Germany-based Kurds protest against Turkish government

PanARMENIAN.Net - Germany-based Kurds have amassed in front of the parliament building in the capital, Berlin, protesting the “suppressive” policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as the German government’s relationship with Ankara, Press TV reports.

The participants at the Monday, November 7 rally held up flags of Kurdish groups, including the People’s Defense Units (YPG) and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), which are fighting Takfiri militancy in Syria and Iraq, Turkey’s neighbors.

Ankara considers the Kurdish groups to be affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an independent Kurdish state inside Turkey since 1984. Turkey has banned the PKK and has been carrying out military strikes in both Syria and Iraq with the stated aim of targeting the Daesh Takfiri terror group and the Kurdish forces.

Turkey has also been engaged in deadly confrontations with members of the Kurdish minority in its southeast, and recently arrested the two co-leaders of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) along with nine other lawmakers from the party.

The protesters in Germany also carried signs that stated “It’s enough,” signaling their request for an end to Ankara’s “warlike politics of suppression,” as in the words of a rally organizer.

“We do not want, every day, to sustain a new pain. We do not want the whole country to become a ball of fire and, with a blind war, the people to be defeated again,” the organizer said. “This can only be managed with the personal ambitions and interests of Erdogan and a small group around him.”

German parliament member Andrej Hunko, who was participating in the rally, said, “We do not want to send any German soldiers to Turkey; we want for the German soldiers to be withdrawn, also in the light of the political developments in Turkey.”

Some 250 German troopers are stationed at the Incirlik airbase in Turkey, along with six Tornado reconnaissance jets and a refueling plane, as part of the U.S.-led coalition allegedly battling the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.

Turkey stirred tensions in its relations with Berlin when it until recently denied access to the base to German parliamentarians.

Relations first soured between Ankara and Berlin in June, when the German parliament passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I.