The participants in the demonstration waved Kurdish flags and showed photos of people killed in the attacks. At least 59 people have been killed in the attacks so far, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
Portraits of Abdullah Öcalan, the head of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who is in prison in Turkey, were also on display. In addition, demonstrators chanted slogans against the Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“The will of the Kurdish people will not be broken. (…) We will not leave our ancestral land,” protester Siham Sleimane told the AFP news agency. “We are victims of extermination,” said Salah al-dine Hamu, who also took part in the protest.
For about a week, Turkey has been using the “clawed sword” against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq. Ankara accuses the PKK of carrying out an attack in Istanbul in the middle of the month that killed six people. Both the PKK and militant Syrian Kurds denied any responsibility for the attack.
