UN accuses Turkey of ‘serious’ abuses in Kurdish region

The UN on Friday accused Turkish security forces of committing serious abuses during operations against Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey after a regional ceasefire collapsed in July 2015.

A report from the United Nations’ rights office details evidence of “massive destruction, killings and numerous other serious human rights violations committed between July 2015 and December 2016 in southeast Turkey”.

“Government security operations” have targeted more than 30 towns and displaced 355,000 to half a million people, mostly Kurds, the report said.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has waged an insurgency against Turkey since 1984, though the violence was contained during the truce agreed in 2013.

But fighting resumed when the ceasefire fell apart in summer 2015.

Satellite images of areas affected by the latest unrest “indicate an enormous scale of destruction of the housing stock by heavy weaponry”, the report said, with some neighbourhoods “razed to the ground”.

In Cizre, a mainly Kurdish town on the Syrian border, residents described the devastation of neighbourhoods as “apocalyptic”, the UN said.

In early 2016, nearly 200 of the town’s residents, including children, “were trapped for weeks in basements without water, food, medical attention and power before being killed by fire, induced by shelling,” it said.

– No accountability –

The allegations come at a delicate time for Ankara, which is gearing up for an April referendum on whether to create an executive presidency that would expand President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein criticised Erdogan’s government directly, saying he was “particularly concerned by reports that no credible investigation has been conducted into hundreds of alleged unlawful killings.”

“Not a single suspect was apprehended and not a single individual was prosecuted,” Zeid said in a statement.

The UN rights office said it had been seeking access to areas affected by the anti-PKK operations for more than a year, but Erdogan’s government had not approved a visit.