Warmonger Erdogan oppressing Turkish peace movement

This 20 January 2017 video from France says about itself:

Hundreds took to the streets of Paris on Saturday, to protest against the ongoing military operations of Turkey against the Kurdish-held Afrin in northern Syria.

The protesters marched towards the square of the Republic, while holding anti-Erdogan and pro-Kurdish signs and banners.

As the Turkish armed forces continue their bloodshed in Afrin, northern Syria, Dutch NOS TV writes today (translated):

Criticism through social media is also being oppressed. More than forty journalists, Kurdish politicians and human rights activists have been arrested in recent days after they condemned the operation in Afrin on Twitter. …

“Racist, fascist war, I am against war“, Nurcan Baysal posted on Twitter last weekend. It was her reaction to the beginning of Turkish military intervention in Afrin. The Kurdish woman works as a writer and human rights activist in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. She has a firm opinion, and is clearly not afraid to state it.

That night the front door of Baysal was broken down by police. After three days of detention, she was released today on condition that she did not leave the country. There is another investigation going on. “Nothing in Baysal’s tweets calls for violence”, writes Human Rights Watch in a reaction. “She is doing the exact opposite.” …

The German newspaper Tageszeitung reported on Twitter yesterday: “While we are writing this, the apartments of journalists are being stormed and searched”. It concerned two journalists working for the Turkish publication of the newspaper; Taz Gazete. According to the newspaper, the two have been arrested. And there were simultaneously raids in the houses of a journalist in the eastern city of Van and two journalists in Istanbul.

The journalists previously had organized an online debate in which activists and politicians were guests who spoke out against the Turkish operation in Afrin. In addition, according to Taz Gazete, they had shared information from local sources in Afrin.

The latter is now actively blocked by the Turkish authorities. Since today, the news website The Region is no longer accessible in Turkey. The authorities decided to block the site on Monday. The Region is one of the few news sources with a wide local network in Syria, including in the Afrin region. The site quoted many sources from Afrin and other Kurdish areas in Syria in recent days.

In its first National Defense Strategy document issued in over a decade, the Pentagon this month bluntly declared that its nearly two-decade focus on the so-called global war on terror was over, and that it has adopted a new strategic orientation toward preparing for “great power” confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and China. In Syria, the Pentagon’s declared strategic shift has already been realized in bloody facts on the ground. The US plans to permanently occupy parts of Syria, impose a client regime of its own choosing, and destroy the influence of its rivals. These moves have sparked the ongoing Turkish invasion in the northwestern Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin, which threatens to spark a much broader and bloodier conflict: here.

General Sir Nick Carter, the Chief of the General Staff of the British Armed Forces, has declared that Britain must actively prepare for war with Russia and other geo-political rivals: here.

Laws to promote women’s rights are on the books in Turkey. But as the mood grows more conservative, gender issues are out of the spotlight and activists fear the government is backsliding: here.

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