Condemn the Suruç massacre!
Find, prosecute and punish the perpetrators!
Down with ISIL and its allies in Turkey!
Hold Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP government responsible!
On this day of 20 July 2015, dozens of people, more than 50 on some counts, lost their lives as a result of an attack by a suicide bomber in the town of Suruç, province of Urfa in Turkey, just across the border from the Kobane canton of Rojava, the autonomous political entity of Western Kurdistan established in 2012 in the north of Syria. This was an attack on the youth group of the ESP, one of the component forces of the umbrella party HDP (the People’s Democracy Party), which won 13 per cent of the popular vote in the 7 June 2015 elections and caused the party of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the AKP in power, a serious setback. From this vantage point, this attack appears as a new addition to the long list of carefully planned attacks on the HDP during the election campaign, culminating in the bomb attack on the demonstration in the city of Diyarbakır two days before election day, which left four people dead.
The 3rd Euro-Mediterranean Conference, bringing together parties, organisations and militants from 17 countries on four continents in an internationalist meeting in Athens, Greece on 18-20 July 2015, severely condemns the attack and demands that everything possible be done to prosecute and punish the perpetrators and the instigators. The Conference notes that this attack on the HDP is also unambiguously an attack on the Kurdish people and those who act in solidarity with it. Recalling the horrible attack on Kobane by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) only a month ago, on 25 June, which left 146 civilians dead, and the fact that another powerful bomb exploded, on the same day as this recent massacre in Suruç, in Kobane itself, it can be said without risk of error that the force behind this new massacre is again the ISIL, either directly or through its takfiri allies in Turkey. This barbaric organisation, in turn, has been used by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP government as its lever in their struggle for greater power in the Middle East and also in pursuit of their aim of putting an end to the experience of Kurdish autonomy in Kobane.
The Conference declares that it is unconditionally on the side of the oppressed Kurdish nation in its quest for its national rights in the context of the partition, dating from almost a century back, of Kurdistan into four parts (Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria). It also declares its support to all the revolutionary and progressive forces in Turkey, Syria and Iraq who are fighting against the barbaric ISIL. It further states unequivocally its belief that unless Erdoğan and the AKP government in Turkey are brought down in Turkey, the ISIL will enjoy support from Turkey and through this country, with which Syria shares a 900-kilometer long frontier, from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in terms of logistics, finance, arms, health care for its combatants, and the flow of militants over the border. Erdoğan and the AKP government have been caught red-handed in the repeated cases of raids by the security forces of Turkey itself on the TIR lorries of the MIT, the Turkish intelligence organisation, in which arms caches headed to ISIL or other takfiri/sectarian armed groups were discovered. All of these cases were later covered up through the arbitrary decisions of the Turkish judiciary under Erdoğan’s control, but the evidence is incontrovertible.
The Conference extends its support to all the forces that are fighting against Erdoğan and the despotic AKP government in a consistent manner, in particular to the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DIP), and warns against the dire consequences that may result from all kinds of prevarication and hesitation on the question of the struggle against these forces.
Our solidarity goes first and foremost of course to the Kurdish people, who are fighting valiantly for their freedom and dignity.
Smash the ISIL and its reactionary war-lord entity!
Bring down Erdoğan and the AKP government!
Recognise unconditionally the right to self-determination of the Kurds!
Forward to a Socialist Federation of the Middle East and North Africa!
