Feleknas Uca, an MP in the Turkish parliament for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and former MEP in the European Parliament, released a statement on the Iraqi military’s recent move to take over control of the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar (Shengal), and to drive out the Yazidi forces that were formed in the resistance against the massacres of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014-15.

Uca, a Yazidi herself, said:

“Yazidis have lived through 73 ‘fermans’* and massacres so far, and were subjected to genocide by the ISIS barbarians in front of the entire World in 2014.

Unfortunately today, attacks against Yazidis continue yet again in a systematic way. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have had to leave their land, thousands have been killed, further thousands of women and young girls were abducted by ISIS in 2014. Today the fate of 2700 abducted Yazidi women is still unknown.

The Yazidi people who returned to Sinjar and who are trying to rebuild their lives and establish their means of self-defence are now subjected to attacks of states and regional powers, who do not recognise the Yazidi people’s will so that the massacre, left unfinished, may be completed.

The ruling AKP administration has conducted air strikes on civilian settlements, hospitals, council buildings and schools in Sinjar dozens of times. We recently visited Sinjar as a delegation, and observed on site the destruction caused by air strikes. And now the Yazidi people are being targeted and attacked by the Iraqi military. The [Turkish] Minister of Defence, Hulusi Akar, admitted in a speech he made in the parliament that a decision had been taken for the elimination of Sinjar’s free will through means of an agreement signed by Erbil and Baghdad on the 9th of October [in 2020].

Yazidi people are now being subjected to attacks, re-started by ISIS on the one side, and to the joint attacks of Turkey, Iraq and KDP [the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq], on the other side. They want to leave the Yazidis exposed to a 74th ferman, with walls being constructed along the border with Rojava [Northeast Syria]. All these organised and systematic attacks are expressions of the intended genocide targeting the Yazidis, and constitute crimes. We call upon all powers involved in these processes to stop committing crimes against the Yazidi people.

The tension they want to create in Sinjar will do nobody any good; on the contrary, all the people in the region have been suffering from it. These attacks endanger the future of all of the peoples, and are preventing peace. In Iraq, where the President has not yet been elected, the Government not yet formed, and ISIS rising from its grave yet again, all those who only watched previous attacks on the Yazidis are also partners in this crime, particularly the United Nations.”

* Persian word for a high state official’s orders, but used in the context of persecutions and massacres targeting Yazidis throughout history