Kurdish boys killed as tensions rise in Cizre -- New Internationalist

Kurdish boys killed as tensions rise in Cizre -- New Internationalist





‘Please help me find who killed my son,’ Ayse Kazanhan sobbed,
sitting on the brightly carpeted living room floor, shaking back
and forth.


‘My son didn’t do anything. I can’t understand why they did this. He was a very special boy.’


Last month, 12-year-old Nihat Kazanhan was fatally shot by unknown
gunmen in the predominantly Kurdish city of Cizre, in southeastern
Turkey, near the Iraqi border.


He was one of at least six people – mostly youths – who have been shot dead since late December last year.


His death was the latest in a string of tragedies which threaten to
undermine the fragile peace process between the Turkish state and the
Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Turkish-Kurdish guerrilla group designated as a terrorist organization by the US and European Union because of its three-decade insurgency for self-rule.

With media attention focused on the
fighting in Kobane, ethnic tensions are rising in Cizre, in southeast
Turkey near the Syrian border and Kurds there are facing renewed
violence.
Jordi Bernabeu Farrús under a Creative Commons Licence