Source:“Kobane Halkı’yla Dayanışma Çağrısı!” (“Call for Solidarity with the People of Kobane!”), Lambdaistanbul, 3 October 2013, http://www.lambdaistanbul.org/s/etkinlik/kobane-halkiyla-dayanisma-cagrisi/

A civil war erupted in Syria in March 2011; with the attack of ISIS, one of the most brutal organizations to develop in recent history, on the city of Kobane, this civil war has arrived within a few meters of our doorstep. We could say that this period is the cruelest of this civil war. As happens in all wars, the primary targets in Syria are women and children.

At least 70,000 women and children were forced to exile to the district of Suruç in the city of Urfa, following the ISIS attacks on the city of Kobane in Rojava, Kurdistan. In part because Turkey neighbors Kobane, the Turkish public witnessed, via the local and international media, the support that was being provided [by the current Turkish government] to the brutal ISIS gangs. As such, we too, at Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Organization, are witnessing the threat to life in Kobane and to security in the Middle East because of warmongering gangs that are directly or indirectly supported by the Republic of Turkey.

We at Lambdaistanbul are concerned for all peoples who have experienced or risk experiencing the massacres of ISIS, especially the people of Kobane. We recognise that not only is it those such as the gay individual who was murdered yesterday in Izmir, but also the Kurds who are forced to face cruelty, that are the oppressed of the world. We do not shy away from stating again and again that social peace will provide everyone with a habitable world. We were concerned when the threat of massacre faced by the Kurds in Kobane today was realised in Sinjar yesterday. We are now witnessing how Turkey’s security forces are brutally attacking, despite all of this, and in violation of international law, the civilians who are fleeing Kobane and the people who are trying to provide support for them. As such, we believe that the motion on cross-border military operations that was passed by the Turkish Parliament constitutes a threat to the security and the future of the peoples of the Middle East. That is why we find the politics taken up by the Turkish government in the face of cruel ISIS attacks to be worrisome. We believe that it is a civil responsibility to amplify the call to solidarity with the people of Kobane.

In accordance with this responsibility, we call everyone to take part in the campaigns that are being organized in solidarity with the people of Kobane and those who have been displaced by the war.

Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association.