ANKARA - Journalist Fréderike Geerdink said that without Kurdish journalists, many truths would not be heard, adding that Turkey is committing a war crime by killing journalists. 

 

Journalists Gülistan Dara and Hêro Bahadîn were killed and 6 others were wounded in a Turkish drone attack on August 23 in Seyîdsadik district of Sulaymaniyah in the Federated Kurdistan Region. Reacting to the killing of journalists, Journalist Fréderike Geerdink said: “Turkey cannot target journalists even if it says it is at war.” 

 

Underlining that journalists should be protected according to international law, Geerdink said: “If Turkey says it's a war, it's a war crime and it's a crime anyway, you cannot just kill people. But everybody's silent. Also, politics is silent.” 

Geerdink also referred to the “security arrangment” signed between Ankara and Baghdad on August 15. Geerdink said that Turkey has the authority to exercise strict control in the cities under the control of the KDP in the Federated Kurdistan Region, but this is prevented in the cities dominated by the YNK. Stating that Iran and Turkey have been massacring Kurds in the region for a long time, “The security arrangement with Baghdad adds an extra danger, but the danger has always been there” she said. 

 

Journalist Fréderike Geerdink

 

KDP'S ROLE

 

Geerdink stated that the KDP is politically and economically dependent on Turkey: “Turkey just has them in their pocket, so to speak. And it depends on, will they achieve their goals, what their goals are. If their goal is to enrich themselves further, then probably they're being very successful. But if their goal would be, although I never see anything that points to they have this goal, but if their goal is to achieve more freedom for Kurdistan, and for Kurdish people, then obviously they are not reaching their goal at all. But I don't think that's their goal anymore. Maybe far back in history it was but that has faded away since long.”

 

TESTIMONY ON THE GROUND

 

Stating that Kurdish journalists are not well explained at the source of the silence against the attacks against Kurdish journalists, Geerdink said: “There's this perception like, ‘They're more like activists than journalists’, ‘maybe they are connected to terrorism’. There is a lack of understanding what Kurdish journalism is. They have another perspective; the perspective of struggle, the perspective of the people.” Geerdink said that she had worked on the ground in Kurdistan for years and had witnessed the work of Kurdish journalists, but that the Turkish press generally lying. 

 

'I LEARNED A LOT FROM KURDISH JOURNALISTS'

 

Geerdink concluded: “If we didn't have the Kurdish press and Kurdish journalists, there were so many stories we wouldn't know. Like Abdurrahman Gök, who made the pictures of the young man who was killed in a Newroz grounds, of the mothers, the remains of their children, sent them in boxes via the post Office. The men who were thrown out of helicopters, people say, ‘Oh, that's outrageous. That probably didn't happen’ but later, it turns out it's, of course, true. This goes back to the 80s and 90s. So many stories we would never heard of, if it wasn't for Kurdish journalism. I learned a lot from them, and I respect them.”