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Turkey (Bakur or North of Kurdistan)
- In a speech she delivered in the 12thInternational Conference on “The European Union, Turkey, and the Kurds” at Tuesday night, the Kurdish MP Leyla Zana demanded three things from the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan:“1- In order to conduct negotiations based on Mr. Ocalan’s conditions again, it is necessary to pave the way to create equal conditions and healthy communication channels; 2- Achieving a lasting peace is possible only if Kurdish people’s legitimate rights and demands are accepted under constitutional guarantees. Therefore, in the new constitution discussions, if an equal, free, and democratic coexistence with Kurds is desired, there is only one solution: just like other people, Kurdish people should have a political and administrative status wherever they live. 3- Rojava should also be approached on the same basis. The state should give up its rigid and incomprehensible attitude; people’s political will should be respected.”
- HDP Şırnak deputy Faysal Sarıyıldız who is also in Cizresaid: “Atrocity continues in the savagest manner. Sounds of blasts came while the wounded were about to be taken out of the basement. 30 people there are facing a threat of execution. We have released the names of all the people there, yet the President and others continue to distort the truth.”
- Mother of injured Kurdish youth: “our youths are on the eve of death. My heart is trapped inside that basement. I wish I could see the injures on my son’s body. I have no idea what parts of his body are injured. He has been thirsty and hungry for 10 days. Who knows what pains he is suffering from? I would have smelled my son’s injures… I would have kissed them… My other son is in prison, too. We truly are in pain.”
Syria (Rojava or West of Kurdistan)
- Officials from Syria’s largest Kurdish group left Geneva on Saturday after being excluded from the negotiations. Meanwhile the Special U.S Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL Amb Brett McGurk visited northern Syria including Kobani city and held meetings with People Protection Units (YPG) commandos.
- As a result of a series of airstrikes conducted by Assad regime warplanes against Kurdish-inhabited neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo city, 4 civilians lost their lives and 8 more were injured all of whom are Kurdish. Kurdish-inhabited Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood, which is controlled by the Kurdish forces, has frequently been targeted by both Assad regime warplanes and Turkish-backed opposition forces since the breakout of the Syrian Civil War.
- Sinem Muhammad, the Syrian Kurds’ representative to Europe believes that the Opposition side is trying to monopolize the Geneva III Conference. She accuses them of trying to exclude the [Kurdish-dominated] Democratic Self-Management Administration and the Syrian Democratic Council from the peace conference. She adds: “We in the Self-Management Administration, regardless of our participation in the Geneva III Conference, will continue our struggle to establish … a new regime in a democratic, decentralized, pluralistic and federal Syria with no room for exclusionary and chauvinist thoughts.”
- Gharib Hisso the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Representative to the Iraqi Kurdistan said: “the Turkish Army is on call to attack Rojava. They have shelled Gire Spi (Tel Abyad) and Afrin in recent days.” Tracing the relationship between Turkish army build-up on the border and the Geneva III Conference, Hisso added: “If Kurds participate in the Geneva III Conference, the Turkish army will most probably react by waging an all-out war on Rojava.”
- The third group of Arab and Turkmen fighters successfully passed their military training period in the Military Academy of Shahid Aziz in Gire Spi (Tel Abyad) on Friday. This group of fighters, who was composed of 43 Arab and Turkmen fighters, went through courses on the importance of training, history of Syria, relations among different ethnic and religious groups, women’s history, revolutionary ethics, soul of fraternity, and rights and responsibilities of YPG, YPJ, and SDF members.
Iraq (Bashur or South of Kurdistan)
- In a speech he gave during the conference, Deputy PM Qubad Talabani stated that the financial and economy crisis is the most challenging circumstance Kurdistan Region is facing and that the government does not deny the significance of this issue. PM Barzani gave a similar statement during his speech in the conference. “To restore balance between income and expenses, and to establish a stable economy, we need reform. And, it should first start with the Ministry of Finance and Economy,” Deputy PM Talabani added. “Unless the ministry is redefined with a new structure and work protocol, all of our reform efforts in the finance sector will be limited.”
- A High Committee of Kurdish Political Forces to re-activating the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament, normalizing the cabinet situation, tackling the economic crisis and holding the referendum on Kurdistan’s future held its first meeting on February 1, 2016.
Iran (Rojhelat or East of Kurdistan)
- In the Kurdish inhabited neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood, Aleppo, some Kurdish women launched a campaign of collecting 10,000 signatures for release of Iranian Kurdish activist Zeyneb Jalaliyan. The campaign, which lasted four days, was launched by pro-PYD (People’s Protection Units) women in Sheikh Maqsood, Aleppo.
- A group of Iranian academics issued a statement, supporting their counterparts in Turkey against the AKP-led government increasing pressures on them. Condemning the Turkish military operations against Kurdish civilians, the signatories of the statement have called to an end to “the interminable military curfew” against one million residents in the southeast. Ervand Abrahamian, Touraj Atabaki, Fariborz Raisdana, Janet Afary, Kamran Matin, and Mazyar Behrooz are among over the 50 academic signatories of this statement.