OPINION - After First Diyarbakir Mothers' Congress, impressions on terrorist PKK's child recruitment

By Valeria Giannotta

- The author is an Italian academic and political scientist. She is scientific director of the Türkiye Observatory at the Centre for Politics and International Studies (CeSPI), based in Rome.

ISTANBUL (AA) - While in the West, some states show a certain positive attitude towards the terrorist organization PKK by offering shelter to some of its members and setting themselves up as a logistical base for the recruitment and collection of funds for the militias; they certainly neglect the pain that PKK causes to innocent victims. As a matter of fact, much is being done in Türkiye to convey the right message about the atrocities that the PKK and its sister organizations are capable of committing, hence noteworthy is the First International Congress held in the city of Nevsehir, acknowledged as a city of peace, on the phenomenon of the kidnapped children.

- Mothers of Diyarbakir

In Diyarbakir, a Kurdish-majority city in southern Anatolia, since 2019, a large number of mothers have been carrying out a silent but extremely dignified protest, action demanding the release of their children kidnapped by the PKK and enrolled in guerrilla warfare. The sit-in began on September 3, 2019, when Hacire Akar staged a protest outside of the Peoples' Democratic Party's (HDP) Diyarbakir office and in a very short time, it spread in several other cities and provinces, such as Van, Mus, Sirnak, Hakkari and Izmir. In front of the pictures of their missing young sons and daughters, these women have been sitting for more than three and a half years in front of the headquarters of the pro-PKK HDP party, asking to have their children back. Although HDP is a political party active within the Turkish Parliament, it has never really cut its ties with PKK as it represents an important pool of public support. Therefore, perceived as an ally and political arm of the PKK terrorist organization as well as the co-responsible author of the entrapment and kidnapping of young people, HDP headquarter was chosen as the address of the protests. Indeed, it seems that the party has been playing a key role as a way station for the children being taken to the mountains to combat. Hence, the Mothers of Diyarbakir are asking HDP to account for the loss of their children and they are keen to continue the protests until they have them back. Unfortunately, this is a sad and quite large phenomenon capable of expansion. According to the estimates of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Türkiye, 450 families are involved in the protests and to date, only 38 have been able to reunite with their children. Thanks to the intelligence operations of the Turkish armed forces, indeed, some young people have been freed from the clutches of the PKK and have been brought to safety, while currently, the operations aimed at rescuing the others are still going on.

- PKK/YPG: The tactics pivot on recruiting children

As a matter of fact, there is no doubt that the PKK's tactic pivots on recruiting young children, as they are more easily indoctrinated and have the potential to serve longer. As well there is concrete evidence that YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, also acts, in the same way, to carry on its armed struggle by kidnapping and enlisting young people who, in turn, are brainwashed. In this regard, some Syrian sources, such as Assyria TV Official, report that "The YPG has forcibly recruited many underage Assyrians in Syria"; among the others, it namely refers to a 16-year-old boy who was renamed with a Kurdish name whose coffin was returned to the family with a "martyr" diploma [1]. However, this ignoble phenomenon has also begun to be known internationally. A United Nations report, "UN's Children and Armed Conflict," highlighted that already in 2021, the PKK recruited 221 child soldiers in Syria, while the UN's report on "Children and Armed Conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic" claims that between July 2018 and June 2020, 417 children were used by the YPG. Although many are undetected cases of child soldiers who are not included in the international reports, the news coming from Syria of missing young people, especially Assyrians, Yazidis and Christians kidnapped by the YPG and sent to fight, is increasing. This is a practice that not only harms the personal dignity of individuals but also undermines the impregnable rights of human beings, which is, therefore, prosecuted by international law. Indeed, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, approved in 1998, establishes as a war crime the enlistment of children under the age of 15 in national armed forces and their use in active participation in hostilities in both international and internal conflicts. Moreover, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, approved in 2000, raises the minimum age for direct participation in firefights from 15 to 18 (Article 1) and it prohibits conscription or forced recruitment under the age of 18 (Article 2). Furthermore, Convention No. 182 of the ILO - International Labor Organization, approved in 1999, defines the forced and compulsory recruitment of children as one of the "worst forms of child labor" and prohibits it. Thus, looking with benevolence at the PKK and PYG also means accepting and justifying their crimes. As a terror organization, in addition to the bloodshed in over 40 years causing the deaths of more than 60.000 civilians in Türkiye, PKK is guilty of taking children away from their families by enlisting them in the worst conditions that the armed struggle can carry. Indeed, those are crimes committed not only towards the little ones but also towards the whole of humanity; thus, the time has come for the international community to express a firm condemnation by leaving aside any sort of ideological support to those terrorist organizations.

[1] https://twitter.com/AssyriaTV/status/1610998203758874627?t=zudPitjmzpkVaK5akTtjzw&s=08

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.