AMMAN (CNS): Turkish airstrikes and ground troops are threatening areas in northern Iraq populated by Christians, Yazidis and Kurds trying to recover following attacks in 2014 by Islamic State militants.
Initially, airstrikes shook Mount Sinjar, an area that is home to the Yazidi minority and against whom the militants carried out a genocide campaigny.
On June 17, Turkish commando forces were airlifted into the border region of Haftanin, some 14 kilometres from the Turkish-Iraqi border, for what Turkey said is a military operation against Kurdish rebels, however, analysts and others disputed the claim.
“Shelling by the Turkish military hit fields near the town of Bersev, forcing some 10 to 15 Christian families to flee,” said a Chaldean Catholic priest, who wished his name withheld for fear of his safety. “Those families have now returned,” he added,
Father Emanuel Youkhana, of the Assyrian Church of the East, who spoke with the priest, explained, “Christians are very fearful about what is going to happen because they are quite aware that neither the Iraqi nor the Kurdistan regional government can do anything to stop this.”
He said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “is taking advantage of the fact that world powers are not making Iraq a priority at the moment. Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, are weak. Also, Kurdistan’s economy is linked to Turkey.”
Nadia Murad, a Yazidi survivor of the 2014 genocide and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, tweeted on June 15: “Mount Sinjar is a war zone right now. Turkish fighter jets are bombing multiple locations. Over 150 Yazidi families had just returned to their homes.”
Father Youkhana, who runs Christian Aid Programme Northern Iraq for displaced Iraqis around the northern Iraqi city of Dahuk, called the latest military action “another unjustified action by the Turkish state … with an unfair, unjustifiable pretext of targeting so-called terrorist groups.”
