[WATCH] 'Erdogan terrorist' — Kurds in Malta show solidarity with under-fire Kurds in Syria

A small gathering of Kurds residing in Malta took to the Turkish Embassy in Floriana to show solidarity with war-torn Rojava.

Organised by Moviment Graffitti on Saturday, activists said that following US President Donald Trump’s exit from Syria, the Turkish state was carrying out an ethnic cleansing of Kurds in Northern Syria.

The vacuum left by the US military allowed Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to oppress the democratic system in Rojava, a de facto autonomous region, and home to Kurdish, Assyrian and Arab communities.

“Erdogan Terrorist! Viva Rojava!” were the cries of the Kurdish gathering in Floriana as a spokesperson for the community said that the Turkish military was killing children along with ISIS terrorists. 

“We came here to say a few words, to get something done in the hopes that that the war will stop,” he said. 

The invasion of Rojava by Turkish forces has resulted in several high-profile deaths reported in the media. Amongst these victims was Hevrin Khalaf, a Kurdish politician and head of the Future Party, as well as a women’s rights activist.

A Turkish newspaper, Yeni Safak, described Khalaf’s killing as a “successful operation.” The group that has declared responsibility for the murder is Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a Sunni Islamist extremist organisation. 

“The government in Rojava is built on ideas of feminism, ecological principles and radical democracy. It has managed to fight back but Turkey is using Islamist militants,” a Moviment Graffitti activist said on Saturday. 

Only four years ago, the world was celebrating the liberation of Kobane—one of the main cities in Northern Syria—by Kurdish fighters from the hands of ISIS militants. 

“Now, those Kurdish forces and Rojava communities that had been used to effectively clear ISIS from the region and that were pivotal in the defeat of this terrorist group have been completely and cruelly abandoned to Erdogan’s ambition to destroy the Kurds and other communities in this region,” a Graffitti statement read on Saturday.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 112,850 civilians have been killed in the Syrian civil war between March 2011 and March 2019.