Letter from HDP Co-Chairs to Ban Ki-moon

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Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chairs, Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahatiin Demirtaş have sent a letter to United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to attend the First World Humanitarian Summit.

The summit is being held today and tomorrow (May 23-24) in İstanbul.

The HDP leaders stated in their letter they sent ahead of the summit which is convened upon Ban’s call, expressed that they closely follow the summit.

The talks terminated all of a sudden

The letter bearing the signatures of Yüksekdağ and Demirtaş is briefly as follows:

“The summit is being held in a period in which democracy and social peace ground is being overthrown by authoritarian state violence in Turkey, conflict and extent of the humanitarian destruction is getting heavier in the Kurdish region of the country, and the most massive refugee crisis in the late history is being witnessed on the border.

“We are deeply worried that hosting such a critical summit might be a mean for Erdoğan regime to cover up its violation rights and humanitarian crimes it has been committing without considering accountability before national and international law.

“The regional conflict which the Erdoğan regime has incited has taken on a dramatic dimension with the immediate termination of the talks being carried out between the government and Kurdish opposition”.

Humanitarian issues

The letter expressed that Turkey needs to develop perspective for the solution of humanitarian crises:

“In the report you prepared for the İstanbul Summit, you note that your vision is to ‘restore the belief against global order’ and ‘show deserved solidarity to the millions left behind in their chronical needs and constant fear in conflict zones’.

“Right now in Turkey, millions of Kurdish citizens and over a million Syrian refugees have been living deprived of security in the conditions you defined.

“Considering the fact that intricate humanitarian crises come into existence directly as a result of geopolitical and economical calculations and negotiations of states, we would like to bring to the attention of you that democratic autonomy and accountability on a local scale is of central importance in preventing this human-made humanitarian issues”. (AS/TK)