Presidency’s Director of Communications Fahrettin Altun said, “We promise to parents weeping for their children that we will not sacrifice our children to the wheel of terrorism and abuse.”
In a post he shared on his Twitter account, Director of Communications Altun stated the following:
“We promise to parents weeping for their children that we will not sacrifice our children to the wheel of terrorism and abuse. Our struggle will continue fearlessly and determinedly until we save our last child from the clutches of the treacherous terrorist organisation PKK/YPG.”
In Fahrettin Altun’s post, there was also a video with Turkish subtitles titled “YPG continues to exploit children.”
The video, which states that a report published by the United Nations (UN) reveals once again that the YPG, the Syrian arm of the terror group PKK, continues to recruit children, included the following statements:
“YPG constitutes a majority of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US partner in the coalition against ISIS. According to the report, there are 318 verified cases of child recruitment by the YPG and 99 by its all-women wing, the YPJ, under the umbrella of the US coalition partner, the SDF. The SDF and its affiliates were responsible for 35% of all verified child recruitment cases in Syria.”
As stated in the video, the YPG and its umbrella, the SDF have continued to violate human rights despite signing a joint action plan with the UN to end child recruitment in June 2019, and Türkiye has repeatedly warned the international community of the danger posed to children by the PKK and its affiliates.
The video underlined that in southeastern Türkiye, many children had been kidnapped and forced into conscription by the terror group and reminded that the mothers of some of these children, who had been abducted by the PKK, held a sit-in protest in front of HDP’s headquarters in Diyarbakır.
Pointing out that the political party HDP, which has close links to the PKK, and its youth organisation serves as a recruitment tool for the terror group, the video noted that the pressure created by the protests of the mothers of Diyarbakır has resulted in more than 240 families reuniting with their children last year.
The video stated the following: “Children are our future and must be protected from the clutches of terror groups. Türkiye will continue its vigilant fight against PKK and all forms of terror.”