Turkey waging conventional war against Kurds: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor-in-chief of Zuerst in Berlin, to discuss the remarks made by Turkey's Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu saying over 355,000 people have been displaced since the beginning of December 2015 due to the ongoing conflict in the southeastern region of the country.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Give us your thoughts on the numbers released by the Turkish Health Ministry - 355,000 people now internally displaced since the beginning of December 2015?

Ochsenreiter: Yes, these numbers sound like maybe this could be the next upcoming refugee crisis when we see what is right now going on in Turkey. We have to define this war, what happens now, especially in the southeastern parts of Turkey but also of course in northern Syria and in northern Iraq against the Kurds as a conventional war by the Turkish army against the Kurdish population and not just against Kurdish militia but against Kurdish civilians.

If we take into account that couple of days ago, the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the Kurds are allying, our Kurdish gangs are allying with the Russians, what means with the enemy, and that around one hundred years ago already the Armenians, as he said the Armenian gangs, were allying with the Russians again, with the enemy, it is just one half of his message because the other half of his message he did not say we knew what happened in 1915; 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turkish militants, by the Turkish army, so we witnessed a genocide. So maybe what Davutoglu said was an annunciation, genocide with annunciation before.    

Press TV: By many accounts on the ground, the number of the internally displaced will probably continue to rise. What steps should Turkey be taking to try and remedy this situation? Should we be seeing Ankara more intent on trying to find a solution to the issue?

Ochsenreiter: I seriously doubt that the Turkish President Erdogan is right now interested in a peaceful solution because he is right now imposing himself as the strong man for several months. He is absolutely dominating the scene in the region. He is negotiating with the European Union. He is using the refugees as a sort of pressure, material against the European Union. He is getting a lot of money from the European Union. He is getting a lot of benefits. On the other side, he is doing the war. He imposes himself as the strong man in Turkey. He even went so far in the last weeks that he tried to make pressure on the Americans because Erdogan is not really happy with the situation that his ally, his NATO ally America, is at the same time also supporting the Kurds.

So there will be no solution with this president and of course no peaceful solution. A peaceful solution could be only brought from outside. That means not an intervention of course but it means to do all means of diplomatic and economic pressure against Erdogan’s Turkey.  

We can see for example with Syria, with the Russian Federation, with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with China, that means Turkey should be the country where we should impose sanctions, economic embargoes, we should strengthen or sharpen the visa regime so that would be the form of pressure what might make the Turkish government to react and to solve the crisis.

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