Karayilan: PKK militia "should now intervene" to defend "resistance"

Words by HPG leader announce intensification of Kurdish-Turkish conflict

30.03.201616.15h

Murat Karayilan. Author: Gerîla TV screenshot

"Spring has come, the HPG should now intervene." These are words by Popular Defense Forces (HPG, the PKK's armed wing) commander Murat Karayilan, quoting the need to support "the self-defense resistance of Kurdish youth." A large scale HPG involvement would signal an intensification of the conflict between the Turkish forces and the PKK-linked Kurdish militias.

In recent weeks, sources in the Kurdish movement had told Natonalia that April would witness an intensification of HPG actions in North Kurdistan (Turkey).

Now Karayilan himself says that the HPG "should be active in rural areas in order to show solidarity with the resistance in urban areas," the commander told the PKK-linked Firat News agency.

Indeed, since July 2015 North Kurdish cities have become the main areas of the armed conflict, most remarkably the Sur district in Amed (Diyarbakir), Cizîr (Cizre) and Nisêbîn (Nusaybin). On the Kurdish side, youth militias (the YDG-H) have taken a central role.

Karayilan insisted on the demand for autonomy for Kurds within Turkey, a demand, he said, that amounts to "a universal right."