JINHA

ŞIRNEX – In the town of Silopi, a place of clandestine burials and countless destroyed houses, the Turkish state has attempted to fix its image with the help of the media. Police drove a group of children to an empty field and forced them to play ball for 10 minutes, leading to a headline in the mainstream media: “Life returns to normal in Silopi.”

The district of Silopi, in Şırnak province, is now in the 31st day of a 24-hour curfew and genocidal assault imposed by Turkish state forces. Recently, some families have begun to return to their homes in the neighborhoods of Nuh, Cudi and Başak, after having been forced out by state forces.

The families returned to find that state forces had left their homes destroyed and covered with racist graffiti (previously seen after attacks in Silvan and Sur). The looted homes are covered with phrases such as “Daddy Tayyip” (referring to Turkey’s president); “Armenian bastards”; and tags declaring the presence of special operations teams.

Panic struck the district this afternoon when special operations police boarded a group of children between the ages of 8 and 14 into a police vehicle. Families worried that their children had been kidnapped. The truth emerged later: a police special operations team had carried the children to an empty field and forced them to play football.

The children reported that after they started to play on the police officers’ orders, a cameraman came to the field. After the cameraman shot some footage, the special operations soldiers told him “enough” and brought the children back to the neighborhood.

Three hours ago, Doğan News Agency ran a story featuring the footage of the children playing football, accompanied by the headline “Life returns to normal in Silopi.”

The presence of masked special operations officers in the background of the footage provides a clue to the nature of the footage.

(ekip/fk/cm)