Sarya Gözüoğlu / JINHA

AMED - Gülistan Yalçındağ, a human rights worker with the Human Rights Association in Turkey, commented on the death of the young child Aylan Kurdi, blaming the powerful states who permitted the war on his homeland for his death.

A photograph of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a shore in Bodrum, Turkey spread rapidly across social media recently. Aylan died, along with his older brother and his mother, when the rubber dinghy they boarded hoping to reach Greece capsized. It has emerged that the family were forced to flee their home in the Kobanê Canton of the autonomous Rojava region in Syria after Daesh began attacking the area.

Gülistan Yalçındağ serves on the Women's Commission of Turkey's Human Rights Association. Commenting on the photograph, Gülistan denounced Aylan's killers as all those who permitted the attacks on Kobanê.

"Why is it that the situation of refugees' can't make it onto the agenda?" asked Gülistan. "People treat it as an ordinary peace of news and move on, but this is a problem for humanity, and everyone who remains silent in the face of it has a share in the massacre. On the one hand, people are going swimming in this sea at holiday resorts. On the other hand, there's a life and death situation in that same sea.

"There's broadcasting on this, there's news on this, but there's no intervention happening. At the end of the day the ones responsible for this are those in power--the forces, the states in power," she said. "This isn't just a problem in Turkey. The reason people are forced to leave their homes and migrate in the Middle East is Daesh, and those who ignore the war and the cruelty are the ones responsible for this."

(fk/cm)