Pro-Kurdish activists rallied outside The New York Times and marched to CNN Tuesday to protest the lack of media coverage of what they say was a massacre of Kurdish people by government forces in Turkey. Turkey says it carried out a military operation against people it identified as militants with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Initial state media reports put the death toll at 60, although that number was later retracted. The local governorate said 10 people were killed. But pro-Kurdish lawmakers have accused Turkish forces of massacring dozens of wounded civilians. Protesters rallied here in New York City.
Elif Genc: “My name is Elif Genc. I’m from the HDK NYC, and so that’s the Peoples’ Democratic Congress. And the reason that we’re here today is because we’re just trying to bring awareness to a horrific massacre that occurred over the weekend in Turkey. They’re actually just opening fire and just openly killing, with like reckless abandon, just children, women—it doesn’t matter who. But there should definitely just be some awareness on the part of the international community that Turkey is—put pressure on Turkey to stop this, because if there was—I mean, there are American weapons companies that are selling weapons to the Turkish army to kill these people, to begin with.”