SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — In the wake of the death of yet another group of Kurdish civilians in a Jan. 23 attack by Turkish jets and the unprecedented violence that engulfed the occupying Turkish soldiers based in the area, anger is simmering among many Iraqi Kurds living in these highlands toward both the Turkish government and the militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi state for failing to protect them.
These local Kurds, caught between various competing forces, feel abandoned by their government as they go about their lives in their region. “There is not a single family in our region who hasn’t lost a member to the Turkish airstrikes,” rights activist Ahmad Shamki in Shiladeza told Al-Monitor via telephone. “In 1996 my 17-year-old brother Ali was killed in a Turkish airstrike and we could not collect his body for 13 days from our village on the border with Turkey, the same year my wife also lost three relatives in an airstrike and their bodies were never recovered.”