‘Jihadis took 17 of my family tothe hills and shot them’
SITTING IN a London restaurant, the Kurdish man across the table is talking without blinking.
In a soft voice, Bektas says: “If I didn’t have a family here, I would go home tomorrow and kill Daish [Arabic for Islamic State].”
Six weeks ago, 17 members of his extended family were murdered by the fundamentalist group terrorising the Middle East.
IS militants had been driving north towards Kobani — the Kurdish city in Syria that has been under attack by jihadis since September 16 — and stopped in the village where Bektas’s family lived.
“Our area is 15 miles south of Kobani. They set up a checkpoint, to look at documents. When they found Kurds, they took them to the mountains and killed them. They killed women and children in my family.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Bektas — who left Syria 12 years ago and now works as a waiter in the UK — was against the West sending ground troops.
“We just want bigger, heavier guns. We will deal with Daish,” he said. A friend from Diyarbakir, a Kurdish city in Turkey, added: “Now some of those weapons are coming through to Kobani, they are on the offensive, also thanks to the US air strikes.”
The Kurds do not have their own state and occupy territory in what is now southern Turkey, northern Iraq and eastern Syria. They have a history of persecution under Arab dictators as well as suffering massacres at the hands of IS, and profess their sympathy for Israel, well known to be the ultimate target of the jihadis.
“If these people get a small chance, they will kill all the Kurds, and they want to kill the Jews, too. Kurdish and Jewish people should come together because we have similar problems.”
The men stressed that Kurdish culture is democratic and accepting of other groups and religions. “Kurds feel they have a lot in common with Israelis. We are not strict Muslims, we are moderates and there are many secular. We are helping the Yazidis, who are being massacred by IS.” In June this year, Benjamin Netanyahu backed Kurdish independence. He said: “They are a fighting people that have proved their political moderation.”