“In our opinion, Erdogan's policy is genocide and total extermination of the [Kurdish] people, both in Turkey and abroad," Patiev said at the Rossiya Segodnya press center in Moscow.
Relations between Ankara and the Kurds, who comprise some 25 percent of the country's population, have been progressively worsening. Ankara has been carrying out a campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which seeks to create a Kurdish state in parts of Turkey and Iraq, since the summer of 2015 following a deadly suicide attack in Suruc. Ankara considers PKK to be a terrorist organization.
In February, Kurdish activists claimed Turkish troops had burned some 150 civilians to death in basements in the town of Cizre in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak.
"Human rights organizations are unnecessarily politicized, quietly watching the terror happening in Syria and Turkey… One can understand Germany with its multi-million Turkish diaspora, but we should not appease Turkey," Patiev added.
The KNK is a Brussels-based coalition of European organizations formed by exiled Kurdish politicians, lawyers and activists raising awareness of human rights violations in Kurdish-populated regions.
