Bünyamin Tekin

Kurds no longer feel safe in Belgium since a large group of ultranationalist Turks carried out a racist attack on Kurdish families returning to their homes after Nevruz celebrations on Sunday, injuring several of them.

Nevruz is traditionally celebrated by Kurds in the second half of March as the first day of spring.

One of the victims of the attack who spoke to Turkish Minute on condition of anonymity for security reasons described how it all began.

Mamo, a 30-year-old Kurd from the northwestern Syrian city of Afrin, said his extended family had gathered at his father’s house in Heusden-Zolder and left for Nevruz celebrations in the Kessel-Lo neighborhood of Leuven. On the way back, a Turkish man intercepted their car and shouted at them because their car was decorated with Kurdish flags and symbols.

This outraged the men in the family. They confronted the person, whereupon he became violent but was overpowered because he was outnumbered.

A video of the altercation and accounts of the incident quickly spread among the Turks of Heusden-Zolder, who make up about 30 percent of the population and were outraged by the audacity of Kurds to venture into a Turkish neighborhood with their symbols on display.

Hundreds of nationalist Turks soon gathered and attacked the house where Mamo’s extended family lived. According to him, there were about 40 people in the house, half of them young children.

Mamo said the attackers were armed with machetes and some with guns, and that shots were fired.

His brothers were brutally attacked by several assailants.

The attackers destroyed vehicles and tried to break into the house in Heusden-Zolder, which Mamo said belonged to his father and where dozens of his family members had taken refuge. He said the attackers tried to set the house on fire, putting about 40 people in danger.

The attackers waved the Turkish flag and gave the “wolf” salute, a gesture of the ultranationalist Grey Wolves, considered the paramilitary wing of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and is banned in several countries.

The gravity of the situation prompted the police to intervene and protect the Kurdish house for 24 hours.

At least six Kurds were hospitalized, one of whom is in serious condition, Council of Kurdish Communities in Belgium (NavBel) Co-chair Tahir Orak told Turkish Minute after visiting the hospital.

“His legs are broken, he will need surgery,” Orak said, without identifying the victim.

According to Orak, the family that was attacked was taken to a safe house by Kurds, which Mamo also confirmed.

Orak said only one person was detained following the incident and that the authorities informed him of an investigation but were waiting for the tensions to calm down before they made any arrests, since there are still riots in Heusden-Zolder.

Orak had a message for the European authorities.

“We, the Kurds, are not asking for their protection. They should protect themselves. These ultranationalist Turks will do them the most harm,” Orak said.

“They are controlled by [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan and the MHP,” Orak said, adding that as NavBel they are trying to defuse the tensions.

This is the organisation behind the manhunt for Kurds in Heusden Zolder (Belgium) – Turkish grey wolves (Bozkurt)
They believe in social-Darwinism, that the Turkish race is a superior-race

Yesterday they attacked us Kurds, tomorrow it may be you#BantheGreywolves https://t.co/I8IgjfkbJM pic.twitter.com/Y1Q0ovjWFp

— ScharoMaroof (@ScharoMaroof) March 25, 2024

Some people claimed that the attacks on Kurds in Heusden-Zolder were “organized” as the district mayor Yasin Gül had previously stated that he sympathized with the Grey Wolves.

In an interview with Turkish broadcaster CNN Türk on Monday, Gül gave a different account of the events and said that the attacks had been provoked by the Kurds.

Turks have been rioting in Ghent and Brussels since Sunday evening. In Ghent, several hundred people gathered in front of the municipal building and chanted slogans against the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which they see as the main cause of the incidents. They hung a Turkish flag in front of the building.

A photo shared on X shows several armed men giving the wolf salute and holding another man, presumably a Kurd, with a Turkish flag on display, although the victim’s face is not visible.

Several social media accounts claimed that the incident took place in Brussels, where a large Turkish minority lives near the Schaerbeek neighborhood.

The racist attacks were followed by protests by Kurdish groups in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Bern.

Kurdish communities from several European countries gathered in front of the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday afternoon, responding to a call by the European Congress of Kurdish Democratic Societies (KCDK-E) to protest “the fascist attacks by the Turkish government.”

In the Belgian city of Liège, masked people attacked the headquarters of the Nationalist Hearths, the youth organization of the MHP, which is closely linked to the Grey Wolves, with Molotov cocktails. A Belgian-Turkish association in Eisden was also attacked. Both incidents resulted in damage to property.

The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey and make up around 18 percent of the population. The group has long been affected by discrimination and violence in the country. Hate crimes against Kurds have recently increased in Turkey.

Turks accuse the Kurds in particular of having links to the PKK, which has been waging a war in the southeast of the country since 1984.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies in 2018 conducted a cross-border military excursion in Afrin, Mamo’s hometown, called Operation Olive Branch, to dislodge Kurdish fighters affiliated with the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main element in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Turkish government views the YPG and SDF as extensions of the outlawed PKK.

Orak and Mamo believe that the Belgian media portrays the conflict in such a way that no one is in the right and that both sides are equally violent.

“They don’t see that we are being oppressed,” says Mamo, emphasizing that he and his family had to flee Afrin when Turkey occupied the city.

The Turks claim they were provoked by the PKK flags, but it is very easy to lump the two together, as the colors of the flag are also used as a national symbol by Kurds who are against the PKK.

“The Turks invaded our homeland and brutalized us, while the same ideology is attacking us here because they feel threatened by our flags and symbols. I told the attackers: Show your Turkish or Palestinian flags in solidarity with what you think is worth defending. Why can’t I, as a Kurd, have the same right?” Mamo asks, adding that the children who were present at the incident are traumatized.

They now often wake up crying and are afraid to go to school or return home, says Mamo.

‘Solving the Kurdish issue is the cure’

“What we see here is the denial that this is a European problem,” Dutch journalist Frederike Geerdink, who has been reporting on the plight of the Kurds since 2006, told Turkish Minute, criticizing the attitude of the Belgian and Dutch media reporting on the incident.

“They are treating this as if it is just another conflict in a faraway country where these two ethnic groups clash. No. What you need to see are the Kurdish women who were killed in Paris in 2013 and those who were killed recently. Kurds are being killed and oppressed. You can’t equate the two,” said Geerdink.

This is because of the racist view of the mainstream media, which looks at the incident from a very Eurocentric point of view and only sees people who are very similar and do not like each other, Geerdink said.

Some far-right groups in Belgium, particularly the far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish League) party, have capitalized on the riots to blame the violence on failed migration policies and migrants.

According to Geerdink, measures by countries such as France and Austria to ban Grey Wolves are not a solution to the problem.

“They need to put pressure on Erdoğan to solve the Kurdish issue instead of banning the Grey Wolves, which will do nothing because there is freedom of association and they will organize themselves under other names,” Geerdink said.

The Kurdish issue, a term widely used in Turkey’s public discourse, refers to the demand of the country’s Kurdish population for equal rights and their struggle for recognition.

“But instead we appease Erdoğan because we are afraid that the migrants will overrun our country,” says Geerdink, emphasizing that the same reasons that make Europeans overlook the plight of the Kurds also make them reluctant to take on Erdoğan, namely racism and xenophobia.