In an interview, Murad Aslan, a security expert, said that the PKK / YPG continues to violate children’s rights and thus commit war crimes under international law by recruiting children as soldiers.
The expert referred to the United Nations report on child soldiers in 2019 and noted that 313 children have been abducted, deceived and used as soldiers in just one year, while these have only been the reported and confirmed cases. Out of these, 126 are girls, 20 of whom were under 15 years old. At least 25 of them were injured, killed or missing.
“The main reason the PKK focuses on children is that children are more easily deceived and believe. Also, when they are exposed to the organization’s ideology, they are brainwashed faster than adults,” said Murad Aslan.
The security expert added: “If we observe, the majority of the child soldiers in this organization are from poor and underdeveloped areas. They are almost illiterate or illiterate, and in some cases in southeastern Turkey, the PKK publicly forces every family to pay 30,000 Turkish lira, which is unaffordable for families, so they are forced to replace one of their children, and the geographical location allows the organization to be active in the mountains.
