The France-based Land and Culture Organization has addressed an appeal to the President of France, the European authorities and member states of NATO, requesting action in Kessab. The message reads:
“On Friday March 21, 2014, armed groups claiming to be from several Islamist movements (including Jabhat Al Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham, both affiliated with Al Qaida) entered Syria from Turkey, crossing the border check point at Kessab, clearly implicating the responsibility of authorities of the Republic of Turkey. The attack on the locality of Kessab forced most of its population to flee to Lattakia in a state of emergency. At present, the region of Kessab is almost entirely emptied of its population and armed Islamist groups are occupying and pillaging houses and churches.
The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has assisted the assailants in crossing the border, has covered them during their attacks and has taken in their wounded, who were treated in a Turkish village near the border. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that Turkey has become a base for “Jihad” candidates coming from various countries, including Europe and France itself, and that it shares the responsibility for the confessionalisation and ethnicisation of the Syrian conflict.
The participation of Turkey, a member of NATO, makes this State an accomplice of the deliberate attack of these “jihadists” on a civilian and non-combatant population which is a minority community of Syria. Moreover, Kessab is a symbol for the whole Armenian Nation.
Turkey is well aware of this fact. Kessab is the only group of Armenian villages to have escaped the turkification policy and to have not been emptied definitively of its Armenian population in the 1920’s. What is the objective of the TurkishState today? A year away from the centenary of the genocide of the Armenians, what meaning can one give to such a deliberate act?
We are making a special appeal to the President of France, to the European authorities, and to the Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, requesting a firm and rapid intervention towards the Turkish State, so that the attacks from Turkish territory cease, and that the Armenian population of Kessab can return to their homes.”
