Sinjar massacre

A Peshmerga commander based in Sinjar in northern Iraq has said the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is maintaining its presence in Iraq's Sinjar region despite Turkey's calls for its evacuation, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) presence in northern Iraq's Sinjar district is a threat to Turkey, United States Defense Secretary James Mattis said on March 27.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a phone conversation late on April 25, after the latter criticized Turkey for bombing Iraq's Sinjar region and northeastern Syria earlier on the same day.

The next stages of the recently concluded Euphrates Shield Operation will be broader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said April 5, suggesting that Turkey would move on areas in Iraq.

Speaking in a joint interview with NTV and Star, Erdoğan described the Euphrates Shield Operation as the first stage of Turkey's counter-terrorism road map, saying expanded stages would follow.        

On our return from a NATO meeting, I spoke to Defense Minister Fikri Işık about the new U.S. administration's stance. He said, "They are more open to dialogue compared to the Obama administration. They are listening carefully to our justifications." 

Asylum seekers who have fled conflicts in Iraq and Syria are still not formally recognized as refugees in Turkey, while Yazidis are not afforded equal rights, a new report by the Diyarbak?r Bar Association Children's Rights Center has found.

ISIS killed and enslaved vast numbers of Yazidi people, a religious minority. Their brutal death at ISIS hands came to be known as the Sinjar Massacre. Thousands fled, whereas in the villages the older women were killed while thousands of younger women were raped and sold into slavery.

Ameena Saeed Hasan says that she has made it her mission to rescue as many Yazidi women as she can from ISIS captivity. ISIS fighters captured Sinjar despit it not having oil reserves for them to steal. Their goal was to take the region’s people. They captured thousands of women and children after killing them men in what the United Nations has criticized as genocide.

Iraq's Yazidi minority -- the target of brutal attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- on Sept.24 urged the International Criminal Court to investigate the militants for allegations of genocide and sexual slavery.

Iraq's Yazidi minority -- the target of brutal attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- on Sept.24 urged the International Criminal Court to investigate the militants for allegations of genocide and sexual slavery.