ANKARA 

The disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, huddled between South Asian nuclear powers India and Pakistan, is a pressing issue that the international community should take up, said speakers at several events on Wednesday held to commemorate the Kashmir Solidarity Day.

“The [United Nations] decisions on Kashmir have been accepted by India, its first leader Jawahar Lal Nehru,” said Burhan Kayaturk, the head of the Turkey-Pakistan Cultural Association, at an event at the Pakistan Embassy International School in the capital Ankara.

Under Nehru's term, India went to the UN with the Kashmir issue where the international body through several resolutions called for a plebiscite in the region in line with the inhabitants' right to self-determination.

Pakistan and Kashmiris around the world observe Kashmir Solidarity Day on Feb. 5 every year to extend moral support to people in Indian-administered Kashmir and recognize their legitimate struggle for their rights.

Started by former Jama'at-e-Islami Pakistan chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the day was officially adopted by the then government of late Benazir Bhutto in the early 1990s.

Kayaturk urged the Pakistani community in Turkey to take up the sensitization of the Kashmir issue as their task.

“It is the duty of every Pakistani citizen, student, in Turkey to explain everyone about Kashmir,” said Kayaturk, a former parliamentarian, addressing a huge gathering of Pakistani and Turkish students in the jam-packed hall.

A Kashmiri song was performed on the occasion along with a documentary explaining the genesis of the Kashmiri struggle.

Addressing a similar event hosted by think tank Economic and Social Research Center (ESAM), Turkey's Saadet Party head Temel Karamollaoglu rued divisions in the Muslim countries that have led to unresolved conflicts.

“Unfortunately, the international community has no will to solve the problem of Kashmir, nor Palestine,” said Karamollaoglu. “Because of this [situation], it is the duty of Muslim countries to come together and solve this [Kashmir] problem.”

Pakistan’s envoy to Turkey Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi said that the day is observed across the world in “support of the just struggle for self-determination of the Kashmiris living under Indian occupation”.

“This day is a reminder of not only the glorious struggle of the Kashmiris but also their continuing suffering,” he said.

On Aug. 5, 2019, India scrapped special provisions in the constitution, downgrading the status of Jammu and Kashmir into two centrally administered Union Territories (UT), thus putting the two territories under its direct rule.

Kashmir is held by India and Pakistan in parts but claimed by both in full.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or unification with neighboring Pakistan.

“If George Orwell were to come to life and asked to identify places on the map where he believed the dystopia he depicted in [his] 1984 novel had come true, Indian-occupied Kashmir would be one of the places,” said Qazi in his address at the Pakistan Embassy event.

“The irony would be that it would perhaps be the only place [Kashmir] where the oppressor calls itself a democracy. However, no oppressor has even been able to cower into submission people who are determined to get their rights,” he added.

Referring to the three UN Security Council meetings held on the issue of Jammu & Kashmir since Aug. 5, 2019, Pakistan’s top diplomat in Turkey said: “These meetings affirm Jammu & Kashmir’s disputed international status, rejecting India’s claim that it is an internal matter.”

A Pakistani student from the Middle East Technical University, who participated at the event and who wished to remain anonymous, said: "Given the situation Pakistan is facing, international pressure on India is must to break the status quo on Kashmir.”

He was joined by an Egyptian engineering graduate from the same university who said: “Pakistan and India should exist for peace and mitigate any [threat] of war. If India continues to resort to violent means, the United Nations should press economic sanctions against India…”

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Anadolu Youth Association (AGD) held demonstrations outside the Indian Embassy in Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday night seeking the right to self-determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Raising pro-Kashmir slogans, the demonstrators demanded that restrictions and communications blockade should immediately be lifted in the disputed region.