YAZIDIS said today that their holiest site was under threat of occupation by Turkish forces as they warned of another attempt to eradicate their religion. 

The Yazidi Union of Afrin, in the northern Syrian enclave known as Rojava, issued a written statement condemning Ankara for its bombardment of the Shengal region of Iraq. 

And it accused the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of colluding with Turkey, which enabled the attacks on the Yazidi community. It said it had lost trust in the party which leads the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). 

The statement said: “Their history is clear towards the values of our people ... The forces of the KDP abandoned the Sengal and Lalis shrines in 2014. We lost faith in the KDP.”

The Yazidi people suffered a genocide at the hands of Isis in 2014 as the death cult swept to power across large swathes of Iraq and Syria. 

More than 5,000 men and boys were executed and more than 3,000 women and girls sold into sexual slavery, with many still missing. 

But the KDP Peshmerga fled from Shengal as the Islamists approached on orders from leader Massoud Barzani, who abandoned the Yazidis to prioritise the defence of oil-rich Kirkuk. 

The union appealed to the Yazidi community to protect “our values, culture and history,” and called on all forces in Kurdistan to unite against “Turkish aggression.”

Protests have erupted against Turkey’s invasion, which started on April 23, with all major parties including the Kurdistan Communist Party-Iraq and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) opposing an intra-Kurdish war. 

The KDP Peshmerga has launched a number of incursions, attacking Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerilla bases. It has suffered a number of casualties as a result. 

Ankara has been accused of using chemical weapons on a number of occasions and has destroyed acres of forest land in the mountainous Duhok province. 

According to a report by the Christian Peacemakers Team earlier this month at least 1,500 Kurdish villagers have been forced to flee their homes. 

Last week a Turkish air strike killed three people at the UN-administered Makhmour Refugee Camp amid accusations of war crimes.