Special to WorldTribune.com

A filmmaker who produced documentaries showing the barbaric atrocities committed by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) was assassinated in Turkey on Dec. 27.

“Filmmaker Naji Jerf, father of two children, was assassinated… today in Gaziantep,” the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), with which Jerf worked, said in a statement on Twitter. RBSS said Jerf was killed with a silencer-equipped pistol near the Turkish border with Syria.

A family friend said Jerf, 37, was “supposed to arrive in Paris this week after receiving, along with his family, a visa for asylum in France.”

Turkish media reported that the filmmaker had been producing a documentary on massacres carried out by ISIL jihadists when he was killed.

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Dec. 28 said Ankara would not hold talks with the country’s main pro-Kurdish party over a new constitution because of the “disrespectful” attitude of its leadership.

The exclusion of the Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) from discussions comes as the Turkish military continues an offensive against Kurdish militants in the southeast.

“It is not appropriate to accept them (the HDP) as negotiators after their disrespectful and provocative comments,” Davutoglu said.

On Dec. 26, Davutoglu called off a planned meeting with the HDP, accusing its co-chair Selahattin Demirtas who Davutoglu accused of “treason” after Demirtas visited Moscow a month after Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian warplane.

“I can discuss the constitution with anyone, but the unity of Turkey is not a matter of discussion,” Davutoglu said.

The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), an association of Kurdish political organizations, released a declaration on Dec. 27 calling for self-rule in the country’s southeast.

“The rightful resistance waged by our people against the policies that undermine the Kurdish problem, is essentially a demand and struggle for local self-governance and local democracy,” the declaration said.

  Ahmet Davutoglu, Naji Jerf, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, Report: Anti-ISIL documentary maker assassinated in Turkey, WorldTribune.com