Around a dozen Kurdish people launched a protest on Wednesday inside the European Parliament. 15 February is the anniversary of Turkey’s capture of Kurdistan Worker’s Party co-founder Abdullah Öcalan.
Protesters halted the debate session for three hours. Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) left the chamber as banners were unfurled bearing Öcalan‘s image, and demonstrators shouted slogans critical of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
One MEP told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the protesters were on an upper deck above the Strasbourg chamber, some sitting on a balustrade and dangling their legs above the parliament’s floor.
International solidarity
Demonstrations for the Freedom of Öcalan were in held in Rojava in northeast Syria and in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. Protests were also held all over Europe, including in Rome, Geneva, Lausanne, Paris and Greece.
Six Basque trade unions released a manifesto demanding Öcalan’s release. They underlined his vital role in peace negotiations:
The current Turkish government run by Erdoğan held negotiations with Öcalan for two and a half years, during which the Kurdish leader proposed a gradual plan to achieve peace, from confidence-building measures, through a disarmament process under international surveillance, to a permanent political solution to the Kurdish question. Although the negotiations broke down in 2011, Öcalan’s proposals, included in his “Road Map”, continue to be of the utmost importance to address and seek a negotiated solution to the so-called ‘Kurdish question’
The statement continued:
The demand for Öcalan’s freedom is vital to break the military logic of the conflict and thus divert attention towards peaceful negotiations and towards a democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict
24 years of imprisonment
Ocalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish agents on February 15, 1999 and sentenced to death in June of the same year. Now 73, his sentence was reduced to life in prison in 2002 and supporters continue to demand his release. His capture involved collaboration between the Turkish state and several other states. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement calls it the international ‘conspiracy’.
On 15 February 1999, a new phase in the war against the Kurds and other communities raised its head with the NATO-led abduction of Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan from Nairobi, Kenya. A series of actors in Europe and in the Middle East as well as the US were behind this operation.
The statement continued:
The US and Europe, who led this operation against the Kurdish people’s leader, continue to legitimize the colonization and occupation of Kurdistan and condemn any resistance to it as terrorism, and are the ones that brewed this genocidal fascist regime. This is because the Turkish state paves the path for them to further ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism in the region. The indigenous peoples’ existence is a resistance to these.
Ideas that ‘inspired millions of people to fight’
Öcalan is currently imprisoned on the island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara, one of 10,000 prisoners from the Kurdistan Freedom Movement. He has written at least 12 books in prison. His ideas inspired the Rojava revolution, ongoing in northeast Syria since 2012
Internationalists released a video statement to commemorate the anniversary. The international volunteers had joined the revolutionary struggle in Rojava.
The life and philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan inspired millions of people to fight for democracy, ecology and women’s liberation. As Internationalists, we came to join the Rojava Revolution because we found inspiration within the revolution that is based on Öcalans philosophy. As internationalist members of YPG/YPJ [peoples’ protection units], we condemn the conspiracy. But however they try to attack our longing for freedom, they will never be able to take what we found here: hope.
Abdullah Öcalan’s ideas continue to ignite hopes for revolution and freedom, despite nearly two and a half decades in prison. His supporters see his liberation as essential for bringing an end to Turkish fascism, and achieving peace in Kurdistan.
You can find out more about the UK Freedom for Öcalan campaign by clicking here.
The Canary recently reported that those who died on 23 December were “Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer, and Emine Kara, a leader of the movement of Kurdish women in France”. Glen Black wrote:
Police arrested Malet after the murders, and charged him on 26 December. Malet told investigators at the time that he had a “pathological” hatred for foreigners and wanted to “murder migrants”. As well as killing Kizil, Perwer, and Kara, Malet wounded a further three people. The suspect had a violent criminal history. At the time of the murders, he had just left detention for attacking a Paris refugee camp with a sabre in 2021.
Thousands attended the funeral in Paris on 3 January, and French police attacked the mourners.
The attack comes ten years after Turkish intelligence agent Ömer Güney assassinated Sakine Cansız (Sara), Fidan Doğan (Rojbîn), and Leyla Şaylemez (Ronahî) in a similar attack in Paris. Kurdish freedom movement news agency ANF Firat wrote that there has been no justice for Sara, Rojbîn and Leyla in the ten years since. According to ANF:
justice remains far and so does truth
London demonstrators demand action
The Kurdish People’s Democratic Assembly of Britain (NADEK) held a demonstration outside the French embassy in London on 9 January, where they remembered both massacres.
People tweeted news from the demonstration:
Members of the Kurdish community in London protested outside the French Embassy today to demand the French government open 'secret files' that will shed light on the Turkish state's involvement in the assassinations of three Kurdish women activists in Paris on 9/10 January 2013. pic.twitter.com/Qpl4NvPbbW
Ten years on, there has been no justice for Sakine, Fidan and Leyla or any of the thousands of other women assassinated, raped, tortured and murdered by the Turkish state. We demand the UK, France, the European Union and international organizations take action to hold Turkey to account and to bring the real murderers to justice.
The group demanded that:
The UK, France, EU and the international community must launch a proper and thorough investigation into the chain of command which led to these deaths.
“the second triple murder in 10 years”
On the same day in Cardiff, around 40 demonstrators gathered to remember those who died in the attacks.
A vigil was held in Cardiff city centre, and then the demonstrators moved to a statue of Lloyd George. The group explained why in a press release:
Lloyd George, the Welsh prime minister of Britain was responsible for the partition of Kurdistan 100 years ago. The partition of Kurdistan, meant that in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran Kurds are being massacred to this day.
Jill Davies from Kurdish Solidarity Cymru said:
Kurds are being forcibly assimilated, murdered and tortured, this is happening not only in the middle east but also in Europe. This triple murder is not the first time for this to happen. France failed to protect its Kurdish born citizens that came to France to flee violence
Wales is not innocent either, a Welsh prime minister was behind the partition of Kurdistan, and to this day we have statues of him in Cardiff and Caernarfon. There is even a Lloyd George museum that fails to mention his role in the partition that had lead to war that lasts to this day. There are 40 million Kurdish people worldwide, they are the largest nation without a state in terms of population.
‘Violence is following us here’
Baris Rubar, a member of the Kurdish community in Wales said:
We flee from our countries so that we can live in safety, only to have the violence follow us here. The European governments have a responsibility to protect its citizens. This is the second triple murder in 10 years in Paris of Kurdish activists. We believe there is something sinister going on and that the Turkish state should be investigated for these assassinations.
Kurdish organisations have vowed to keep on organising until they get justice for those killed in the two Paris massacres. They deserve support and solidarity in their struggle.
Featured image via Kurdish Solidarity Cymru (with permission)
Iran again launched deadly missile and drone strikes overnight to Monday against Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq. One Kurdish peshmerga fighter was reported killed in mountainous northern Iraq, where two of the groups said their bases had been targeted in the latest such barrage of aerial attacks in recent months.
‘Indiscriminate attacks’
Iran has been shaken by over two months of protests sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman Jîna Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly struck Kurdish dissident groups based in Iraq, whom it labels “separatist anti-Iranian terrorist groups”. One of the groups, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), said it was hit with missiles and suicide drones in Koya and Jejnikan, near Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Party official Ali Boudaghi said:
A member of the peshmerga was killed in an Iranian strike.
The PDKI, the oldest Kurdish party in Iran said:
These indiscriminate attacks are occurring at a time when the terrorist regime of Iran is unable to stop the ongoing demonstrations in (Iranian) Kurdistan.
The Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala said it was also targeted. On Twitter it said:
Our HQ was once again attacked by the Islamic regime tonight. We’ve been carefully prepared for these types of attacks & have no losses for the moment.
The autonomous Kurdistan region’s government condemned the strikes in a statement, saying:
The repeated violations that undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the Kurdistan region are unjustifiable.
‘Vulnerable to attacks’
Since the 1980s, Iraqi Kurdistan has hosted several Iranian Kurdish opposition groups which have waged an armed insurrection against Tehran in the past.
In recent years their activities have declined, but the new wave of protests in Iran has again stoked tensions.
Rights groups on Monday accused Iranian security forces of using live fire and heavy weapons to suppress protests in Kurdish-populated regions in Iran’s west, intensifying a deadly crackdown.
Iran’s latest cross-border strikes come less than a week after similar attacks that killed at least one person, and following attacks in late September that killed more than a dozen people.
The Iranian attacks also come a day after Turkey carried out air raids against outlawed Kurdish militants in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has fought the Turkish government since the mid-1980s and has long operated rear bases in northern Iraq.
The Turkish state is engaged in a massive campaign of repression against the Kurdish Freedom Movement – one which has been dubbed a political genocide by the movement. There are currently 10,000 political prisoners being held in Turkey on charges related to the movement.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s dictatorial regime is both socially conservative and deeply misogynist. Erdoğan has said publicly that women are “not equal to men due to their delicate natures”, and that Islam has “defined a position for women: motherhood.” The patriarchal nature of the Turkish regime is reflected in its vicious attack on Kurdish women.
The women of the Kurdish Freedom Movement have paid a high price. For example, Ayşe Gökkan – spokeswoman of the Free Women’s Association (TJA) – was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2021. And Leyla Güven, the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), was sentenced to 22 years in 2020. The state has opened a new case against Leyla in an attempt to extend this sentence even further.
An attack against women’s autonomous media
This attack has widened to the targeting of women’s news agencies. Earlier this month the Turkish state arrested 20 journalists – including several from the women’s media organisation Jin News. 16 of them were remanded in prison.
Days after the mass arrests, radical journalist İnci Hekimoğlu was detained in a dawn raid on her home in the Turkish city of Izmir. The arrest was reportedly due to İnci’s social media posts.
However, the state’s attack on radical Kurdish women’s media has been raging for a long time. Women’s news organisations have been censored and criminalised, and female journalists have been targeted.
In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s most frequent jailer of journalists, and the country is still locking them up in huge numbers. But the repression is strongest against Kurdish women.
Threatened with 20 years in prison for radical journalism
Over the past six months, I have been part of two grassroots political delegations that travelled to Bakur – the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders – in solidarity with the movements there. The delegations included people from UK anti-repression organisations, Kurdistan solidarity groups, a radical trade union, and three journalists from The Canary.
Our delegation interviewed radical journalist Nurcan Yalçın about the state’s attempts to imprison her for her involvement in autonomous women’s media.
When we met Nurcan she had been sentenced to three years and seven months in prison. She was awaiting the judgement of Turkey’s court of cessation (in Turkey, defendants do not normally serve their sentence until their appeal has been processed).
Nurcan is banned from travelling abroad, and has had to surrender her passport to the police.
Nurcan has been involved in women’s autonomous journalism since 2013. She started off by working for JinHa women’s news agency. JinHa has been made illegal by the Turkish state – but was relaunched as NuJINHA (which means ‘new Jinha’). Later on, Nurcan began working for the Jin TV production company. Jin is the Kurdish word for ‘woman’.
Nurcan explained that, at Jin TV, all of the roles are carried out by women, whether it’s presenting the news to camera or doing the technical work behind the scenes. She said that Jin TV is run democratically, and all of the journalists and members make decisions together.
“We try to make the voice of women heard”
She said that the Kurdish radical media combats elitism by sharing skills amongst its journalists and not relying on formal educational qualifications. Nurcan herself never went to university.
Nurcan said that at Jin TV:
We try to make the voice of woman heard all around the world. We want to be the voice of women who are oppressed, who are subjected to violence, who face domestic violence.
She added that Jin TV focuses on women’s traditions and culture, and politics relating to women.
In Turkey, all non-mainstream journalists are targeted
The Turkish state opened an investigation into Nurcan in 2015, for ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’. She said that all non-mainstream journalists are targeted by the state, but this is worse if you are a Kurdish woman:
If you are not a journalist working for mainstream media then you are targeted. If you are a woman journalist or Kurdish you will surely face more challenges.
Nurcan told us that the state had started the case against her after she was involved in reporting for JinHa from Northeast Syria. She also reported on the uprising in Bakur – where people in many cities declared their autonomy from the Turkish state. A further charge was brought against her because she posted photos of her family members who were killed taking part in the uprising.
Secret witnesses
Finally, charges were also brought against Nurcan for joining Rosa Women’s Association, an organisation set up for women’s empowerment and to combat all forms of violence against women. Rosa Women’s Organisation has been heavily criminalised, and many of its members have been arrested and sent to prison accused of ‘terrorism’.
Nurcan told us that the prosecution relied entirely on secret witnesses, who could not be cross-examined by her defence lawyers. She said:
It is common for people to appear in court because of the statements of secret witnesses. You cannot ask any questions to them. My lawyers wanted to question the secret witnesses, but they [the witnesses] were never brought to court.
Arrested while trying to do her job
Nurcan said that she had previously been arrested in 2019, in the town of Mardin, while trying to report on the Turkish state’s sacking of the town’s elected co-mayors, who were part of the radical People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The HDP mayors were being replaced by a state appointee – a process that has been repeated all across Bakur. Nurcan told us:
we had our cameras and everything, so everyone knew that we were journalists, but the police detained us – me and four other journalists. I was held in detention for eight days.
The five of them were eventually charged with obstructing a police officer. They were all eventually acquitted of the charge.
“We ask you to make our voices heard”
Nurcan told our delegation that Turkey’s radical journalists need international solidarity. She said:
When foreign people [like you] come to Kurdistan, then you see what kind of challenges we face, as both male and female journalists. We have faced many challenges here. We ask you to make our voices heard all around the world This will be a great support for us.
The featured image is of Nurcan Yalçın, via NuJinHa
This interview was carried out collaboratively with other members of my delegation.
This is part one of a series of interviews The Canary has carried out with Jin News journalists about Turkish state repression. You can read our previous interview here.
The Turkish state is currently in the midst of a brutal campaign of repression against the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
Twenty journalists were arrested last week in Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s Borders. Since then, 16 of them have been remanded.
However, the arrests of the journalists are only the tip of the iceberg in what’s been dubbed a campaign of political genocide. 10,000 people are currently in prison facing charges relating to the Kurdish Freedom Movement. The scale of this repression is hard to comprehend: the number of prisoners, for example, is over double the total number of Palestinians imprisoned by the state of Israel.
Those imprisoned include members of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. The HDP is calling for a radical democratisation of the Turkish state. One HDP member told our delegation:
We are not a political party in the classical sense…we are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-nation state.
6000 HDP members have been imprisoned in Turkey since 2015. But they are not the only one’s facing repression, in fact, those the Turkish state has branded as terrorists include radical lawyers, the women’s movement, and people involved in co-operatives and refugee support organisations.
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
Here in Kurdistan you can be anything – a lawyer, or a journalist for example – except a Kurd. when you show your Kurdish identity you’ll be attacked
I have visited Bakur twice in the past six months, in December 2021 and more recently in June 2022. I was part of two delegations from UK anti-repression organisations, Kurdistan solidarity groups, and a radical trade union.
During our visits, we met with members of the Amed Ecological Society, which is part of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM). These ecological organisers are also experiencing state repression. They spoke to us about their decade-long struggle, but asked us not to name them for fear of state repression.
MEM is a confederated organisation with branches in many cities across Bakur. At its height, its ecological councils had thousands of members. State repression is currently limiting MEM’s organising, but it still has hundreds of members in some cities.
MEM is perhaps most famous for its part in resisting the construction of the Ilısu dam. Sadly, the dam was completed in 2020. This happened despite a fierce international struggle which forced European banks to pull out of the project.
The dam displaced nearly 80,000 people. The beautiful 12,000-year-old town of Hasankeyf was tragically submerged beneath its reservoir.
MEM was also involved in a successful campaign to prevent the destruction of the ancient Hevsel gardens in the city of Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish). In 2014, Turkish state violence was rapidly escalating, which caused damage to the gardens. The Turkish state threatened to destroy the ancient gardens completely.
Local people – including MEM – stepped in to protect the historic site. People brought tents and held demonstrations to protest the gardens’ destruction for 21 days. Then, in 2015, UNESCO listed the gardens as a World Heritage Site, affording the Hevsel a degree of protection.
MEM aims to prevent the destruction of Kurdish culture and natural heritage. The MEM members we spoke to told us that the organisation is involved in cataloguing the history of Kurdish villages which the state burned down in the 1990s. It’s also involved in campaigning against Turkish state social-cleansing policies in Amed.
Refugees from the burnt villages settled in Amed’s old city of Sur. Sur was one of many Kurdish cities to declare autonomy from the Turkish state in 2015. People barricaded the narrow streets to prevent the police and army from entering. The state responded with military force, eventually destroying a third of Sur. The majority of the past residents of the destroyed neighbourhoods have not been able to return.
State gentrification policies used to destroy Kurdish culture
Now, the Turkish state is trying to destroy other Kurdish communities in order to break people’s solidarity with one another. MEM is opposing state plans to destroy the Dicle and Ferit Köşk neighbourhoods to build new housing.
One MEM member told us that the poor people in those areas won’t be able to afford to live in the new developments and will be forced to move to other parts of the city, or perhaps out of Amed entirely. They said:
They burnt the villages, but in the cities they are using urban transformation to destroy Kurdish lifestyle and culture.
As well as protecting Kurdish communities from the state’s social engineering policies, MEM also tries to preserve Kurdistan’s natural heritage. The organisation helps to run an agroecology project in Amed which hosts a library of heirloom seeds. Seed saving is a way to protect the rich biodiversity of the area, which is constantly under threat from industrial agriculture.
The project shares space with a herb farm and a herbal medicine project and clinic. This is aimed at preserving people’s knowledge of natural medicine. The site boasts several beautiful mud-brick structures, built in the traditional style of Bakur. Amed Ecological Society also has a sapling commission, which aims to protect endemic species by planting indigenous saplings. All of these practical projects are acts of resistance against the state’s attacks on Kurdish heritage and culture.
Finally, the movement has a strong focus on education. Amed Ecological Society aims to bring ecology into mainstream consciousness in Amed. To do this, they often speak in public, hold debates, or go to speak to people in other organisations. They place particular emphasis on organising with women and children. One MEM member told us:
women and kids are so important in our society. we want to show them how we can produce in an ecological way and we want to make the connection between nature and humans.
They continued:
The main problem is the capitalist system. capitalist modernity. Our main aim is to challenge capitalist modernity. We are struggling against a profit driven society, the nation state and industrialisation.
Sentenced to prison for protecting nature
We heard that five members of MEM have been sentenced to over six years in prison each. Fortunately, they were able to escape to Europe before they were imprisoned. Two more members are currently awaiting sentences.
MEM was founded in 2012, in the midst of the struggle for direct democracy in Bakur. The organisation sent seven delegates to the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a confederated umbrella organisation. The DTK brings together social movements, trade unions, political parties and NGOs from all over Bakur. It intended to build direct democracy in Bakur and act as a counterforce to the Turkish state.
The inspiration for the movement for autonomy, which the DTK is a part of, came from the ideas of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founderAbdullah Öcalan. Öcalan’s new paradigm proposed a system of direct democracy, known as democratic confederalism, as an alternative to the power of the nation state. He explained how democratic confederalism differed from the state system:
Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organisational blueprint of a democratic nation.
Öcalan‘s ideas also inspired the directly democratic revolution – based on ideas of stateless democracy – that’s existed in Rojava (Northern Syria) since 2012.
Repression intensifies
From 2013 to 2015, there was a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK. This period of relative stability allowed the movement for democratic confederalism to flourish. However, since 2015 the Turkish state has set about dismantling the institutions of people’s power that were created during that period. The DTK itself was finally made illegal in 2020.
The MEM members we spoke to told us that the organisation’s delegates to the DTK had been sentenced to imprisonment for being alleged members of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK). The KCK is an umbrella structure which aims to bring about democratic confederalism in all four parts of Kurdistan (split between Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria). The Turkish state deems the KCK a terrorist organisation.
The situation became even more repressive after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded by doubling down, calling a referendum to give himself dictatorial powers, and arresting thousands of people. The vast majority of the HDP’s elected mayors were replaced by state appointees – known as Kayyims. After this happened things got dramatically worse. One MEM member told us:
after the trustees the repression got worse, and it has continued to get worse for us. For example, two years ago we did a press briefing of around 20 people and there were 200 cops who came just for this. this is one example of how we are living in Amed.
MEM told us that they are not even able to speak directly to the press anymore, as “declarations to the press are forbidden”.
The Rojava revolution is just the beginning
Despite this, the MEM comrades told us that their struggle will continue. One of them said:
we are working for the freedom of all societies in the Middle East. Kurdish society is struggling for democracy, the women’s movement and human rights. We are a powerful movement in the Middle East.
The Rojava revolution became known all over the world, but this is just the beginning of the revolution. For sure the pressure became very deep for the Kurdish society [inside the Turkish state]. This pressure is really a lot for us, every activity we do becomes a criminal thing for the government. We are a target for cops and judges. It is hard to continue with the struggle. but our struggle will be long-lived and we will continue with our work.
The webinar on Thursday 23 June will be a rare opportunity to hear directly from members of the Mesopotamiam Ecology Movement. Ticket sales for the event will also be raising funds for Kurdistan Solidarity Network’s work with MEM. The tickets are priced on a sliding scale, so no one will be turned away if they can’t afford to pay.
This interview was carried out collaboratively with other members of my delegation.
Featured Image is of Amed’s Hevsel gardens – via Wikimedia Commons/MikaelF, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Cropped to 770x403px)
UPDATE: On the afternoon of 16 June, we received news that 16 of the jailed journalists had been remanded in prison. The remaining six people have been released, but may still face charges
On 8 June the Turkish state arrested 22 people – 20 of them journalists – in the city of Diyarbakır. They also confiscated hard drives, cameras and other equipment. Those arrested have been detained for almost a week in solitary confinement.
The Turkish state has declared the case confidential, so no information is currently available about the charges against the imprisoned journalists. In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and the country is still locking them up in huge numbers.
Many of the arrested journalists are from Jin News, a radical volunteer-run women’s media organisation.
Diyarbakır – known as Amed in Kurdish – is in Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders
Political genocide
The arrests form part of a campaign of state repression that has been dubbed a political genocide. It’s aimed at destroying the radically democratic movements and institutions which have grown both in Bakur and Turkey, which take their inspiration from the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
10,000 people are currently in prison in Turkey for charges relating to the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
This attack is doubly strong against the Kurdish women’s movement, which is at the forefront of the revolutionary struggle. The three pillars of that struggle are radical democracy, women’s freedom, and building an ecological society.
The women of the Kurdish Freedom Movement have paid a high price. For example, Ayşe Gökkan, spokeswoman of the Free Women’s Association (TJA), was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2021. And Leyla Güven, the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), was sentenced to 22 years in 2020. The state has opened a new case against Leyla in an attempt to extend this sentence even further.
Last week, I was part of a grassroots political delegation that travelled to Amed in solidarity with the movements there. We aimed to learn and take inspiration from our Kurdish comrades’ resilience and ingenuity in the face of state fascism. The delegation included people from UK anti-repression organisations, Kurdistan solidarity groups and a radical trade union.
We will carry on
Medya Üren
Our delegation spoke to Jin News reporter Medya Üren about the recent arrests of journalists. Medya remains defiant and committed to carrying on her work. We met her in the Jin News office that police had raided the week before, amongst computers that the cops had stripped of their hard drives.
Medya told us that, because of the seizure of her equipment, she had had to report the news with only her mobile phone. She said:
People think that because you face repression, you lose your motivation – but actually, the more we face this repression, the more our motivation increases. For example, even though we don’t have anything to write our news on because they took our equipment, I’m even more motivated to write about it.
Medya said that since the raid there had been an outpouring of support for Jin News. And many young people had contacted them asking to volunteer. She told us that as the organisation grew stronger, the state’s attacks against it grew stronger too.
Becomine a journalist
We asked Medya how she had become involved in Jin News. She told us that she had decided to become a journalist because of her life experiences and what she “had been through”. Medya’s family were forced to leave their home in the 1990s because of Turkish state operations against Kurdish people. She said:
My village was in Şirnak [in the east of Bakur]. In 1993 we had to leave due to the state operations. My family left to Başur [Iraqi Kurdistan], they went to nine different places, and then ended up in Maxmour refugee camp.
During the 1990s, Turkish state forces murdered and disappeared Kurdish people with impunity. Over 3,000 Kurdish villages were burnt. Medya’s family was among thousands of refugees who fled to Maxmour camp, where Medya was born. The camp population swelled to over 12,000 people. Medya told us about her time in Maxmour:
I grew up there [in Maxmour], and I started to study healthcare and medicine in university there [in Başur] . Then the government kicked me out of the university. this is a sign of how federal Kurdistan [The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan] is run by imperialist and fascist structures, and linked to the Turkish state.
Many other refugees from Maxmour were also kicked out of university. Medya said that this was an attempt by the authorities to force the refugees to go back to Bakur. Her family eventually decided to leave.
According to Medya, when they returned to Bakur many of her peers were drawn towards studying law, as a way to resist the Turkish state’s repression and imprisonment of the Kurdish people. But she wanted to become a journalist because of what she experienced when she was growing up. According to Medya:
I had witnessed a lot of things that I wanted the world to know about
She continued:
the things that are hidden, or maybe not heard – i wanted to make these things heard. you could say it’s like a childhood dream
Medya joined Jin News when she was just 17.
Women face the worst oppression
We asked Medya why she was passionate about women’s autonomous media. She told us:
everyone faces oppression here in Kurdistan. But women face the worst in all fields. whether in journalism or politics.
For example, a report states, that in the last months 16 female journalists were threatened or faced violence while working. and as a woman you face more violence, more harassment. so that’s why I wanted to work both as a Kurd, and as a woman journalist.
Medya spoke about the sexual violence against Kurdish women by Turkish forces. She gave the example of 18 year old Ipek Er. In 2020, Ipek Er committed suicide after she was abducted and raped by a Turkish sergeant – Musa Orhan. Orhan was initially arrested by the Turkish authorities, but was promptly released.
What happened to Ipek Er is, tragically, not uncommon. A Turkish non-commissioned officer attempted to rape a 13-year-old girl in Şırnak the same year. At least 3,000 women have been murdered since the conservative AKP government came to power, in what has been dubbed as femicide by the Kurdish movement.
Medya told us about how the mainstream media in Turkey treats women’s journalism:
in the mainstream media, the patriarchal view is felt heavily in the organisations. For example the news about women would be on the third page, and this news builds a ground for more crimes against women.
A media organisation which stays close to the people
Our delegation told Medya how UK journalism is dominated by privileged white men. We asked her how Jin News was different. She told us that Jin News operated in a radically different way to the mainstream media:
in the news agencies that are supporting the state, all the journalists and employees are of one mentality, there is no diversity, no opposing views. it’s the same patriarchal organisational structure. But here, we try to improve and diversify our structure.
Jin News is volunteer run and non-hierarchical. The organisation works to create opportunities to share knowledge about journalism. According to Medya:
we do workshops about women’s struggle, about journalism, to let people know what we are doing and to discuss what we can do among ourselves, how we can change and improve.
She continued:
we also visit families and we talk to people. When we go to another city, we would stay with families, they’d host us. The families support their children to join us and work with us.
‘You can be anything… except a Kurd’
We asked Medya what she thought the state’s strategy was in arresting journalists. She said:
The attitude towards our agency cannot be separated from the general attitude. The pro-state media is already saying that we are supporting terrorist organisations and making terrorist propaganda. These arrests and the media coverage show their true intentions. Here in Kurdistan you can be anything – a lawyer, or a journalist for example – except a Kurd. when you show your Kurdish identity you’ll be attacked.
The conversations my delegation had with other people on our trip to Amed highlight the grim truth in this statement. Lawyers, journalists, refugee rights organisations, ecological movements, trade unionists and politicians close to the Kurdish Freedom Movement are all facing terrorist charges.
Turkey is in the midst of a deep economic crisis – one that threatens the popularity of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s dictatorial regime. In Medya’s opinion, the state wants to restrict media freedom in order to silence criticism of their handling of the economy. She told us:
Another level of this [media repression] policy is about hiding the economic crisis – these [arrest] campaigns are part of this policy of distraction. The government and state are forcing all media outlets, mainstream media, to make news in the way they want it.
Medya says that Jin News’ oppositional stance is at odds with the state’s attempts to create a compliant media, which simply repeats the state’s own rhetoric. According to Medya:
we try to cover all of these aspects in an oppositional way. that’s what disturbs them. that’s why we are targeted. because the state tries to build a single mentality in every field.
The arrests are part of Turkey’s dirty war
In Medya’s opinion, the Turkish state’s arrests and harassment of Kurdish media and other institutions can’t be separated from the war it’s waging against the Kurdish Freedom Movement. This war is taking place in all four parts of Kurdistan, which lies within the state borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
The Turkish military launched invasions of Rojava (Northeast Syria) in 2018 and 2019 in an attempt to destroy the revolutionary society that is being built there. Turkish troops are currently occupying territory in Rojava amounting to thousands of kilometres. This includes the Northern cities of Afrin, Tel Abyad and Serekaniye. In Başur (Iraqi Kurdistan) the military is attacking Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerillas in the mountains with fighter jets, helicopters, drones and chemical weapons. Medya said:
Whether Başur, Rojhilat [the part of Kurdistan within Iran’s borders], Rojava or here. they’re running a dirty war campaign in all fields, not just from the military perspective. They’re using chemical weapons everywhere, committing war crimes. but also these [arrest] operations are part of this dirty campaign. it’s to intimidate people in every field. in media, politics, ecology…
Medya added that Abdullah Öcalan –the PKK’s co-founder – has been imprisoned in isolation in Turkey for 23 years. His imprisonment and isolation are emblematic of the attack on the whole movement. Medya said that the isolation policy against Öcalan was reflected in the attacks on Kurdish media organisations too.
In Medya’s opinion, the state wants to “cut off the head” of Kurdish organisations before they have a chance to grow. She said that Jin News was being targeted for being the people’s voice.
Medya told us that she would welcome collaborations between Jin News and radical media organisations in the UK. She said:
Even if we report with facts and proof, the government and mainstream media won’t recognise this. it’s difficult for us to be heard. For example the opposition CHP party was reacting greatly to some of the arrests of the Turkish journalists who were part of their media. But when its our journalists that are arrested here [in Bakur], there’s no coverage, no reaction. So we want everyone to be a voice for this. To share it.
Over 800 journalists called for the release of their colleagues
On Tuesday 14 June, 837 journalists and 62 institutions signed a statement in support of the detained journalists. It called on the international media and human rights organisations to take up the journalists’ case:
we expect international press organizations, journalists, rights organizations and defenders to show solidarity with us for the development of press freedom in Turkey and to take action against the oppression of journalists.
The statement called for the immediate release of the detained journalists:
Although these policies of oppression and intimidation are known very well by the free press tradition, which works devotedly for the right of people to receive information, we will not get used to these operations and policies of intimidation. The detained Kurdish journalists should be released immediately!
Turkey is trying to silence the voice of radical Kurdish women through its repression of Jin News. One way to break the wall of silence is by reading and sharingJin News’ work. You can also help keep the website going by becoming a subscriber.
Featured image by Medya Üren (with permission). This interview was carried out collaboratively with other members of my delegation.
This is part one of a series of interviews The Canary has carried out with Jin News journalists about Turkish state repression.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement has launched a new initiative to build strategy and connections in the global struggle against capitalism.
The Academy of Democratic Modernity
The new web-based platform is dubbed the Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM). It aims to be a space for revolutionary thought and strategy. The site looks at revolution through the lens of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s new paradigm, based on three foundational pillars of social ecology, radical democracy, and women’s freedom.
The new paradigm is inspired by the defence writings of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founder Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned for the last 23 years by the Turkish state.
The movement sees the global peoples’ struggles going on today – for example in Kurdistan, Ukraine or Palestine – as the continuation of the ever-present struggles of people against power, which have existed throughout history. Today’s struggles are being waged by ‘democratic forces’ against ‘capitalist modernity’.
Capitalist modernity is the dominant global system today, characterised by a drive for unending profits over people, by the nation state and by imperialist oppression.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement opposes capitalist modernity, and rejects the concept of nation states. Instead, the movement seeks to bring ‘democratic modernity’ to the forefront through the practice of radical democracy.
These ideas have been taking shape in Northeast Syria since the 2012 Rojava revolution. The revolutionaries of Rojava have created a system of governing society from the bottom up, through communes cooperating together at the street and neighbourhood level. These then send delegates to cooperate at regional and wider levels. This system is known as democratic confederalism.
Building internationalism
The ADM issued a statement marking the launch of its new website. This called for dialogue and the creation of new forums to discuss ‘democratic modernity’. To do this, it said, it is necessary to connect our struggles against capitalism
we consider the creation of networks and connections between democratic forces as a fundamental prerequisite for building Democratic Modernity. Through the creation of forums and platforms, we want to contribute to the strengthening of the international exchange of experiences and connect existing struggles.
The statement continued by calling for a greater degree of organisation in our struggles against global capitalism. In this way, the ADM hopes to rival the highly organised forces of ‘capitalist modernity’:
Based on the realization of our analysis of the world political situation and the crisis of the democratic forces, we think that it is time to deepen the discussions about ways out of the crisis and the construction of Democratic Modernity. Because while the Capitalist Modernity is a highly organized and global system, the alternative remains until today unorganized, fragmented and without a strategic and unifying proposal of common organization.
The ADM aims to contribute to the creation of democratic confederalism on a global scale:
The areas of work of the Academy are, among others, the organization of social educational work, the connection of democratic forces, and the expansion of democratic politics as a contribution to the construction of Democratic World Confederalism.
The website is available in English and German, and will soon be available in Spanish.
“Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life”
Laying out its vision of how world democratic confederalism can be constructed, the ADM stated:
If we succeed in expanding democratic politics in everyday life – through alliances, councils, communes, cooperatives, academies – the huge political power of society will unfold and be used to solve social problems. Through the expansion of democratic politics and the building of Democratic World Confederalism, the much-needed offensive of the paradigm of Democratic Modernity will succeed.
The site’s authors point out that it is not only possible, but necessary and urgent, to begin building democratic confederalism on a global scale. They write:
Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life. Another world is not only possible – given the world situation, it is sorely needed. Let us start building our future world together in the present, because to wait any longer would be madness.
Featured image via The Academy of Democratic Modernity
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. It’s 2022. Yet we’re still a long way from women’s emancipation. And the war in Ukraine has amplified this more than ever. Because when it comes to war, women are infantilised. Our ability to defend ourselves is equated with the vulnerability of children.
But even worse, this is done without hesitation or critique.
Women and children first
In the mainstream media, story after story reflects the ‘women and children first’ narrative. Whether it’s reporting on people leaving the country or bomb attacks, women are put in the same breath as children.
This has been exasperated by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy banning men from leaving the country. In the rush to put Zelenskyy on a pedestal, there’s been little criticism of this frankly obscene mandate. No one, ever, should be forced to fight on behalf of any state or organisation. But even setting this fact aside, there’s been a general acceptance that Zelenskyy’s priorities are right.
It’s 2022. But a woman’s role as a mother and victim is still enforced in nearly every news bulletin reporting on casualties or refugees. There is no dialogue around fathers leaving with children while their mothers stay and fight. Surely, by now, we should have reached the stage where the message is ‘parents and children first’?
And that’s not to say that powerful women aren’t represented in the conflict. Whether that’s BBC journalists Lyse Doucet and Orla Guerin reporting from the conflict, or women Ukrainian MPs such as Kira Rudik staying to fight, women’s strength is, to some degree, represented:
Our #women are going to fight as hard as our #men. Because bullets don't really care which hands are firing them. And bravery has no gender.@TheSunhttps://t.co/zn9qFNz2C9
Rudik is right, “bravery has no gender” (though the Sun sexualising women fighters is a whole other article). But when news bulletin after bulletin repeats the ‘women and children’ mantra, this message is undermined. It shows that we’re still stuck in the mindset of female vulnerability.
Women as fighters
Our past and our present is full of women fighters. But with the exception of Boudicca and possibly Joan of Arc, it’s unlikely many of us encountered them in our history lessons. In more recent history, women have fought on the frontline in the Mexican revolution, the Spanish Civil War, the Sri Lankan civil war, and the French Revolution, to name just a few examples.
However, in recent years, it’s the women of the YPJ (women’s protection units) in Rojava (north east Syria) who’ve shown the power of women fighters. And the Kurdish Freedom Movement more generally has shown the power of a movement for direct democracy that places women’s liberation as one of its central tenets.
Women are disproportionately affected by war, especially through gender-based sexual violence. But this should make their role in conflict even more vital. The YPJ, for example, focuses on education as much as combat. As YPJ commander Zanarin Qamishlo described in 2021:
the Women’s Protection Units had an impact, both from the military point of view and how to develop it to protect the people or from the social side, and how to influence the authoritarian masculine mentality to change it and push it towards justice and equality, and how for women to become a strong and beneficial will that can break the shackles of outdated customs and traditions.
Qamishlo continued:
It changed the stereotyped image of women’s military organizations, as the female fighters presented battles to liberate cities and villages from ISIS mercenaries, took up arms, and not only fought the enemies, but fought the male mentality that permeates the details of life.
Celebrating women warriors doesn’t mean glorifying war
Celebrating women’s role in combat does not and should not mean glorifying war. It’s not about saying everyone or anyone can or should fight. But there are times when fighting back is necessary, and it’s about time we all recognised that women are just as capable on the frontline as men.
As women, we need to reclaim our history and our present as warrior women. Generations of white men have tried to teach us that women don’t fight; that our role is in the home or dressing wounds. History tells a different story.
So this International Women’s Day, let’s reclaim our history and our power. Let’s stop using the phrase ‘women and children’ to depict vulnerability. The patriarchy has spent generations telling us we’re weak. It’s time to fight back.
A show trial of 108 of Turkey’s radicals is ongoing in Ankara. The trial has been ongoing since April 2021. 21 of the defendants are currently remanded in prison. All 108 face aggravated life sentences.
Many of the defendants are from the left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. Others are connected to civil society organisations and to the Kurdistan freedom movement. The chief prosecutor in the case has demanded that Selahattin Demirtaş – the former HDP co-chair – face the extraordinarily long sentence of 15,000 years in prison if he’s convicted.
Despite its role as an electoral party, the HDP is part of the struggle for radical democracy in Turkey. The HDP is not only anti-capitalist but part of a movement which critiques the concept of the state itself. This movement intends to move beyond nation states by encouraging the reliance on people’s directly democratic organising at the street or neighbourhood level, confederated across regions.
The allegations against the defendants relate to demonstrations that broke out across Turkey in 2014, following Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan’s support for the siege of the city of Kobanî in Rojava – Northeast Syria – by Daesh (ISIS/ISIL). Erdoğan’s AKP government was preventing vital supplies from reaching the besieged city.
Kobanî was eventually liberated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). Many radicals from inside Turkey’s borders crossed into Rojava at that time to join the YPG’s fight. The charges against the defendants on trial in Ankara are serious, and include terrorism and murder. One of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanîtrial, Ibrahim Bilmez, spoke to The Canary about the case.
A purge to silence the movement for radical democracy
The ‘Kobanî case’ is part of an onslaught by the Turkish state, aimed at silencing political radicalism within Turkey. That onslaught includes plans to criminalise and ban the HDP.
Last year I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez, who is one of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanîtrial. Bilmez is personally representing Ayla Akat Ata from the HDP and Sebahat Tuncel, the former co-leader of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Overall, his firm is representing all of the 108 defendants on trial, and is working with many other lawyers as well.
Strengthening the state’s hand in the attempt to ban the political opposition
I asked Bilmez whether he thought the trial in Ankara was connected to the moves to ban the HDP. He replied:
There definitely is a connection. They’re trying to push the Kobanî case through and speed it forward. So that they can say ‘look at all these HDP ‘terrorists”. And then it would be very easy for them to shut down the HDP by pointing to them already being convicted in this Kobanî case
Bilmez said that the Ministry of justice had tried to speed up the Kobanî case by replacing a judge – who wasn’t moving things along fast enough – and replacing him with a judge “who’s more racist and closer to their ideas”. The assistant judges in the case have also been changed. According to Bilmez:
Whenever they want they can just change the judge. You can’t talk about justice in this kind of situation.
Bilmez argued that the Ministry of Justice is “answering directly to Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan”. He said:
basically the political system and political power politics is interfering with and directing the Kobanî case, and moving the case forward.
The Turkish state meddling with the judicial system is nothing new. Since Turkey’s failed coup attempt in 2016, nearly 4,000 judges and prosecutors have been sacked.
Blaming the victim
The Kobanî case relates to a tweet by the HDP executive council from October 2014, calling on people to take to the streets in solidarity with Kobanî. The message read:
Urgent call to our peoples […]! The situation in Kobanê is extremely critical. We call on our peoples to take to the streets and support those who are already on the streets to protest against the attacks of ISIS and against the embargo of the AKP government.
People took to the streets to protest in support of the people of Kobanî, and against Daesh’s siege of the city. Supporters of Daesh and Kurdish Hezbollah – an Islamic group which received arms from the Turkish state – attacked the demonstrators, and terrible bloodshed ensued. Up to 53 people died over the course of three days of the uprising. Bilmez told me that the majority of those who died were supporters of the HDP.
According to a report by the Human Rights Association (IHD), 682 people were injured during the protests. At least 323 people were arrested. In the course of the uprising, there were also arson attacks on shops and public facilities. The government holds the HDP responsible for the incidents.
According to Bilmez:
So now they’re turning it around on the HDP years later, and saying ‘you called those people to the streets. You encouraged this violence to happen… and you’re responsible for the deaths that happened’
He continued:
The strange thing is that basically they’re accusing HDP of being responsible for sending HDP people to their deaths.
Bilmez also pointed out that, in the years since 2014, people have already stood trial for charges relating to the uprising, and that it’s a basic principle of law that people should not be convicted twice for the same allegation.
A strategy to neutralise the opposition
The Turkish state has good reasons for taking an interest in the Kobanî case. Several people who are close to the HDP believe that the state wants to carefully stage-manage the banning of the HDP in order to benefit the ruling AKP party in the next election. Erdoğan‘s AKP is likely to face decreasing public support because of the crashing Turkish economy and spiralling government debt.
It would benefit the AKP greatly if the HDP is banned just before the next election.
“A form of abuse”
Bilmez told me that a trial like the Kobanî case would normally take 5-7 years to hear all of the evidence. He said that the case was being rushed in order to obtain convictions, which would provide the evidence for the banning of the HDP.
As of December 2021, Bilmez told us the trial was taking place at two week intervals with the court sitting for two weeks and then breaking for one. Hundreds of files of evidence have been served by the prosecutor, and “every day there is a new dossier”.
Bilmez told me it was impossible for his clients to adequately prepare a defence in these circumstances, as there was no time being allowed to consider the huge volumes of prosecution material. This was why the lawyers in the case staged a protest last year, walking out of the proceedings. Bilmez said that the current conditions were “a form of abuse” against the defendants.
“You can’t say that there is justice in Turkey”
Bilmez said that countering the ‘blatant attack’ posed by the Kobanî case was bringing radical lawyers together:
for Kurdish lawyers and for Left-wing lawyers in the country, we see that it’s a blatant attack. So there’s a lot of solidarity to come together and be active.
He concluded:
Turkey is moving away from having any kind of just government. You can’t say that there is justice in Turkey.
Featured image of HDP flags taken by Emily Apple, picture of Erdoğanvia YouTube
February 15 2022 will mark the 23rd anniversary of the capture of Abdullah Öcalan, the co-founder of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
The PKK has fought for Kurdish freedom and autonomy since the 1970s. Turkey has defined the PKK as a ‘terrorist group’, and most Western states have followed suit, as they see Turkey as a key trading partner and NATO member.
Öcalanwas abducted by the Turkish state from Nairobi in 1999. He’d been forced to leave Syria – previously a PKK safe haven – the year before. The events leading up to Öcalan‘s capture have been dubbed an ‘international conspiracy’ by the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
Öcalan was originally sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because Turkey was in the midst of a bid to join the EU, and it needed to be seen to comply with EU laws.
He has spent the last 23 years in isolation on the Turkish prison island of İmralı. International human rights bodies have repeatedlycalled for an end to his solitary confinement.
Despite being in solitary confinement, Öcalan has still been able to put across his ideas for a new society, as part of his legal defence writings. His ‘new paradigm’ – of a stateless direct democracy based on women’s freedom and an ecologically sustainable society – has inspired both the Rojava revolution in Northeast Syria, and the movement for democratic autonomy in Bakur (the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders).
Taking to the streets
A demonstration is planned in London on Saturday 13 February, calling for Öcalan‘s freedom. The Kurdish People’s Assembly of the UK tweeted:
This February marks 23 years that Abdullah Öcalan has been illegally detained, in conditions amounting to torture, on the prison island Imrali.
Join us at 1pm at Portland Place in London on 13 February to demand freedom for the 'Mandela of the Middle East'. pic.twitter.com/2GNTbtnW6h
Supporters of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are taking part in a “long march” across Europe to Strasbourg, calling for “Freedom for Öcalan”. Strasbourg houses the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe.
“We cannot get any news from Mr Öcalan“
Last December, I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez for The Canary.
I was on the way to join a delegation to Bakur made up of radical journalists, including three of us from The Canary, as well as representatives from the Kurdistan Solidarity Network and defendant and prisoner solidarity organisations.
Bilmez has been Öcalan‘s lawyer for over 18 years. He told me:
the most important thing on the agenda for us at the moment is that we cannot get any news from Mr Öcalan. That’s been going on now for eight months.
Bilmez told me that he was concerned about his client’s deteriorating health. According to Bilmez:
So eight months ago, news came on social media from verifiable sources saying that Öcalan‘s health was very bad, and that he could be close to losing his life… That was last March [2021]. And at that point they gave permission for his family to speak with him on the phone.
No visits since 2020
Bilmez said that Öcalan has not had a visit from friends, family, or his supporters since 3 March 2020, and that even these visits had only been achieved by popular pressure. In the period immediately preceding the 2020 visit, there was a forest fire which had spread to the İmralı prison. Kurdish people in Turkey took to the streets and demanded proof that Öcalan and his fellow prisoners were still alive, and this eventually led to the state authorising the visit.
The hunger strikes broke the isolation
Öcalan‘s lawyers have not been able to visit him since August 2019. Again, those legal visits only came about because of the determination of the Kurdish movement. In 2018, thousands of Kurdish prisoners launched a wave of hunger strikes, demanding the end of Öcalan‘s isolation. According to Bilmez:
The reason that it was possible for the lawyers to actually visit in 2019 was because of the hunger strikes that happened in the prisons, by Leyla Güven from the [People’s Democratic Party] HDP and other prisoners. And that was what put the pressure on, so that lawyers would come and visit.
Leyla Güven‘s successful hunger strike lasted 200 days and almost led to her death. Last year, the state took revenge on her, sentencing her to a further 22 years in prison.
Bilmez said that between 2011 and 2019, there had been no lawyer visits permitted at all. Öcalan has not been allowed any legal visits since 2019 either
Bilmez told me that there had been another hunger strike in Summer 2021, aimed at breaking the isolation of Öcalan, but that a decision had been made early on to quit the strike. This was because – back in 2019 – Öcalan himself said that he couldn’t endorse hunger strikes as a strategy, and called on the movement to find different ways to change things.
“No law applies”
I asked Bilmez what the conditions were like for Öcalan in prison. He said:
he was taken there in 1999, and until 2009 he was the only prisoner in that prison. After 2009, five other prisoners from the Kurdish movement were taken there as well, but they are in separate cells.
Now there are only four people left there [including Öcalan].
Bilmez said that the Turkish state is acting with complete impunity in Öcalan‘s case:
The government has done whatever it wants with him since 1999. No law applies, there’s no transparency there.
My comments might not come across as objective but – as a lawyer – I can say that it’s the case, and this is backed up by the report of the [Council of Europe’s] Committee for the Prevention of Torture. They visited İmralı eight or nine times, and that’s the basis of their report.
Imprisonment of Öcalan‘s lawyers
I asked Bilmez if he had faced criminalisation himself for representing Öcalan. He told me:
In November 2011, there was the biggest ever operation against lawyers in Turkey. Over 40 lawyers [who were connected to representing Öcalan] were arrested and had their houses raided in the middle of the night. They arrested lawyers from [the cities of] Diyarbakir, Ankara, Izmir and Wan, and took them to Istanbul.
35 of us were put into prison, including myself.
I was in prison from 2011-14. Now I have been released – with conditions – but the case against me is still ongoing.
The alleged crime was simply that we were lawyers for Öcalan. They allege that we’re a tool, a vehicle for his ideas and his organisation.
Bilmez said that – on the way to İmralı – he had been physically attacked by Turkish fascist groups, and that on one occasion:
a group of 50 or 60 fascists came to attack us with stones and sticks. The police were forced to protect us in some way, but they didn’t really put much effort into it.
Bilmez considers it likely that that these attacks were done in coordination with the Turkish state.
The importance of international solidarity
I asked Bilmez if there was anything that people from the UK could do to pressure the Turkish government over Öcalan‘s situation. He told us that it was important to focus on the cases being taken outside Turkey:
We have cases with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
These international cases are very important. We’re constantly trying to open cases, or keep cases going – but still Öcalan‘s conditions stay the same. So it is very important to keep up the international pressure and awareness, and to raise your voice.
Bilmez gave examples of how international solidarity makes a difference. He pointed out:
One of the big unions in the UK, which has 1000s of members, specifically mentioned Abdullah Öcalan at one of their big protests, to see this from here was very meaningful and very important.
Another example was that there was a boat full of activists who went from Athens to Napoli raising awareness about Öcalan‘s right not to be isolated. And that was done on the same day as when he had been taken captive in 1999.
These kinds of events are really important. In Turkey the law basically doesn’t mean anything in these political cases, and there’s no independent media here either. So that’s why international political pressure is so important.
A template for further violations
According to Bilmez, the isolation of Öcalan has provided a template for many of the abuses which are now being carried out by the Turkish state. He said:
The kind of violations that have happened in İmralı, and with the wider Kurdish question – these have become the template for Turkey. This injustice that was acceptable in those spaces is now the norm in Turkey.
This first happened in İmralı, and nobody raised their voice. So it has become the standard in Turkey. That the law is there to be bent.
Its time for Freedom for Öcalan
The Kurdish Freedom Movement is calling for an end to the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan as an urgent step. But, more than that, they want an end to his imprisonment. This is seen as a stepping stone to ending the oppression of Kurdish people, and to a radical democratisation of society.
According to Ayşe Acar Başaran, spokesperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Women’s Assembly:
The years-long isolation of Mr Öcalan is a manifestation of the government’s approach to the Kurdish issue. The government has dropped the democratic solution to the Kurdish problem following its alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP since 2015.
The HDP are part of the movement for radical democracy in Turkey, inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan
we see that the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan is not limited to him as a single person – but with him an entire people, an entire movement is being tried to punish and destroy. The imprisonment of his person is vicariously linked to the attempt to suppress an alternative to patriarchy, fascism and capitalist modernity.
10,000 people are currently imprisoned in Turkey for connection with the Kurdish Freedom Movement. In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and they are still being jailed in large numbers.. During our time in Turkey and Bakur, we spoke to many people facing prison for their political organising, as well as many families of prisoners. Emily Apple wrote in The Canary about just how wide ranging the repression is:
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
A lot of the people we spoke to told us how important Öcalan‘s freedom was to them, that freedom for Öcalan would also mean freedom for them and their loved ones. Öcalan is widely seen as the key to restarting peace negotiations with the Turkish state.
Even after 23 years of extreme isolation – and all of the efforts of the Turkish state to silence him – Öcalan still inspires revolutionaries not just across Turkey and Kurdistan but worldwide. It’s clear that the movement will continue fighting for his freedom, and for the stateless, radically democratic society that he envisioned.
Featured image is a screenshot from a video of a protest at the Durham Miners Gala
“I am the lucky one”, the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) tells us, “I’m an MP so I have immunity”. But he will still face charges. Everyone else around the table has either been to prison, is in the middle of a trial, or is facing prison sentences.
This isn’t exceptional. It is the norm in Bakur (North Kurdistan – the Kurdish majority region of Turkey). In every meeting we go to, in every interview we conduct, eventually we discuss what sentences people are facing or have already served.
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
And while this is nothing new – ever since my first trip to the region in 2011 as an election monitor, I’ve been struck by the fact that there is no safe position to take if you support the Kurdish struggle and oppose the ruling government – there are signs things are getting worse.
This was my sixth trip to Bakur since 2011. Several friends I’ve met on previous trips are now in prison, are under investigation, or have escaped the country. This most recent delegation was made up of radical journalists, including three of us from The Canary, the Kurdistan Solidarity Network, and defendant and prisoner solidarity organisations. Our aims were to learn from a struggle that inspires us politically, to connect our work, and to amplify the voices of those facing constant repression from the Turkish state.
Gentrification
There are signs in Amed (Diyarbakir) that the Turkish state is feeling more confident. In the old city of Sur, small, out of reach Turkish flags and pictures of Erdoğan – who appears to love having his face on every lamppost – have been replaced by bigger banners. Most of the police cordons have gone. There is no longer an armored car parked permanently on the corner of one of the main squares.
In 2015, residents of Sur declared autonomy. The Turkish state responded with deadly force. Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson reported on the situation in Red Pepper in 2016:
The police and military are using every kind of violence against the Kurds. They are using tanks and heavy armoured vehicles. They have flattened houses, historical places, mosques. They use helicopters and technological weapons, night vision binoculars and drones. They don’t let families get to the bodies of youths who were killed. Corpses remain on the streets for weeks.
As people on several trips have told me, the Turkish state also used the excuse to bulldoze the area and concrete over evidence of the war crimes committed. Old houses have been replaced with new builds. Those displaced were given less than market value prices for their homes and are unable to afford to move into the new houses the government has built. This was deliberate. Erdoğan wants to change the make-up of Sur. I’m told that government officials, police, and military are all given discounts if they want to buy these new houses.
During my last trip in February 2020, these new builds were still closed to public access. We could only view them from the city’s historic walls or through gaps in fences. Now they’re open. But they’re eerily quiet. Row upon row of empty houses and deserted streets. A literal ghost town when you know the horrors that have been concreted over to create them.
There are other signs of gentrification around Sur. New cafes have opened up; a once bombed-out deserted hotel is now open and boasts a Starbucks. A massive poster for Burger King is displayed on one of the main streets. As one person tells me, these are all ways in which the Turkish state is trying to crush the spirit of Sur. But despite years of war, curfew, displacement, and now gentrification, that spirit is still strong.
Force still dominates
While the military and police presence is diminished, it’s still felt and impossible to ignore. One night, walking back to our hotel, we see a police operation with a balaclava-clad man wielding a semi-automatic on a street corner. On another night, two of our delegation are stopped and searched by the police. No explanation is given. Local residents tell us this is just what happens when people are out at night.
These are just minor glimpses into the everyday reality for people who live in the region. Erdoğan might be trying various tactics to eradicate Kurdish resistance, but sheer force still dominates.
The power of women
Women’s rights are central to the Kurdish Freedom Movement. As I wrote after attending a TJA (Free Women’s Movement) conference in Amed in 2020:
There’s a women’s revolution taking place in the Middle East. Not just in Rojava (the mostly Kurdish part of northern Syria), where images and stories of the brilliant and brave female fighters against Daesh (Isis/Isil) have captured international headlines, but in Bakur too. Under the increasingly dictatorial and fascistic government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, women’s rights are being eroded at a national level. In January, for example, a so-called “marry-your-rapist” bill was introduced, meaning men who rape women can avoid punishment by marrying their victims. Meanwhile, women are regularly attacked with the police showing little interest in investigating.
But women are fighting back. And the Kurdish women’s movement is at the forefront of this fightback. Lipservice isn’t just paid to women’s equality in the Kurdish freedom movement; equality isn’t something that can be sorted after other struggles are won – it’s a central foundation that is visible in every aspect of organising. And it shows. Not just with the women at the conference but in the movement’s political structures. The HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) has ‘co-chairs’ to ensure there’s equal representation for women across the party.
The Turkish state is scared of the power of women. The TJA states that its “first target was the women’s foundations”. Ayşe Gökkan, the former spokesperson of the TJA, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in October. She was prevented from defending herself in Kurdish at her trial. Former HDP MP and DTK co-chair Leyla Güven was sentenced to 22 years in prison in December 2020.
One of the women we met this time at the TJA had just been released from nine years in prison; another had served a six-year sentence.
“If you are Kurdish the way is the prison”, they tell us. This is certainly a sentiment Ayşe would agree with. When we last interviewed her in the gardens of the DTK offices – offices now closed by the state – she told us:
Prisons in Kurdistan have a special importance in our history of resistance. Prisons became education centres because so many people were imprisoned. Our resistance started in the jails. The people inside the jails started to organise the people outside the jails.
However, the TJA tell us the situation is worse for women:
The system is male dominant and that affects the cases. We have male friends and we are in the same struggle but because the system is male dominant we’re accused of being women and Kurdish while they are just accused of being Kurdish. That’s why it’s more hard for women. The women’s punishment is always more than men. The decisions are not equal with the law. They give decisions depending on the political situation. women are faced with lots of abuse, some faced with sexual abuse, torture, some other political intimidation. We have friend who is sentenced and faced with sexual abuse in prison.
Prison repression
The Turkish state is also trying to crush this prison resistance. At a prisoner solidarity organisation, we are told that Erdoğan is experimenting with different types of prisons to see which one works best, including increasing isolation for prisoners. The government is currently undertaking a massive prison expansion plan, spending billions despite the economy collapsing. The TJA tells us that women are punished for Kurdish dancing and singing.
While we’re in Amed, we hear of the death of Garibe Gezer. Garibe committed suicide after being sexually assaulted and held in a padded cell. But as people make clear to us, she was killed by the Turkish state. This was reiterated in a statement made outside the Bar Association by the HDP, the Democratic Regions Party, Peace Mothers, and Lawyers for Freedom Association:
We have lost Garibe as a result of the penal execution system, which is established with the aim of full isolation and killing every day, and its practices and as a result of the physical-sexual assaults.
Release sick prisoners
Other campaigns are focussing on the condition of sick prisoners. On the day we attend a press conference for sick prisoners at the Bar Association, we hear news that two died on 15 December. Both had cancer. According to data from the Human Rights Association, there are currently 1,605 ill prisoners in jail, with 604 of them classed as “seriously sick”. Since the start of 2020, 59 prisoners have died of their illness.
HDP spokesperson Ebru Günay described the situation:
The prisons of a country are the mirrors of their democracy. Unfortunately, the prisons of Turkey have turned into houses of death. Only in the last week, two ill prisoners have lost their lives in prison.
People are also campaigning for the release of Aysel Tuğluk. Aysel has been in prison since 2016 and has dementia. She is:
the first woman who co-chaired a political party in the history of Kurdish political parties and the only woman who faced a political ban as she was banned from politics after the Democratic Society Party was closed. She is also a lawyer, a human rights defender and a politician who has devoted her whole life to the Kurds’ struggle for freedom and equality that will culminate in an honorable peace.
Despite her illness, and an independent medical report saying she should be released, she is still imprisoned. People are ensuring she is not alone, though, as the statement made outside the Bar Association makes clear:
Aysel Tuğluk or all other captives are not alone. There is a powerful women’s organization behind them. Women’s solidarity and unity will keep on defending the politics of keeping alive.
Resistance is life
There’s a saying in Kurdish – resistance is life – berxwedan jiyane – and despite the sadness, despite the repression, this spirit was still evident in every meeting. Despite decades of repression, people are not only still fighting back, but they are fighting for a radically democratic, anti-capitalist, and pro-feminist society.
And while we’re a long way from facing the excesses of the Turkish state in the UK, we are facing the most draconian crackdown on dissent we’ve seen in generations. Our friends are in prison for fighting back against police violence. On 17 December, Ryan Roberts was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the 21 March Kill The Bill demo in Bristol. He will spend a decade behind bars. As Tom Anderson wrote in The Canary:
Ryan – along with his fellow demonstrators – fought back against the police’s violence, racism, and misogyny. The actions of the demonstrators on 21 March were part of the same struggle as the actions of people fighting back against state violence around the world, and we should be proud of them.
The police bill will criminalise many more of us. The struggles are different, but there are many parallels.
These struggles will continue. And whether it’s fighting back against our increasingly authoritarian UK state or standing in solidarity with our Kurdish comrades, our struggles are connected, and international solidarity is powerful.
108 people are standing trial this week in Ankara in a case that’s been dubbed a political “show trial”.
Many of the defendants are from the left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. Others are connected to civil society organisations and to the Kurdistan freedom movement.
The allegations against them include terrorism and murder.
If convicted, the party’s former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş is facing a ridiculous demand from the chief prosecutor of 15,000 years in prison. All of the 108 defendants are facing prison. 21 of them have already been incarcerated pending the results of the trial.
Several people who are current HDP members of the Turkish parliament attended the trial as observers.
A mass prosecution triggered a tweet
According to the Firat News Agency (ANF), the prosecution was triggered by a tweet issued by the HDP’s Executive Council in 2014, when the Turkish state had placed an embargo on cross border aid to Rojava in support of the Daesh’s (ISIS) attack on the city of Kobanî.
The tweet called for an ongoing protest against the invasion plans. It read:
Urgent call to our peoples […]! The situation in Kobanê is extremely critical. We call on our people to take to the streets and support those who are already on the streets to protest the ISIS attacks and the AKP government’s embargo.
A movement for a real people’s democracy
The tweet came at the same time that people in Bakur – the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders – began ramping up their movement for autonomy. The movement, led by the Kurdistan freedom movement, was inspired by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader Abdullah Öcalan‘s ideas of democratic confederalism. The democratic autonomy movement included people from diverse religions and ethnicities.
By 2015, people in several cities had declared autonomy from the Turkish state, barricading their city centres and organising democratic assemblies, village communes, and cooperatives.
The Turkish state’s response to the movement was bloody. It declared curfews across Bakur, and attacked people with heavy weaponry. 50,000 were displaced from the city of Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish) alone.
Since then, the Turkish state has repeatedly replaced the HDP’s elected mayors with kayyums – trustees who are state stooges appointed by the president. The state has also attacked workers’ cooperatives in Kurdistan, arrested tens of thousands of people, and closed down Kurdish language schools and TV channels. It is currently taking legal action to try to ban the HDP.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, meanwhile, has found Erdoğan and the Turkish state guilty of war crimes against the Kurdish people. The Turkish state has also ignored a 2020 ruling from the European Court of Human Rights that Demirtaş should be released from prison and that his continued incarceration was:
stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate: the very core of the concept of a democratic society.
A show trial aimed at continuing the repression of the movement
The trial – dubbed the ‘Kobanî trial’ – is an extension of the Turkish state’s repression of the movement.
Several people have spoken out on Twitter this year in support of the defendants:
The trial comes against the backdrop of renewed threats by Erdoğan to extend Turkish military action in Syria.
Defendants united
Those accused were united in refusing to give their defence speeches to the judge who had been appointed for the trial. The defendants have been arguing throughout the trial that they cannot get a fair hearing. Former HDP co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ – who is also standing trial – said at a previous hearing:
Our right to defense should not be blocked in this courtroom, but it is blocked. Failure to respect my right to defense is a sign of how the panel of judges will proceed
ANF reported on Monday 18 November that:
The lawyers will meet their clients during the next pause and make their decisions on whether they will give a defence or not.
The state’s revenge for Kobanî victory
A HDP statement says that the trial is intended to avenge the movements’ victory against Daesh, which happened despite the “ongoing support for ISIS being shown by the Turkish regime”:
With this show trial, they want to portray known politicians as criminals in order for social support to the HDP to be arrested. The 3530-page indictment contains evidence that has nothing to do with the truth. If things go according to Erdogan’s wishes, Selahattin Demirtas should spend up to 15,000 years in prison. This is the request of the Office of the Attorney General. But this is a proxy trial to avenge the victory against ISIS at Kobani.
Featured image by Corporate Watch (with permission)
A delegation of people from all over Europe has travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan to protest against the Turkish invasion and bombing. And this statement from the Defend Kurdistan campaign explains the urgency of the situation:
In April, the Turkish state initiated a new, wide-ranging military campaign in South Kurdistan in the regions of Matina, Zap and Avashin. Heavy battles continue in these regions, with the Kurdish guerrilla forces fiercely resisting this illegal invasion. These large-scale attacks target not only the Kurdish guerrilla forces, but also the achievements of the Kurdish people, with the aim of occupying South Kurdistan. To date, the response to these attacks on the international level has unfortunately been muted. Seizing on this silence, the Turkish regime has put in place their plan to occupy all of Rojava (the region of North and East Syria) alongside South Kurdistan. In so doing, Turkey is determined to ethnically cleanse this vast area – 1400 km long – from North-West Syria to the Iraqi-Iranian border. At the same time, Turkey is waging a drone war against the Maxmur refugee camp, a gross violation of international law. Connected to this policy of ethnic cleansing, the Turkish military also hopes to depopulate the Sinjar region, home of the Yazidis—and thereby achieve what ISIS could not.
We, as a delegation from all over Europe, have come to Kurdistan aiming for peace and freedom. Politicians, academics, human rights activists, syndicalists, journalists, feminists and ecologists from over ten countries wanted to get direct impressions of the situation and stand up to end the war and destruction.
Pierre Laurent, deputy president of the Senate of France, said on behalf of the delegation:
We are a peaceful and solidary peace delegation in solidarity with all the Kurdish people and we will build diplomatic pressure to stop the Turkish invasion of Southern Kurdistan.
Stop the weapons exports to Turkey
The delegation has been gathering testimonies from people who have suffered as a result of the Turkish bombing. They spoke to Peyman Talib, a woman who lost her leg as a result of a Turkish drone attack.
”They say Turkey only attacks right at the border and only attacks PKK. But that is only an excuse. I am a civilian and I live close to the city and they attacked me anyway. They do not care about human rights.“#defendkurdistanpic.twitter.com/ArP5vYfvKL
However, the delegation has been prevented from travelling freely around Iraqi Kurdistan. On 20 June, the delegation was prevented from visiting the Mexmûr refugee camp by the Iraqi military. The refugee camp has been bombed by Turkey earlier this month.
One tweet reads:
Turkey bombed the refugee camp #Mexmûr on June 5th, following a thread Erdoğan had made a few days earlier. The #Delegation4Peace wanted to visit the people of Mexmûr today in solidarity, but was stopped and sent back by the Iraqi military at a checkpoint.#defendkurdistanpic.twitter.com/4C8jbkTj45
And on 21 June, the group was denied access to Qandil.
Qandil has been under increasing attacks from the Turkish military in recent months. Turkey is attacking Qandil because the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has its base in the region, but its drone attacks and shelling are deadly and indiscriminate.
Demonstrators met by warning shots
Demonstrations broke out after the delegation was refused access to Qandil. Demonstrators were met with warning shots by security forces:
Because the way to #Quandil is still closed a demonstration started.
Already after 200m the demonstration was stopped by warning shots and has to return.
Several Kurdish movements who joined the international delegation in their attempt to reach Qandil have criticised the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls the area, for preventing freedom of movement.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party is accused of trying “to legitimize Turkish occupation”. Defend Kurdistan’s statement reads:
Unfortunately, the Kurdistan Region (KRG) and the Iraqi government have done little to stop Turkey’s occupation attempt. In particular, it has been disappointing for us to see how Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) officials have even tried to legitimize the Turkish occupation. Whatever Ankara’s economic pressure might be, the KDP must not allow itself to be turned into a Turkish proxy, as the consequences of this war can be grave for all of Kurdistan and the region.
“We need the internationalists as a voice in their countries to stop these attacks“
One of the people the International Peace delegation spoke to in the village of Kuna Masi said:
We need the internationalists as a voice in their countries to stop these attacks
The international delegation is part of a global movement against the Turkish attacks, and in solidarity with the people under attack in Northern Iraq and North and East Syria. You can follow the delegation’s progress on Twitter here.
The author is part of Shoal Collective and is one of the authors of the report highlighted in this piece.
A new report by Shoal Collective takes a look at the oppressive new surveillance technologies being used by the British police.
Police are using broad ‘counter-terrorism’ measures to seize devices on UK borders and carry out a ‘digital strip search’:
When people are arrested, stopped at UK borders or their homes are raided, the police often seize phones, tablets, computers, memory cards and SIM cards, in order to extract personal data. A number of companies supply equipment to the UK police to do this, including [Israeli company] Cellebrite, Digital Detective, ElcomSoft, Grayshift, Magnet Forensics, MSAB, OpenText, and Oxygen Forensics.
According toShoal Collective, this police tactic is intended to creating a chilling effect, with the aim of deterring people from political organising.
Over half of the police forces in the UK have confirmed that they use data extraction technology. To give an idea of the amount of data involved, in 2017 Police Scotland revealed to media cooperative The Ferret that in:
the last three years Police Scotland have successfully obtained data from at least 35,973 phones… In the same period the police tackled 16,587 computers.
Police ‘counter-terrorism’ powers enabling a digital strip search
Police often stop people at UK borders and seize devices under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. According to Shoal Collective:
Schedule 7 came into force as part of the UK’s Terrorism Act in 2000 and allows the police to stop people on arrival to, or departure from, the UK and question them in order to determine whether they might be involved preparing terrorist acts. Unlike other powers of police questioning, under Schedule 7 it is illegal to answer ‘No Comment’ or not to respond. People may be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned if they refuse to give an answer. Although the questions have to be related to the investigation of terrorism, in reality people have been asked questions on a range of subjects unrelated to outlawed ‘terrorist’ organisations. For example, people have been questioned about their religious beliefs, personal life, participation in protests and political organising, among other personal matters. Under Schedule 7, the police also have the power to confiscate electronic devices and demand passwords, and have the power to arrest if passwords are not given.
‘Targeting surveillance at anyone whose politics have the imagination to look beyond borders‘
By far the greatest use of Schedule 7 is against Muslims with political views, especially on foreign policy or security issues. It is a fundamentally Islamophobic policing power. However, as a tool, this power is targeting surveillance at anyone whose politics have the imagination to look beyond borders: so solidarity with migrants or independence struggles, such as the Palestinians or the Kurds. This also means gatherings of campaigners from different countries who reject capitalism’s role in solutions to climate change, conflict or global poverty. This is why it is impossible to see the use of Schedule 7 as anything other than blatant political policing.
‘Creating a huge database’
According to Alastair Lyon of Birnberg Peirce solicitors:
The definition of terrorism is wide enough that huge areas of legitimate political activity can fall within it. Schedule 7 interview answers can’t generally be used in court. The process of asking questions does not appear to be the purpose of most stops: answers given in interviews themselves are probably of least interest to the police. The ‘digital strip search’ appears to be the point.
Confiscated digital devices can be detained for a maximum of seven days, unless retained thereafter for a criminal investigation. Devices give the police access to huge parts of your life and relationships. This is key: the police are potentially creating a huge database of this information.
Using Israeli technology to spy on people in the UK
One of the technologies most used by the police to extract data from seized devices is provided by Israeli company Cellebrite. The company’s technology is used to:
unlock and extract data from smartphones,enabling them to crack passwords and extract contact lists, call history, internet history, calendar entries, emails, SMS messages, documents, photos and videos, as well as see what apps were used and the data stored on them. Cellebrite’s technology also allows police forces to gain information regarding location, and can retrieve hidden files and deleted content.
The use of Cellebrite technology is in breach of the Palestinian call for states and other bodies not to purchase technology from Israeli companies, because of the Israeli states colonial policies against Palestinians.
State spying has a huge impact on lives
Shoal Collective‘s report gives the example of Josh Schoolar, an internationalist volunteer who travelled to Northeast Syria to join the Peoples’ Protection Units’ (YPG) fight against Daesh (ISIS/ISIL). Nik Matheou, an internationalist in the Kurdish Freedom movement, based in London stated:
From late 2016, and through all of 2017, Josh was in Syria, in Rojava… He went initially to do civil volunteer work… Six months after that he decided to join the International Freedom Battalion, which is a battalion of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), made up of anarchist and communist groups from Turkey and around the world. He fought with them for several months, participating in the liberation of Raqqa [from Daesh/ISIS]. After the liberation of Raqqa, he stayed for a couple of months more and then came home.
The YPG is not an illegal terrorist group in the UK. In fact, a British jury in the case of Aidan James – another YPG fighter – found that it was not a crime for James to join the YPG’s fight against Daesh.
However, the British authorities routinely try to monitor and criminalise UK citizens who have fought with the YPG.
Matheou highlighted how he and Scoolar were stopped under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act in 2018:
In November 2018, we went to continental Europe. When coming back, however, we were Schedule 7 interviewed at the border in Dover. That was the beginning of the repression for Josh. He was questioned separately in a different room to us about his time in Syria… His phone was taken … and then returned to him two or three days later.
Months later, Schoolar’s house and workplace – a primary school – were raided by armed police. These raids resulted in Schoolar losing his job and his home.
Matheou described the impact of this repression on Schoolar’s life:
In terms of the effects on Josh’s life, they were profound. I really can’t believe that the raid on his school was anything other than an attempt to do what it achieved: which was to get him fired and to ruin his chance of pursuing his chosen career as a teacher. He had to radically change his outlook on what he was going to be doing in his life from that point on.
It also affected his life because at that point his passport was taken away. And it created a general problem with being able to feel confident with communication with close friends. If he was communicating with friends and then that was found out through his electronics, then potentially that could make a stronger case against them. So, he didn’t do it. It was a constant low-level panic. He lost his way of paying rent. He had to move home for several months before being able to move back to Manchester. It really defined the entire last two years of his life before he sadly passed away.
Chilling effect
The report asserts that this type of police repression is being used as a weapon to stamp out radical voices in the UK:
State surveillance is used alongside police violence and the violence of the prison system to control dissent. The ever-encroaching surveillance state has a chilling effect on participation in social movements for change, because it enables the targeting, harassment and criminalisation of social movement organisers.
And it highlights that UK terror legislation is being deployed in a racialised way against certain communities in the UK:
The discriminatory application of the UK’s draconian terror legislation means that certain communities are treated with suspicion and criminalised. For example, Muslims, Tamil people and Kurdish people encounter even greater police surveillance by virtue of their religion or ethnicity.
We need to defend ourselves against state surveillance
Shoal Collective concludes with a call to take steps to defend ourselves against state surveillance:
It is necessary for us to fight back against the surveillance society and to resist the introduction of new technologies that will be used to control us and our communities. We need to take steps to defend ourselves against state surveillance and to stand up for those movements and communities who will bear the biggest brunt of it.
Tom Anderson is part of the Shoal Collective, a cooperative producing writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism. Shoal Collective were involved in doing the research and writing the report mentioned in this article.
This is the revolutionary Anna Campbell. Monday 15 March marks three years since she was murdered by the Turkish state in Rojava, north-east Syria.
Anna was an anti-fascist, feminist and queer internationalist. She joined the women’s revolution in Rojava in May 2017 during the fight against Daesh (ISIS/Isil). Turkey invaded Rojava’s Afrin region in 2018, and Anna joined the YPJ’s armed resistance against the invasion. She was murdered by a Turkish missile strike in March 2018, along with her friends Sara Merdin and Serhildan, as they tried to help refugees flee Afrin.
Fighting for a “free and dignified life for everyone”
Rojava is a region of around 3 million people, organising themselves using a model of direct democracy, attempting to give power to the grassroots. It is a society that centres on women’s liberation, religious tolerance, and minority protection as key. According to Anna’s friends:
It was anti-fascism, peoples’ democracy and women’s liberation that first attracted Anna to Rojava.
But, like all of her comrades in Rojava, Anna wasn’t just fighting for direct democracy in that region. She was fighting for a free and dignified life for everyone, and she was fighting for women’s liberation everywhere. The people of Rojava don’t see their struggle as separate from here. They see it as a small part of a global struggle.
Organising in the UK
Anna was an anarchist and anti-capitalist organiser, working tirelessly before going to Rojava. Her friends say:
[Anna was] involved in every type of resistance in the UK and Europe, from distributing food, protecting the environment, resisting detention and deportation of refugees and immigrants, to prison abolition.
In the UK, Anna stood on the streets against fascists. The Canary’s Tom Anderson recalls:
We both stood our ground alongside fellow anti-fascists one day in Dover, as the National Front lobbed bricks at us. The Front was trying to hold a racist march through the city.
Her friends say that Anna:
knew how to fight fascism, but that fight was not limited to street punch ups or macho posturing. Anna was humble and she gave meaning to every action, serving the people.
“Her loss leaves a legacy”
If Anna were alive in the UK today, she would no doubt be outraged by the systematically misogynist UK state, which fails to protect women and, in many cases, doesn’t even bother to investigate their murders. She would be disgusted by the fact that a man murders a woman every three days in this country, and that 62% of these victims were murdered by a spouse or former-partner. She would be using her education in Rojava to build a different society in the UK: one that actually tackles patriarchy and misogyny head on, and one that ensures that women are actually safe in their own homes.
Her friends say:
Remembering those we have lost in the struggle against capitalism, fascism, and patriarchy reminds us of the need for revolutionary commitment, grief and love. The present is born in every moment from the past, and we walk in the paths trodden by those who came and left before us.
We miss Anna every day, not just at the time of this anniversary. Her loss leaves a legacy; we must keep revolutionary fires burning…
They continue:
Let’s keep the momentum going in 2021, in the name of Anna Campbell, of Sara Merdin, of Serhildan, and of every person who has fallen in our struggle for freedom and dignity.
We have the power to create a society where gender liberation is at the forefront. But we can’t rely on our government to do it for us. The majority-Kurdish women’s struggle in Rojava and Bakur (within Turkey) is perhaps the strongest women’s movement in the world right now. Let’s learn from these revolutionary women so that Anna, Sara and Serhildan, and all of their comrades haven’t died in vain.
Featured image via Anna’s friends, with permission
Perhaps the strongest women’s movement in the world right now is the Kurdish Women’s Movement. On International Women’s Day, The Canary takes a look at these revolutionary women.
Kurdish women came to world attention in 2014, gaining global media headlines in their fight against Daesh (ISIS/Isil) in Rojava, Syria. Yet, as is typical in a patriarchal society, western media outlets usually depicted the Kurdish Women’s Movement as young, beautiful twenty-somethings with guns, even appearing in women’s magazine Marie Claire. But Kurdish women, from the young to the very old, were struggling against patriarchy and fascism for decades before Daesh existed.
Kurdish people are the largest stateless group on Earth. Most live in the geographic region of Kurdistan, which lies within Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Kurdish people have experienced generations of oppression in all four countries, from Saddam Hussein’s Anfal genocide in Iraq, to the torture and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people and the burning of villages in Turkey.
Sakine Cansız
Yet this oppression contributed to the creation of one of the largest women’s struggles in the world in the Kurdish regions within Turkey and Syria. One of the biggest icons of this struggle is Sakine Cansız (in the left-hand image at the top of the page). She was a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978 with Abdullah Öcalan. The PKK began an armed struggle against the Turkish state in 1984. Kommun Academi writes:
Sakine Cansız was tasked by the leadership to build the women’s movement, a duty that she took very close to her heart. She single-handedly managed to gather large groups of young women, often students, for discussion and educations. On November, 27th 1978 only at the age of 20, Sakine Cansız became one of the two female co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, when she participated in the party’s founding congress.
Cansız was imprisoned and tortured in Diyarbakır prison from 1979-1991. Kommun Academi continues:
The resistance of Sakine Cansız in Diyarbakir prison led to a new approach towards women in Kurdish society. It encouraged women to join revolutionary structures in the cities and moved women towards politicization in the villages. Starting with her prison resistance, Kurdish women’s activism gained increasing respect and support among the popular masses.
After her release from prison, Cansız continued in the PKK, and later as an educator of the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Europe. She was murdered in Paris in 2013, along with Leyla Şaylemez and Fidan Doğan, both central women in Kurdish organising.
Decades of organising
Long before the 2012 Rojava revolution in northern Syria, the Kurdish movement was developing structures for radically changing how society was organised. If you speak to any women in Kurdistan, they will tell you that this struggle didn’t start during the Arab Spring, or in the fight against Daesh. It began more than 40 years ago, through women such as Cansız, who organised tirelessly from prison.
Democratic confederalism – an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-state ideology – was created by Öcalan from his prison cell. Democratic confederalism ensures that power that would usually be held by governments is given to people at the grassroots level. Local communes were set up within the Kurdish part of Turkey in 2007, empowering people to make decisions over areas of their lives. In Syria, people began putting the ideas of democratic confederalism into practice in 2005.
Within the Kurdish Freedom Movement, women’s councils, academies, and cooperatives have been created, while positions of power are always held by co-chairs, at least one of whom identifies as a woman.
The patriarchy of the government, which has constructed itself on the basis of women’s bodies, feelings, ideas, beliefs and labour, intervenes constantly in our daily lives. It invades our space with violence, exploitation denial, murder and creating illusions. As important as tearing off these masks and organising a strong self-defence against these patriarchal attacks is the construction of a mindset. Jineoloji, which we have reached by setting out from a paradigm based on freedom, will succeed in achieving this.
Continuing the struggle
Cansız and the many other women who have died in their struggle for women’s liberation, continue to be a source of inspiration not just in Kurdistan, but around the world. Within Turkey, thousands of Kurdish women continue to be imprisoned, including Leyla Güven (to the right of the photo at the top of the page), who survived a 200-day hunger strike in 2019. The women currently imprisoned gain their strength from those who have struggled before them.
In the UK, Kurdistan Solidarity Network Jin (‘Jin’ means ‘women’ in Kurdish) released a statement for International Women’s Day. They said:
As feminists, we know that struggle involves work and it involves love. It is militant just as much as it is joyful. Whether we look to you, our sisters and comrades who have been imprisoned by the Turkish state, to the women fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan, or the women building new ways of life across society in all four parts of Kurdistan, we see this same love and dedication in their actions.
They continued:
We join your call to continue the struggle, to stand side by side as free women and raise our voices, to oppose all forms of injustice and fascism, to strive for building a society where justice and equality prevail and where the rights and dignity of women are respected.
We call for unity and solidarity, against feminicide and in defence of a free life and free society everywhere. United we will overcome. We salute you and wish you peace and strength.
“Women, Life, Freedom” is an important slogan of the Kurdish Women’s Movement. On this International Women’s Day, we must stand in solidarity with all women like Güven, locked up as political prisoners, and we must remember all those who have died in their fight against misogyny and patriarchy.
