Kurdish people from across Europe travelled to the suburbs of Paris, France, on 3 January for the funeral of three Kurds murdered in a racist attack. Gunman William Malet killed two men and one woman on 23 December, in a attack on the Ahmet Kaya community centre in Paris’ 10th district.
His victims were Abdurrahman Kizil, singer and political refugee Mir Perwer, and Emine Kara, a leader of the movement of Kurdish women in France.
Organisers chartered buses to bring people from across France and some neighbouring countries to the ceremony in Villiers-le-Bel, north of Paris, local sources said. Tears and cries of “Martyrs live forever!” greeted the coffins, wrapped in the flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish-controlled Rojava territory in northern Syria.
The huge crowd followed the funeral on giant screens erected in a car park. The screens showed coffins surrounded by wreaths beneath a portrait of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
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.
A history of Turkish persecution
Many Kurds in France’s 150,000-strong community refuse to believe Malet acted alone. They called his actions a “terrorist” attack, and pointed the finger at Turkey.
Ten years ago, men believed to have ties with Turkey’s secret services shot dead three Kurds connected to the PKK. The murders took place in Paris’s 10th District. Coincidentally, their funerals were held in almost exactly the same spot as those of Kizil, Perwer, and Kara. More recently, the now-banned Turkish ultra-nationalist group Grey Wolves was blamed for an attack in Lyon. Members of the group beat men at the city’s Kurdish cultural centre in April 2022.
Celik, a local who attended the 3 January funeral, said:
We feel like they’re doing everything they can to crush us, whether it’s here or in Turkey.
Malet’s murders led to confrontations between Kurdish people and French police in the streets of the capital.
A chance to pay respects
The Democratic Council of Kurds in France (CDKF) said the 3 January ceremony was an:
opportunity for those who wish to pay their final respects… before the bodies are repatriated to their native soil [for burial]
CDKF activists will lead a march on 4 January in tribute to the December victims. The route will include the street where the shootings took place.
On 7 January, a “grand march” of the Kurdish community will set off from Paris’s Gare du Nord rail hub. Organisers had originally planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the 2013 shootings, but will now mark the most recent murders.
Thousands attend the funeral of the martyrs of #Paris terrorist attack
The Democratic Kurdish Council in France called for participation in a march to be held in the French capital on January 7. pic.twitter.com/MhgrE7LJhh
Content warning: graphic descriptions of state violence
This week, supporters of the Kurdistan Freedom movement have called for action against Turkey’s ongoing assault.
Turkey is reported to have been using chemical weapons in its attacks on Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) guerillas in the mountains. Videos like this one – taken in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan – have been circulating. Antifa Enternasyonal tweeted in October:
URGENT! To those people that don't believe that the #Turkish fascist state is using chemical weapons against the #Kurdish guerrilla freedom fighters, look!
Take a good look at this video! Dozens of young brave comrades have fallen to the use of forbidden weapons! pic.twitter.com/jK36wdRLig
The chemical attacks by the Turkish state are by no means new. In October, the Canary published this interview with bereaved families of guerillas who had fought the Turkish state. One of them told Canary contributor VZ Frances:
When I talk about my son who was martyred, he died with 16 others in Dersim. When we found them, there were no wounds. We were able to get only 3 bodies out of the 16 martyrs. They were killed by chemical weapons. When their bodies were found, their eyes were completely filled with blood.
Since the state knows that these chemicals can only be analysed up to a certain point after death, they refuse to give up the bodies. It has been 4 years. There were many attempts within those 4 years, with no response.
People have been tweeting footage of the attacks under the hashtags #WeSeeYourCrimes and #YourSilenceKills. International campaign group Rise Up 4 Rojava tweeted:
In Vienna, on 30 November, hundreds demonstrated outside the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), demanding that it launches an investigation:
Some hundreds of people today in #Vienna in front of @OPCW protesting turkish use of chemical weapons in #Kurdistan and demanding an official investigation. https://t.co/JPnXKLza4d
Also on November 30, a group of international academics, campaigners and others published an open letter to the OPCW demanding that it investigates the attacks.
Attacks on north and east Syria continue
Meanwhile, Turkey’s attacks on Rojava – the part of Kurdistan within Syria’s borders – continues. The Turkish military has been engaged in heavy bombardments of Rojava since Saturday 19 November. Turkey is trying to crush the revolution that has been taking place there since 2012. It has already launched two major invasions, in 2018 and 2019, and is occupying parts of north and east Syria.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) released a statement on 29 November, condemning the ongoing attacks. It says:
The Turkish occupation continues the brutal attacks on the north and east of Syria, targeting the lives of more than 5 million indigenous people and hundreds of thousands of IDPs [internally displaced persons] from other Syrian regions. The recent Turkish aggression has entered its tenth day and caused extensive damage to the population’s farms and properties and civilian infrastructure
A coordinated Turkish offensive
The current attacks, dubbed ‘Operation Claw-Sword‘ by the Turkish military, are a coordinated offensive against both Rojava and Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey has been accused of deliberately targeting camps where thousands of Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) members are being held, in order to facilitate their escape. The bombing of Al-Hol camp led to the deaths of eight members of the SDF, and at least six Daesh prisoners escaped – but were later rearrested. The region is now on high alert to defend against attacks by Daesh sleeper cells.
Turkey’s “military escalation” has been criticised by US officials. The US has forces in north and east Syria, and coordinates with the SDF.
However, Turkey and its allies seem to be pushing ahead with the threat of ground attacks, with several assaults on the Manbij region – by mercenaries allied with Turkey – reportedly being repelled in the last few days.
Preparations for a full ground offensive seem to be ongoing:
Watch our Daily Review:
❶ Turkey to launch ground operation ❷ Intensive air strikes across NE Syria ❸ Syrian mp on Damascus, Ankara dialogue ❹ No justice for Kurdish lawyer ❺ Football controversy over Kurdish flaghttps://t.co/GELhbSKPOtpic.twitter.com/vq3qqrKgBb
As these moves by military powers play out, people at a grassroots level all over the world are answering a call to ‘Defend Kurdistan’. Several blockades of Turkish Airlines counters have taken place at European airports:
Demonstrations have been held in London, Bristol, and Leeds against UK arms sales to Turkey, and in support of the uprising in Rojhelat (the area of Kurdistan within Iran’s borders):
— Kurdistan Solidarity Network #YourSilenceKills (@kurdistansolnet) November 28, 2022
Bristol Kurdistan Solidarity Network is holding a demonstration against Boeing on 1 December, protesting the company’s supply of weapons to Turkey.
Defend the revolution
Turkey is attempting to stamp out a revolution right now in Kurdistan – a revolution which represents the struggle of people against states and against fascism. Those resisting the current attacks deserve our support and solidarity. Check out the Kurdistan Solidarity Network and Rise Up 4 Rojava on Twitter for news of demonstrations and how to get involved.
Three Iranian teenagers are among 15 people who could face the death penalty over the killing of a pro-government paramilitary force member, the judiciary said on 30 November. Iran has been rocked by protests since the September 16 death of Jîna Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s dress code for women. Authorities charged a group of 15 people with “corruption on earth” over the death of Ruhollah Ajamian, a member of the Basij paramilitary force, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.
The Basij militia is a volunteer paramilitary force of men and women under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Its members are found in schools, universities, state and private institutions, factories, and even among tribes. Basij forces are widely used to help to maintain law and order and repress dissent, and have frequently been accused of using extreme brutality.
As the Canary previously reported, Norway-based Iran Human Rights said at least 448 people had been “killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests”, in an updated toll issued on 29 November. The group says its toll includes those killed in violence related to the Amini protests and in distinct unrest in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Based on the announced charges, such as ‘waging war’ and ‘corruption of earth,’ some of the accused could be sentenced to death. The detainees are being held without having been officially charged or being able to meet with a lawyer, or contact family.
In reality, this is a security process, not a judicial one. The security establishment wants to quickly issue sentences and doesn’t care about legal procedure. The courts are just acting as rubber stamps.
Social media protest
Authorities are heavily policing protests on the streets, as well as those on social media. As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, Iranian authorities have arrested the two actors behind a viral video where a group of film and theatre figures stood silently without headscarves in solidarity with the protest movement. Authorities have arrested the actor and director Soheila Golestani, who appeared without her headscarf in the video, and the male director Hamid Pourazari, who also appeared prominently, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The director of DAWN, which was founded by Jamal Khashoggi, shared the video on Twitter:
Incredible! Soheila Golestani (actress) published this video (without a headscarf) on her Instagram, & Hamid Pourazaei (director) & a group of Iranian actors/actresses & theatre/movie professionals joined them. Courage & resilience! #MahsaAmini#مهسا_امینی#IranRevoIution#Iranpic.twitter.com/FpbpsOJVTR
In the clip, Golestani, wearing black, walks into the shot without a hijab and turns around to reveal her face, looking directly into the camera. Nine other women then join Golestani with the same gesture, as do five men. The Iran Wire website said all those in the video were Iranian actors. It was not clear if they too risk arrest.
Further arrests
Several Iranian actors have made taboo-breaking gestures of removing their headscarves, with are mandatory for women in the Islamic republic. Earlier this month Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s best-known actors remaining in the country, posted an image of herself on social media without a headscarf:
Iran also arrested two prominent actors, Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, who expressed solidarity with the protest movement and removed their headscarves in public in an apparent act of defiance. Authorities have now released both on bail, reports said.
Iranian cinema figures were under pressure even before the start of the protest movement sparked by Amini’s death. Prize-winning directors Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi remain in detention after their arrests earlier this year. Rasoulof was arrested for objecting to the violent response to protestors from the government on social media. Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison for criticising the Iranian government.
The world must speak out—heads of governments around the world, U.N. officials and experts, and international professional associations of lawyers, journalists, doctors, teachers, athletes, cultural figures and others—should publicly condemn the violent and lawless behavior of the Iranian authorities, and communicate clearly to Islamic Republic officials that meaningful costs will intensify with their continuation.
Iranian security forces have killed at least 448 people since mid-September. The killings, over half of which were in ethnic minority regions, came amid the state’s crackdown on protests. The news about the number of killings comes on the same day Iran’s football team faces the USA in the World Cup.
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. Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted that the Iranian state could sentence 21 people to death over the protests.
Now, AFP reports that the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group has given an update on the number of people security forces have killed. IHR said that authorities have killed 448 people. Of these, 60 were children aged under 18, including 9 girls and 29 women. IHR said security forces killed 16 people in the past week alone. They slew 12 in Kurdish-populated areas, where protests have been particularly intense. The toll also rose after the deaths of people killed in previous weeks were verified and included, it added. The toll only includes citizens killed in the crackdown and not members of the security forces.
The UN Rights Council recently voted to establish a high-level fact-finding mission to probe the state’s crackdown. Iran’s authorities angrily rejected the UN probe – despite admitting to many of the killings. Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Tuesday 29 November that his forces had killed more than 300 people. This was the first time the authorities have acknowledged such a figure.
Predictable non-cooperation
IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said:
Islamic republic authorities know full well that if they cooperate with the UN fact-finding mission, an even wider scale of their crimes will be revealed. That’s why their non-cooperation is predictable.
Security forces also killed large numbers of people in the western Kurdish-populated Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan provinces. There, authorities killed 53 and 51 people respectively. However, IHR said that more than half the deaths were recorded in regions populated by the Sunni Baluch or Kurdish ethnic minorities.
The greatest number of deaths were in the southeastern region, Sistan-Baluchistan. Authorities killed 128 people there after protests erupted following the death of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini. Tehran’s morality police had arrested her, and the ensuing protests then fed into the nation-wide anger.
Since Saturday 19 November, Turkey has been bombing Northeast Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. At least 64 people have already been killed, but this may only be the beginning. The Turkish state is threatening a ground invasion of Rojava.
The attack has systematically targeted vital infrastructure needed by the civilian population. Rojava Information Center tweeted:
During its recent attacks across NES, Turkey targeted essential civilian infrastructure extensively and systematically. Turkey hit power stations, medical buildings, grain silos, roads, oil and gas facilities, and schools. pic.twitter.com/E0GOskMXE8
While international coalition Rise Up 4 Rojava warned yesterday of preparations for a ground invasion:
Tukrish military are mobilizing to the border regions and occupied territories of #Rojava. There has been repeated warning by @SDF_Syria officials about the preparation of ground invasion. Here footage of a military convoy in the Kilis. #RojavaIsUnderAttackpic.twitter.com/3VeJZ5r7pO
In 2012, a revolution began in the majority-Kurdish region of Rojava in northern Syria. People organised themselves into communes, declared autonomy, and began practicing stateless direct democracy. The revolution, however, was under threat from the very beginning and has faced invasion by Daesh (Isis/Isil) and Turkey. People from all over the world have travelled to Rojava to join the revolution as internationalists
Turkey has already launched two major invasions, in 2018 and 2019, and is occupying parts of Northeast Syria.
The Turkish state is saying that its current attacks are in retaliation for a bombing in Istanbul on 13 November. It blames the bombing on groups associated with the revolution in Rojava. However, the Kurdistan Freedom Movement has denied any involvement in the bombing.
Campaigners are calling for international action against the new threat to the revolution. Rise Up 4 Rojava has released a video calling for protests against Turkish Airlines:
NO WAR ON NORTHERN SYRIA – Block, Disturb and Occupy Turkish Airlines! #RiseUp4Rojava
— Kurdistan Solidarity Network #YourSilenceKills (@kurdistansolnet) November 24, 2022
Statement from internationalists in Rojava
The Canary has received a statement from a group of women internationalist supporters of the Rojava revolution. They call themselves ‘Antifa Mala Inanna’ (the house of Innana – an ancient Mesopotatamian goddess). They said:
Right now, NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] is showing its true murderous colours. The fascist Turkish state along with its allied Nations are committing a massacre against one of the largest stateless populations in the world. Attacking civillians, journalists, hospitals; targeting directly their guns into peoples homes in small villages across North Syria and Iraq (Kurdistan).
The internationalists called for increased resistance across international borders:
Nation States want us to be silent, complicit and oppressed. In the west state violence is normalised or completely unreported. It is time to stop wondering whether we can make a difference or not, we can; the Kurdish Freedom Movement showed us the way with self determination and now women in Iran and Rojhelat [the part of Kurdistan within the borders of Iran] strengthen their resistance along side us too.
We are all fighting the same enemies, the same Patriarchal, Imperialist, Dominant systems. In Europe we must stand against our countries crimes against humanity, self organise, and get creative.
Civilians and a hospital targeted
In an open letter seen by the Canary, the internationalists spoke of the destruction that Turkey has caused this week inside Northeast Syria:
In Kobanê, a hospital was destroyed, a journalist from ANHA, and many civilians targeted. These are airstrikes, warplanes of which they must obtain permission for airspace from Russia and US.
The letter critiqued NATO’s silence over the attacks:
The OCHA [the United Nations office for Coordinating Humanitarian Affrairs] made a press release stating since May this year, Turkey‘s president Erdogan has been threatening a miltary incursion into Northern East Syria. NATO remains silent.
The letter’s authors commented that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoĝan is up for re-election, and Turkey is in economic crisis. Erdoĝan has repeatedly used an aggressive foreign policy to bolster support at home.
Kurdish people have experienced colonisation for centuries
The internationalists went on to speak about the oppression of Kurdish people, and particularly the repression of Kurds by the Turkish state:
Kurdish people have… experienced genocide for [centuries] by all powers that seek to colonise the land and build a capitalist nation state system. They are denied a place in this world, they are forbidden to speak their native language, they are forbidden to build co-operative communities and their women and children are raped and murdered. They are not recognised even as a country on any map, with Kurdistan spanning borders of Syria (Rojava), Turkey (Bakûr), Iran (Rojhelat) and Iraq [Başur].
Kurdish people encounter intense repression within Turkey. At least 10,000 people are currently in prison for alleged association with the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Moreover, Kurdish language education is severely repressed. Cooperatives that Kurdish people inside Turkey’s borders created to meet people’s needs have been declared illegal. And there have been multiple cases of Turkish security forces committing rape and murder with impunity.
The open letter went on to speak about the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish state, and the silence of the UK and EU:
Since April 14th 2022, Turkey has been using chemical warfare against Kurdish Freedom Guerillas in the mountains of the fertile crescent. Against these illegal weapons, they have been resisting in the same place for over seven months from the ground.
October 20th this year, videos from an independent news agency were published that showed directly the use of such weapons in Northern Iraq by the Turkish army.
This month the British parliament discussed [MPs’ calls] on EU countries to demand an investigation by the OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons).
The European Union has turned a blind eye to these horrific events, not just currently but for years, for their own profit.
The internationalists spoke about how people have been working at a grassroots level to expose these crimes:
Internationally, young people are taking to the streets to speak out about their countries’ involvement with the slogan, [#YourSilenceKills] and [#ẀeSeeYourCrimes]. Protests in front of the European Parliament denounce the [West’s] silence.
The Rojava revolution challenges the state system
The open letter’s authors explained why the revolution in Rojava is a threat to the Turkish state:
Rojava is internationally recognised as an autonomously organised revolution of democracy (AANES [Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria]). It is an example of collective and co-operative practice. This worldwide recognition of such success is the biggest threat to Turkey and all nation states; if this collective organising is autonomous it does not need the state to survive.
They described the current airstrikes as “anti-democratic”, “not anti-terrorist”. And they said that the Rojava revolution is in “defence of true democracy”.
The letter concluded with a call to “speak out together and stop this massacre” and called on the media worldwide to publish “these stories of crimes against humanity”.
The people resisting Turkey’s attacks in Northeast Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan deserve our solidarity. Follow the Kurdistan Solidarity Network and Rise Up 4 Rojava on Twitter for news of demonstrations and how to get involved.
Featured image via Bristol Kurdistan Solidarity Network (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.
Nilüfer Koç from the Kurdish National Congress spoke at the Ecosocialism 2022 conference about the popular uprising in Iran, war in Ukraine and Rojava Revolution. Alex Bainbridge and Susan Price report.
The Iranian state has sentenced a protester to death for taking part in the nationwide protests against the killing of Jîna Mahsa Amini.
Authorities have not yet named the man. They have accused him of:
setting fire to the government building, disturbing public order, conspiracy to commit crimes against national security, enmity with God and causing corruption on earth.
A United Nations official has said that authorities have arrested 14,000 people since the protests began, and are charging at least 1,000 of them in the Tehran province alone. A similar number are also facing charges outside the capital. Iranian security forces have killed hundreds of people since the uprising began in September, including at least 43 children.
We are witnessing a strange encouraging and hopeful phenomenon among the people. And that is the power of unity and hope, the force that has caused people not to stop fighting for even one day
She explained the central place of women in the uprising:
Women have the main and key role in this uprising, from the very beginning when they killed Jîna Mahsa Amini because of not having proper clothing in their opinion. Until now, women have not vacated the battlefield.
“We will build a free life through the women’s revolution”
We are living in the time of Freedom in Rojhilat [the name for the area of Kurdistan within Iran’s borders] Kurdistan, led by women. In the 21st century, we will build a free life through the women’s revolution. Here, Rojhilat and all Iranian women are now imposing a democratic Iran. This time, it should be us women and the peoples, not the hegemonic powers, that will determine how the new life will be.
KRAR celebrated the fact that ‘Jin Jiyan, Azadi!’ (Women, Life, Freedom!), a slogan that has its origins in the Kurdish womens’ movement, is now known throughout the world:
As we prepare to welcome another 25 November, we greet the day of combating violence against women with the universalizing of the JIN-JIYAN-AZADI philosophy. All women of the world come together around this slogan and get closer to each other. This is very exciting and hopeful. It is the password of resistance, the talisman of life and the identity of freedom, especially for women and peoples in Rojhilat Kurdistan and Iran.
Building and developing democratic self-government is the guarantee of social revolution. On this basis, as KJAR, we present our project in 10 points to women, youth and the whole society in order to self-manage and protect the women’s revolution. We consider ourselves responsible for the practical application of these dimensions.
1 – Political women prisoners and all political prisoners, starting with Zeynep Celaliyan, should be freed immediately.
2- All nations and peoples should form committees under the leadership of women against a murderous system that develops enmity between peoples. They should develop democratic relations and alliances and establish a democratic administration.
3- With the awareness that self-defense is a fundamental right, women, our people and young people can only make the stance of serhildan [uprising] permanent by organizing themselves with the awareness of self-defense.
Self-defense is an indispensable right of society and women, because of special war policies developed against women and society. No neighbourhood should be without committees or units. Our people should be able to give the necessary punishment to the murderers, agents, rapists, torturers and officials in Iran and Rojhilat Kurdistan.
4- Under the name of a judiciary committee, leaders of religion and belief, lawyers, who give confidence in society with the active participation of women, should develop their own judicial system and reject the judicial system of the Iranian regime. A democratic judicial system in accordance with social morals and values should be developed.
5- All artists, athletes, teachers, workers, doctors and environmental activists who have been fighting for democracy and freedom for years should form their own committees in this revolutionary process. In particular, women who lead in these fields should form their own committees in parallel, as they take part in the general committees for the protection of revolution, freedom and democracy.
6- The demands of universities, which lead the rise of freedom every day and everywhere, are democratic questions. Teachers, students, intellectuals and academics should form education committees for the development of a free and democratic education. An alternative education system should be developed. It is necessary to organize all houses, streets and neighbourhoods in the form of an academy.
7- All Rojhilat and Iranian women will be able to establish their communes, units, and shura [council] units everywhere and organize their own future and ensure their freedom.
8- The family plays a leading role in protecting and developing the revolution. In this process, each family has an important role in strengthening the committees. In order to develop a free and new human being, it is necessary to strengthen the struggle with the democratic family principle.
9- The state uses religion, belief and culture as a tool to divide peoples. The Iranian people should form religious, belief and culture committees against this and should respect each other’s sensitivities.
10- Revolutionary community support committee. Due to the invading dominant system, and also due to the uprising and protest process in the squares, many revolutionaries, many families and societies are experiencing great economic difficulties. Organizing ourselves is crucial to providing vital needs with the help of original economic institutions and companies, led by all those who encourage the revolution, women and youth.
As the uprising in Iran develops, people are likely to experience more and more brutal repression from the embattled Iranian state. We need to listen to the voices of those who are risking their lives for freedom, and be ready to support them.
The Boycott Turkey Campaign made the following statement, calling for a boycott of the Scotland vs Turkey game, and of tourism in Turkey more generally:
Scotland v Turkey should be condemned for what it is: an extension of the [Turkish] state’s assimilation policies and an attempt to bury the struggle for freedom.
The so-called UK government encourages domestic defence industries to partner with Turkish militarism. Their geopolitical partnerships will never pave the way to freedom, in Europe or the Middle East.
Boycott the game and Turkish tourism.
In solidarity with the imprisoned.
“Generations of genocide”
The campaigners continued, explaining why there is a need for a boycott:
In Turkey, the Kurdish people are the country’s biggest ethnic minority at around 20% of the population. They have faced generations of genocide, and every part of Kurdish identity, culture and language is attacked. Today, there are around 10,000 Kurdish political prisoners in Turkish prisons.
[T]he Turkish state is attacking all left wing social movements in Turkey as well as the Kurdish people as a whole. The state is also drone-striking, bombing and gassing the guerrilla in the mountains and assassinating civilians and defense forces of the revolutionary autonomous area of Rojava / North-East Syria, which is putting the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s anti-imperialist, revolutionary socialist principles into practice.
Local football fans arrested for waving the Kurdish Flag
The Boycott Turkey campaign’s statement said that Amedspor, one of the local football teams in Diyarbakır, was fined in 2014 for using Amed, the Kurdish name for the city, as part of the team’s name.
Amedspor members and fans are not only targeted at home, but also by assassination attempts and attacks from far-right fans across the country. The team’s treatment by the state and the nationalist right-wing reflects the attitude towards Kurdish people and liberatory politics as a whole.
One local player has received a lifetime ban from competing for expressing his political beliefs. While the Turkish military’s brutal repression against cities in Bakur was still ongoing in 2016, former Amedspor midfielder Deniz Naki received a 12-match ban for dedicating the team’s win against Bursaspor to the people who had been killed by Turkish state forces. He also had to pay a fine, and received a suspended prison sentence. He later received a lifetime ban for views he expressed on social media.
This kind of ban is only enacted when the political beliefs expressed are critical of the state. For example, in 2019, the Turkish national team repeatedly performed salutes before matches, in support of the Turkish state’s invasion of Northeast Syria. The players persisted with these salutes, even after complaints from UEFA.
Support the boycott, and stand with the struggle for freedom
“Boycotting Turkey is not merely an attempt to economically disrupt a billion-dollar business empire that profits from massacre, authoritarianism and intimidation. It is also an ethical stance against the exploitation, terrorization and annihilation of the Kurdish people and other communities, targeted by the nationalist state mentality of Turkey. Boycotting Turkey means saying NO to the normalization and white-washing of dictatorship and genocidal politics.”
It’s important that we oppose the match tomorrow. Radicals in the UK have long supported a boycott of Israeli apartheid in support of the Palestinian struggle – now we need to also extend that solidarity to our Kurdish comrades.
A young woman called Ala has sent a message to the world, from the heart of Iran’s people’s uprising.
Ala spoke to the Çay at the Women’s Front podcast about the ongoing uprising in Iran, which erupted following the murder of Jîna Mahsa Amini on 16 September by the Iranian police. Jîna had been arrested for supposedly not wearing a proper hijab.
If anyone in Iran hears my voice, I tell them to close their wounds and continue until they reach freedom.
And if someone outside of Iran hears my voice, I request you to be the voice of the Iranian people, because the Islamic Republic of Iran is trying to silence the voice of the Iranian people.
Ala is a Kurdish woman from the city of Kirmaşan (or ‘Kermanshah’ in Persian). Kirmaşan is part of Rojhelat, the part of Kurdistan which lies within Iran’s borders.
The Çay at the Women’s Front podcast is broadcast from Rojava Northeast Syria, and asks questions like “What problems do we face on the journey for a free life?” and “What do we learn from the young women and mothers who weave the change of society with their hands?”
It published a twenty-minute message from Ala. You can hear the whole recording here.
Oppression and injustice
Ala explained the significance of the protests:
During the years of my life in Iran I have always witnessed oppression and injustice to people, especially women. I have witnessed many protests, but the protests..of the last month are the longest protests that have taken place in the last 43 years.
She continued, explaining the heavy repression of the movement:
In the past month we have witnessed the killing of many people, including the old and the young – children, men and women. The phenomenon that we are facing is one of the most cruel confrontations, because it is clearly a violation of human rights. And they are trying to force any protesting person to remain silent, be it a child, be it a woman or a man.
It can be forcing them to remain silent by arresting them or by killing them. They are cutting off the internet and other communications… And are trying to silence the voice of Iran’s struggles.
We are witnessing a strange encouraging and hopeful phenomenon among the people. And that is the power of unity and hope, the force that has caused people not to stop fighting for even one day in the past month.
Ala explained the many ways in which people are joining the struggle:
Today all freedom loving people are political fighters, everyone in the way they can. One [way] is through face-to -face protest and participation in street protest, the other is through strikes and not going to work, the university student by not participating in classes, the school students by defying the singing of the national anthem.
All people are on the battlefield with empty hands, but hearts full of hopes and empathy.
Women are the vanguard of the protests
Ala talked about the importance of women in Iran’s uprising:
The point that distinguishes these protests from other protests is the presence and strong role of women in it, women who have broken the silence for many years and are in the field as the… vanguard and flag bearer of these struggles.
For many years – as a Kurdish woman – I have witnessed the oppression that has been committed against the Kurds, and on the other hand I have witnessed the good thinking behind the Kurdish struggles. Jin, Jiyan Azadi! [Women, Life Freedom!] It is not just a slogan but a thought, a thought that took route in Bakur, Kurdistan [the part of Kurdistan that lies within the borders of Turkey] and now it has spread its roots… and all borders and all the people of the world have heard the words of Kurds and Kurdish women’s struggles.
Jin Jiyan, Azadi!
Ala explained that “Jin Jiyan, Azadi” has “encouraged women of all colours and languages to fight for their rights”. According to Ala:
Women have the main and key role in this uprising, from the very beginning when they killed Jîna Mahsa Amini because of not having proper clothing in their opinion. Until now, women have not vacated the battlefield.
During this time I have witnessed the death of many people, I have shed tears in my heart for each of them. I am saddened by the news of people being arrested, but I will not forget what they had come to the field for, and what they lost their lives for. They died for freedom, to get their rights and others’ rights. And this conveys to me the message that now is the time to stand and fight, not the time to do nothing and cry.
Boycott this dictatorial system
Ala concluded her message by explaining what the people rising up in Iran need from people outside:
The expectation that Iranian people have from people outside of Iran is to be their voice, and to use all their power to boycott this dictatorial system. And they should see these killings, and these child killings and show a serious and effective reaction. Other governments should stop their overt and covert support for the Islamic Republic, and boycott them.
This is a revolution for all the women of the world
Ala encouraged comrades around the world to share the news about the uprising, and to take inspiration from it. She called on us to:
Let other people know about our struggle and inform them about what is happening in Iran, and know that this is a revolution against oppression and for all the women of the world.
Shocking video footage was released on October 18, showing the painful death of two young Kurdish freedom fighters, who were among 17 people recently killed in a chemical weapons attack by Turkey, reports Peter Boyle.
Content Warning: graphic descriptions of state violence and disrespect for the dead
In 2021 and 2022, I was part of two delegations to Bakur, the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders. The delegations were comprised of people from different groups and organisations in the UK, including the Canary, the Industrial Workers of the World union, anti-repression groups, and the Kurdistan Solidarity Network. We conducted interviews with people from different organisations in the region.
One of these organisations was the Amed (Diyarbakır) branch of MEBYA-DER, whose full name is ‘Aid and Solidarity Association for People Who Lost Their Relatives in the Cradle of Civilizations’.
MEBYA-DER is comprised of Kurdish families who are collectively demanding justice while fighting against the Turkish state’s assimilationist policies, which seek to destroy their identity and struggle both in life and death. Its main aims are to ensure the return of their relatives’ bodies and proper research into the cause of their death, and to campaign for justice against the state’s inhumane attacks on the dead.
A member told us:
The state pursues psychological war, especially against the families of martyrs.
Remembering the fallen
Defending the memory of the fallen and carrying on the struggle that they gave their lives for is a practice that exists across the world. In Kurdistan, nearly every family close to the Kurdish Freedom Movement has lost at least one person. The martyrs and their sacrifices are central to the political, social, and spiritual history that is written and lived by millions of people in the movement.
The importance of the martyrs is also recognised by the Turkish state, which identifies them – and the traditions surrounding them – as a threat. The state frequently desecrates individual bodies, often in highly violent and misogynistic ways, and damages or destroys entire graveyards beyond its national borders.
One member of the association told us:
I am a mother of three martyrs. I was charged [and threatened] with three years of prison, but not sentenced. The only thing that happened in my life is that I had three children who were killed. They indirectly and, actually, directly tell us: you either die or are imprisoned if you don’t obey. We cannot talk about human rights, democracy, or justice [of the state] – only violence and repression. Of course we fight back.
Recovering bodies from the hands of the state
Another member of MEBYA-DER told us:
Our main aim is to reach martyrs’ bodies, because the state creates a lot of problems to reach them.
The bodies of those killed in the conflict are often “returned in pieces”, or are never returned to their families at all. There are massive delays before the bodies are returned, and before the necessary DNA testing can be carried out in order for relatives to identify their loved ones. One of the mothers told us:
264 cemeteries were excavated to allegedly test DNA from the bones, but later on they found that the bones taken from the graves were actually used in the roads as a material.
In other instances, the military or state would publicly present parts of the bodies to intimidate people and to create provocation.
Last month, one father picked up the remains of his son – a civilian killed by the state during the 2015 siege of Sur in Amed. The bones of Hakan Arslan were handed over in a white bag to his father, mimicking the degrading treatment of the remains of Agit İpek, Mahsum Arslan, and other guerillas who were sent via the post in storage boxes and white bags to their families.
Children’s bodies decapitated
One of the mothers in MEBYA-DER said:
Some friends here have family members who were martyred and at the same time they have someone in prison. They witnessed many brutal cases of state violence against the dead bodies and the prisoners. I have seen that some of our children were decapitated – this was done after they were killed.
All of these actions of the state are extensions of colonial violence into the grieving process. Even ceremonies are weaponised, with severe limitations on attendance and armed entourages of the military and police.
The mother continued:
Only three family members can attend the ceremony. The police escort you to the cemetery and you are not allowed to wash the bodies, which is important in Islam.
Investigating the causes of death
One of the biggest struggles is determining the causes of death, with limited access to specialist equipment and no institutional recourse to carry out tests. According to one parent:
When I talk about my son who was martyred, he died with 16 others in Dersim. When we found them, there were no wounds. We were able to get only 3 bodies out of the 16 martyrs. They were killed by chemical weapons. When their bodies were found, their eyes were completely filled with blood.
Since the state knows that these chemicals can only be analysed up to a certain point after death, they refuse to give up the bodies. It has been 4 years. There were many attempts within those 4 years, with no response.”
In 2019, a photo of 13-year-old Mohammed Hamid Mohammed covered in horrific burns went viral. The attack happened in northeast Syria during the military offensive named ‘Operation Peace Spring’ that Turkey launched against the region. His burns are widely considered to be from white phosphorous. However, nothing has happened since then to hold the Turkish state to account.
Steve Sweeney, an English journalist, travelled throughout South Kurdistan in Iraq during 2020 and 2021 to investigate reports of chemical weapons being deployed by the Turkish state. In interviews he conducted with local shepherds, civilian families, and military personnel, Sweeney recorded various accounts of acute pathology symptoms consistent with chemical weapon attacks, and the deaths of people and livestock. The Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has declined to investigate.
“even the dead are attacked.”
Cemeteries are often attacked by the state and vandalised, especially if they contain the graves of Kurdish guerillas. Members of MEBYA-DER showed us the photographs, below, from a cemetery in Lice, Amed province, taken in 2021. The cemetery is known to contain the remains of many people who died in the liberation movement.
A Kurdish cemetery with desecrated gravestones
Repression
According to one member of MEBYA-DER:
The Turkish state has announced all Kurdish struggle, and indirectly the Kurdish people, as terrorists.
We are doing demonstrations and gatherings to raise awareness. Before, we used to protest in [offices of] the Bar Association, now we protest outside the courthouses and prisons and do press conferences. We do everything we can through social media as well. Even though I haven’t done anything, the state comes twice a month to raid my house because of my family [who are martyrs].
These actions are also taken by organised mothers in Istanbul, Van and Batman. Known collectively as the Saturday Mothers, they undertake public sit-in protests and vigils, often for hundreds of weeks at a time, against the enforced disappearances of their relatives and other grave injustices.
Imprisoned for involvement in legal organisations
In November 2021, co-chair of MEBYA-DER Şeyhmus Karadağ (below, right) was sentenced to 6 years and 3 months in prison. One month later, co-chair Yüksel Almas (below, left) was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Yüksel Almas (left) and Şeyhmus Karadağ (right) – Picture via ANF
Yüksel Almas was imprisoned because she attended commemorative events for the martyrs murdered by the state, and for giving interviews and speeches. She spoke publicly about the burning of her native village by the Turkish army in the 1990s, the torture carried out, and the process of fleeing.
She demanded that the perpetrators of extra-judicial executions and forced disappearances are brought to justice, that the state reveal the locations of mass graves, and that they hand over the abducted bodies of those killed in the Kurdish liberation struggle.
This is a state strategy of making legal organisations effectively illegal by bringing baseless terrorism cases against their members person-by-person. Once enough members have been convicted, the state can brand the entire organisation as ‘terrorist’ and outlaw its existence. This attack is not limited to MEBYA-DER. A member of the organisation told us:
“It doesn’t matter which organisation it is – all face this.
Prison as warfare; isolation as a weapon
The prisoner solidarity organisation TUHAD-FED (Legal and Solidarity Associations Federation of Prisoners and Convict Families) told us how prisoners were kept without proper nutrition or access to healthcare, and were being tortured. While prisoners are individually repressed by the prison, it is also designed to destroy the ecosystem of the community. This is a microcosm of the state’s enclosure of Kurdish society, with the words “we are living in a prison” being echoed by several people we met during our time in the region.
In a country where it is both illegal to criticise the president and the state – something as small as a social media post or a flyer for a student march has serious consequences. Many people we met had cases due to these types of actions.
TUHAD-FED told us that Turkey is testing a new ‘S-type’ prison system that relies on isolation as the main method of control. It is a secretive programme with little public information. Prisoners are kept alone. This is a development on the F-type prison system introduced in 2000, in which two prisoners are kept together per room and communal time is severely restricted.
This contrasts with the ward-style prison system which comprises the majority of the prisons in Turkey – people spend time together as a group, and may have the ability to interact with between six and 20-or-more people at a time throughout the day, depending on the prison type.
In 2000, there was massive resistance within Turkish prisons against the introduction of the F-type system. It was recognised as a method of psychological warfare imported from advanced capitalist states like the US and UK as a direct method to break the organisation of prisoners.
At least 816 prisoners carried out death fasts. 122 people were martyred during the fasts, and others died in military occupations of the prisons when the state tried to crush the resistance. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) publicly approved of the F-type’s introduction.
The founder of the Kurdish movement, Abdullah Öcalan, has been incarcerated on the prison island of İmralı since 1999. For most of those 23 years, he has been kept in solitary confinement, a procedure that is internationally considered to be torture.
One MEBYA-DER member reflected on how Öcalan’s treatment is a mirror for the treatment of Kurdish people:
Isolation of our leader is complemented by isolation of our culture, language, our legal activities, and the state creating obstacles for our work.
As elections loom, tension increases economic crisis
With elections planned for June 2023, Erdoğan’s attempts to maintain his 20-year regime are relying increasingly on nationalist and colonial policies of “eradicating the terrorist threat” through desperate attempts to crush the democratic structures of the Kurdish movement, and all of the left. Meanwhile, Erdoğan is positioning himself as a necessary geopolitical actor and a peace-maker between Russia and Ukraine.
As these crises of the state unfold, organisation across Kurdish society continues. As one member of MEBYA-DER told us:
We will fight until we get our freedom in every sense. Until our leader is released. Until we get the freedom of language and culture. Let our voices be heard wherever you are!
The Rojava revolution, which broke out with the onset of the Syrian Civil War brought freedom to millions of local Kurds, Arabs, and minorities, and hope to many more people across the globe. But it also showed that the Western left could not be trusted. In the UK and elsewhere, many comrades failed to stand in solidarity with the revolutionary element in that terrible conflict.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on, the same sections of the left are repeating the same cruel, cynical slogans. As in Syria, we must listen to local leftists who are taking a principled, democratic stand in the face of the onslaught of imperialist violence by Putin’s Russia.
A failure of solidarity with Rojava
In the course of the Syrian conflict, we learned the hard way that the British left can struggle to take a stance on issues which should be trivially obvious. Some elements of the left struggled to condemn ISIS, framing their rise as the sole result of Western intervention in the region. The authoritarian left struggled to condemn the Assad regime, responsible for mass butchery and the bulk of war crimes committed in the country.
On the other hand, leftists of all stripes found reasons to condemn the Kurdish-led Rojava revolution. Some attacked the direct-democratic political project in North and East Syria (NES) for working alongside US airstrikes to defeat ISIS. Some attacked it for coordinating with the Assad regime to ensure continued supply of basic essentials to civilians in the region under its control.
Neither side stopped to look at the other and realise that the situation in NES was far too complicated to fit their black-and-white narratives. Meanwhile, comrades on the ground were sacrificing their lives, and making whatever tough compromises were necessary, to keep their people alive.
I once heard the region’s top political figure Ilham Ahmed tell a roomful of conservative sheikhs who had happily worked with ISIS but were now complaining about Rojava coordinating with the Syrian government in Damascus:
I know how brutal the regime is. They have tortured and killed my friends. But I will sit down and negotiate with anyone who isn’t actually trying to cut my head off.
No one can claim this is not a courageous or principled position. It is easy for Western leftists to sneer at comrades overseas, to wallow in purity politics which get them off the hook from actually doing anything. It’s difficult to do what Ilham and her comrades are doing. Our job is to stand alongside them and support them.
Standing with comrades on the ground
The conflicts in Syria and Ukraine are linked. Each forms a part of the ongoing contest between hard Russian imperialism and the USA’s subtler attempts to remain the dominant force on the global stage. The USA keeps troops in Syria not only because of the region’s paltry oilfields but in order to maintain a beachhead disrupting the Russian-Iranian axis of influence in the Middle East, while the Ukraine war has drawn previously recalcitrant European powers closer to a US-defined regional policy. Meanwhile, Russia’s naked aggression has darkened the skies in both Ukraine and Syria.
There is not an obvious revolutionary third line in Ukraine, as there is in NES. Nonetheless, we must recognise Russia’s invasion for what it is – the bloody and destructive expansion of a capitalist regime. We do not need to think NATO or the Ukrainian government are worthy of support in and of themselves to recognise the need to stand with Ukrainian people.
As such, we must support comrades working to stop or mitigate the brutal invasion – on both sides of the frontline. Like our comrades in the Rojava revolution, Ukrainian socialists and anarchists are not only risking their lives, but setting aside their own ideological disagreements with the Ukrainian state to fight for what is self-evidently right.
Even if they are not willing to listen to comrades from the region when they call on the Western left to avoid “leftist Westsplaining” and ‘moral relativizing’, anyone who sits in their bedroom in the UK and praises Assad or Putin in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ need only count the bodies.
Resist Russia in Ukraine and the West at home
We live in a world of uneven but multiple imperial capitalist poles, of which the USA is the richest, most powerful, and all-pervasive, and Russia the most brutal on the battlefield. In the Syrian conflict, Russia and its allies have been by far the most brutal on the battlefield, bearing responsibility for the majority of civilian deaths outside of the Syrian regime itself. Meanwhile post-Iraq the USA has adopted a subtler military doctrine of proxy warfare and power projection. Each must be resisted in their own way. Supporting the resistance against Russia does not diminish our efforts to challenge Western capitalist hegemony at home.
In different ways, both the Ukranians and the Kurds have felt the sting of Western indifference, exceptionalism, and – in the Kurds’ case – orientalism. At the same time, the Rojava revolution reawakened a spirit of socialist internationalism in this country and elsewhere. In this spirit, we must stand alongside our comrades making tough choices in Syria, Ukraine, and across the globe.
Featured image via the author, courtesy of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava
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.
David Shoebridge, the Greens lead Senate NSW candidate, joined other speakers in calling for the Australian government to condemn the Turkish invasion of South Kurdistan (northern Iraq) just as it has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Other speakers at the rally on April 30 at Sydney Town Hall were: Gule Rose, from the Democratic Kurdish Community Centre (NSW); Peter Boyle, Rojava Solidarity Sydney; former Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon; and Jim McIlroy, Socialist Alliance.
Two foreign journalists arrested by the Iraqi Army are now in police custody in Baghdad, according to reports. Named as Marlene F. and Matej K., the pair were detained by the army on Wednesday 20 April. The arrests took place near the Yazidi settlement of Şengal in northern Iraq.
But Kurdish news website ANF claims no reasons had been given for the arrests.
Threatened
Marlene F. and Matej K. had been researching the Yazidi community. ANF reported Kurdish sources which said the arrests had taken place despite the pair declaring themselves as journalists:
By their own account, Marlene F. And Matej K. have been in Şengal for a few months for research into social settings in the Yazidi community in Şengal. According to Civaka Azad, they were conducting conversations with representatives of different civil organizations and regional institutions.
Reports say they were searched and threatened, and their phones and bags were seized. The arrests came during tensions between the Iraqi military and militia units, according to ANF:
At the beginning of the week, tensions between Yazidi defense forces and Iraqi troops had escalated. There were combats as a result of attacks on the positions of the YBŞ, the Yazidi women units YJŞ and Asayîşa Êzîdxanê.
Open letter
Marlene F.’s parents signed an open letter to German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock calling for the reporters to be released. The letter said that freedom of the press was “not a luxury”.
Additionally, they said the journalists were interested in the the Yazidi people and want to:
contribute to the demand and the right of the Yazidi population to self-determination being heard worldwide.
Reporters Without Borders puts Iraq at 163rd place on their press freedom index. Kurdish journalists have warned about an assault on press freedom. Reporter Omed Baroshsky was released from jail in February. Imprisoned in 2020 over social media posts critical of the authorities, Baroshky served 18 months in prison. Press freedom in the region, he told the Committee to Protect Journalists, was an “illusion”.
As The Canary has reported, Yazidis suffered genocidal brutality under ISIS rule and now face repression from nearby Turkey.
International Women’s Day is one of the focal points of the struggle for the Kurdistan Freedom Movement. Today supporters of the movement will be out on the streets across Kurdistan.
Women took to the streets in Bakur – the part of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey – despite massive state repression. Kurdish woman Cahîda Dêrsim tweeted:
Across the border in Northeast Syria, women fighters also commemorated 8 March:
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day the #Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (#YPJ) published a footage with messages of their fighters on the 8th March. The Kurdish freedom movement draws its strength, motivation & will from the reality of the free woman #IWD2022pic.twitter.com/VEKTjPfD0j
The left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP) is the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. The party practices the co-chair system, meaning that positions within the party and the movement are filled by two people, who must not be two men. The HDP has spearheaded the introduction of co-mayors in municipalities where the party has stood candidates in local elections (although in most cases HDP mayors have been replaced by state appointees loyal to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan).
The arrests of Semra Güzel and Halide Türkoğlu are part of the ongoing repression of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) by the Turkish state. They follow moves by the state to strip Güzel – together with many of her fellow HDP MPs – of their parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Bodette tweeted about the events that led up to Güzel‘s arrest:
March 2: Investigations against 9 democratically elected HDP MPs—Berdan Öztürk, Meral Danış Beştaş, Ayşe Acar Başaran, Ömer Öcalan, Feleknas Uca, Murat Sarısaç, Dersim Dağ, Sait Dede, and Pero Dundar—were sent to the Parliament, with the request that their immunities be removed. pic.twitter.com/ihap01eqD3
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 three key concepts of the movement are women’s freedom, radical democracy and ecology.
The women of the HDP have already paid a heavy price for their commitment to radical politics. Leyla Güven – an ex-HDP MP and co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) – was imprisoned for 22 years in 2020. The DTK is the umbrella body trying to bring about democratic confederalism in Bakur. The DTK itself has been criminalised by the Turkish state. HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag – who is one of the defendants currently on trial in Ankara – was originally arrested in 2016 and has been in prison ever since.
The TJA (Free Women’s Movement) – whose spokesperson Ayşe Gökkan was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment last year – highlighted the situation for women in Bakur:
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 both being women and Kurdish while they are just accused of being Kurdish. That’s why it’s more difficult for women. The women’s punishment is always more than the men. The decisions are not equal with the law. They give [judgements] depending on the political situation. women are faced with lots of abuse, some faced with sexual abuse, torture, some other political intimidation. We have a friend who has been sentenced and faced with sexual abuse in prison.
The crackdowns continue
The Union of Women’s Communards/Women’s Freedom Force released a statement to mark International Women’s Day. It seems fitting to end with their words:
Women, whose labour and bodies are exploited by men in homes, factories and schools, continue to stoke up the purple fire they have lit against male-state violence. In the meantime, the severe political-economic crisis of AKP-MHP [the ruling coalition in Turkey] fascism is continuing with various crackdowns against women. They pay the heaviest price of impoverishment as a result of the economic crisis
The statement concludes:
We have declared a war on patriarchal capitalism on all fronts! We have removed all the borders. We will continue the socialist feminist struggle with every method and tool in every field until we destroy the male-dominated world!
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
Steve Sweeney writes that Kurdish officials have accused Western powers of complicity in Turkish airstrikes that killed two people and injured many more at the United Nations-administered Makhmour Refugee Camp in northern Iraq.
Abdullah Ocalan’s jailers hoped that by slamming shut the prison doors, the world would forget about him. But, as John Tully writes, for millions of Kurds and their supporters around the world, Ocalan remains a living symbol of resistance to a century of oppression by the Turkish state.
This is Matt Broomfield. He’s a professional journalist from the UK, banned from 26 European countries, just for doing his job.
Earlier in 2021, Broomfield was detained at the Italian border while on holiday in Greece, thrown into a Greek detention centre, and imprisoned for two months. He was subsequently banned from the 26 countries that make up the Schengen Area for ten years.
While imprisoned, he had a taster of what life is like for refugees trapped in European detention centres. Broomfield said:
My two months in detention were just a brief taste of what many refugees, political activists and journalists from the Middle East and beyond must spend a lifetime enduring. My case provided a window into the violence, squalor and farce of day-to-day life in the EU’s detention-deportation machine.
The blue area marks the Schengen countries that Broomfield is banned from. The amber countries are due to join Schengen. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Broomfield hasn’t been given any reason as to why he has been banned from most of Europe, but it is almost certainly because he volunteered as a journalist in North and East Syria (NES), more commonly known by its Kurdish name of Rojava. A region of around 3 million people, the people of NES organise 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.
European countries see democracy, in the true sense of the word, as a threat, because they rely on their populations believing in a façade that is labelled as such. NES’s model of grassroots organising has inspired a whole generation of Leftists around the world, so even though the region has been a key ally with the US in fighting Daesh (ISIS/Isil), it is still seen as a grave danger to capitalist countries.
Turkey’s influence
Broomfield suspects that Turkey has been instrumental in him being banned from the majority of Europe. He says:
Since I have never had anything to do with the German authorities, and given Germany’s strong trade ties and strategic relationship with Turkey, it appears likely Turkey asked Germany to issue the ban.
Turkey has massive sway over the Schengen countries. Turkey is the largest host of refugees in the world, with some 3.7 million refugees within its borders, trying to find a passage into Europe. Broomfield continues:
[Turkish president] Erdoğan is able to use the millions of Syrians now resident in Turkey to tacitly or openly threaten Europe with another influx of refugees if they do not accede to his demands.
Turkey has done its utmost to destroy the revolution in NES. It has attacked and occupied parts of the region, backing militias to torture and rape residents. It has carried out bombings and drone strikes on inhabitants, and attacked NES’s water supplies. Women are continually murdered by Turkey and affiliated groups. In 2019, Hevrîn Xelef was murdered by a “jihadist gang allied with Turkey”, while in June 2020, Zehra Berkel, Hebûn Mele Xelîl, and Amina Waysî were murdered by a Turkish drone strike in Kobanê. On top of this, Turkey has been accused a number of times of funding and arming Daesh and other extremists in Syria, and yet it still continues to be a key ally of both Germany and the UK.
Alistair Lyon, a solicitor at Birnberg Peirce, spoke to The Canary about Broomfield’s ban. He said:
It is speculation at this stage as to who is involved beyond Germany, but the decision is certainly in accordance with Turkey’s view of the conflict and it is known to lobby extensively within Europe to promote its views.
A decision made in secret
Lyon went on to say:
The particularly concerning feature here is that a highly controversial political decision, dressed up as a decision in relation to national security, has been made, in secret and without notice or possibility of prior challenge. This immediately calls into question its legitimacy.
Broomfield isn’t the only person from the UK who has been banned from the Schengen area because of his stay in NES. Meanwhile, the British state has attempted to prosecute some of those who have fought for the very same forces that defeated Daesh.
Kevin Blowe, coordinator of Network for Police Monitoring, told The Canary that Broomfield’s case:
highlights the concerted efforts by European nations to suppress dissenting voices who support or sympathetically report on the Kurdish struggle in Rojava.
He continued:
The lack of British government assistance for Matt Broomfield sends a message that solidarity with the Kurds, where no laws are broken, is liable to place campaigners outside of basic human rights protections expected by citizens in Britain and in EU states.
It escalates the already disturbing use of terrorism laws to criminalise those who have travelled to resist the Islamic State in any manner in northern Syria, by a British government that has happily sold arms to the Turkish state that killed British citizens like Anna Campbell.
The Canary contacted the Foreign Office for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Featured image of Matt Broomfield in Deir ez Zor, Syria, with permission
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement – together with solidarity groups and human rights organisations – are calling for an end to Turkey’s use chemical weapons.
Turkey – which is denying it has used chemical weapons – has been a signatory to the chemical weapons convention since 1997.
According to the Kurdistan Freedom Movement and its supporters, however, the use of such weapons has increased since Turkey invaded guerrilla held areas in South Kurdistan – the area of Kurdistan that lies within Iraq’s borders (also known as Iraqi Kurdistan).
Since Turkey’s armed forces invaded northern Iraq/South Kurdistan on 23 April 2021 there have been reports that it has been using chemical weapons against Kurdish guerrillas in the regions of Zap, Metina and Avasia.
These areas are held by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and associated guerrilla forces. The PKK is demanding an end to the repression and authoritarianism of the Turkish state, and is part of the movement for a radical democratisation of the region through a bottom up system called democratic confederalism.
The frequency of the use of these weapons and their lethality has increased in the past two months – there are now reports of over 300 separate uses. The evidence of this international crime and the casualties resulting from chemical weapons use are mounting up.
“All living beings and nature are completely destroyed”
The Kurdistan Communities Union – or KCK – described the effects of the use of these weapons:
The chemical weapons used by the Turkish state are lethal weapons that cause suffocation, burns, impairment of the nervous system, and cauterization and destruction of tissue. In the areas where these weapons are used, all living beings and nature are completely destroyed. In addition, the remnants of these weapons settle in soil, water and plants, massively endangering the health and survival of the local population for years to come.
Dr Rûken Samsun, who’s a guerrilla fighting as part of the YJA Star Free Women’s Troops, told reporters from Firat News Agency:
These chemical weapons affect human reflexes and nerves. There are also chemical gases that burn and suffocate the human body. Suffocation occurs when living things are deprived of oxygen. Chemical weapons are banned worldwide. The use of chemical weapons against the guerrillas is immoral.
The interview with Samsun can be viewed here:
Effects are being felt by the civilian population
The 5 November KCK statement highlights that Turkey’s chemical weapon attacks affect Kurdish civilians, as well as the guerrillas:
It is well known that chemical weapons are being used not only against the guerrillas, but also against the local civilian population. As a result of the use of these weapons, the civilian population is already suffering from severe health problems that have now reached extremely worrying levels. Many people in the region have been directly affected by the use of chemical weapons and have therefore tried to visit civilian hospitals in the region. However, they are being prevented from doing so by the KDP [authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan] and the Turkish state and are instead being treated in secretly established military hospitals. Although all these facts are known, the crimes against humanity committed by the Turkish occupation forces through the use of chemical weapons are still not recognized. This denial and the accompanying silence or open support provide legitimacy to these crimes.
Why are you silent?
The KCK concludes its statement with a call on people worldwide to speak out:
As the KCK Health Committee, we are reaching out directly to all institutions, organizations, human rights defenders, and environmental and animal rights activists who are committed to securing the future of humanity: Why are you silent?
It also makes a specific call for several international organisations – the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the United Nations (UN), the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), and Doctors Without Borders – to condemn Turkey’s use of chemical weapons:
We would like to take this opportunity to directly address the OPCW, UN, CPT and especially Doctors Without Borders: Why are you silent regarding the genocidal crimes of the Turkish state in Kurdistan and the Middle East? To remain silent on the use of chemical weapons means to become accomplices and supporters of this crime. In particular, we would like to make the following appeal to the OPCW and Doctors Without Borders: We call on you to live up to your tasks, investigate the use of chemical weapons by the Turkish occupation forces in the guerrilla areas of South Kurdistan as soon as possible and without further passing of valuable time and to thus stop this crime. We would like to emphasize here that we are ready to provide all necessary support and assistance for these efforts.
Calls for an arms embargo and sanctions against Turkey
The Kurdistan National Congress, meanwhile, is calling for support from people worldwide:
[we] call on all international institutions, governments and the international public
……to condemn Turkey for its crimes and use of chemical weapons
….to put Turkish government and state officials on trial for their crimes against humanity and war crimes
….to impose sanctions on Turkey for using chemical weapons
….to impose an arms embargo on Turkey.
We call on the international press to break their silence and start reporting on Turkey’s use of chemical weapons.
We call on the international public and all democratic forces to show solidarity with the Kurdish resistance and support the Kurds’ demand for an immediate stop of Turkey’s attacks and use of chemical weapons.
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)
Protests continue on the streets of Kabul and other cities in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, over hundreds of activist organisations and individuals around the world have pledged support for the Afghan women facing oppression by the Taliban.
Courageous
On 4 September, women protesters attempted to march to the presidential palace in Kabul. But the Taliban attacked them with tear gas:
The women demanded there be no recognition of Taliban government without the full participation of women in politics and without recognition of their right to work. Tear gas was reportedly used to disperse the demonstrators and one woman allegedly beaten. Women also reportedly demonstrated in Herat and other regional cities.
The Taliban fired in the air to disperse these protesters (parts of this footage may be distressing for some readers):
Despite a ban by the Taliban on demonstrations, protests continued in Kabul and other cities such as Takhar, Parwan, Badakshan, and Ghazni.
Solidarity pledges
Meanwhile over 370 activist organisations and hundreds of individuals have pledged to take to the streets on 25 September in support of Afghan women.
Their demands are as follows:
Refuse to recognize a Taliban government, which has no legitimacy beyond the brutal force it commands, and which terrorizes the people of Afghanistan, girls and women in particular.
Stop all forms of support to the Taliban, including funding, providing of arms, and technical know-how.
End imperialism, militarism, fascism and religious fundamentalism. Cut the Pentagon Budget.
Stop and prevent manipulating women’s rights for commercial and other interests.
Support the women’s resistance to the Taliban inside Afghanistan. Respect and support Afghan women and people’s exercise of their democratic and human rights, including their right to self-determination.
Evacuate women and men, human rights defenders, journalists, police officers, public employees, athletes, and LGBTI+ who wish to leave the country and ensure their safe passage.
Create an independent body of observers, made up with a majority of women, who have a track record of promoting women’s human rights to monitor the situation in Afghanistan.
Welcome refugees, with the US and their allies assuming the responsibility of financing the cost of resettling displaced people from Afghanistan.
Immediately open humanitarian corridors to support the people of Afghanistan.
Stop arms trade policies and the military industrial complex, which profits from the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere the world.
Support from Kurdish women
Previously, The Canarypublished messages of defiance by the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA). There were also messages of support from a number of Kurdish women’s organisations, including the armed YPJ (women’s protection units).
Now Kurdish women’s organisation Kongra Star is calling on all governments and the UN to refuse recognition of a Taliban government:
We urgently call upon governments, @UN Security Council & regional entities to:
— Kongra Star Women's Movement Rojava (@starrcongress) September 1, 2021
Turkey assisting ISIS
The Kurds of northern Syria have been at the forefront of the war against Daesh (ISIS). NATO member Turkey is at war with the Kurds and Yazidis – a war which will likely benefitIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K). IS-Khorasan is the organisation that claimed responsibility for the Kabul airport bombing. As one commentator observed:
Thus, the more Ankara erodes the ability of Kurdish and Yazidi militant groups to combat ISIS, the greater the chance Turkish forces could face ISIS-K attacks in Afghanistan, like the one that killed some 180 people at Kabul airport last month.
It now appears that Turkey, led by authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is working up a deal to provide intelligence and military support to the Taliban. Indeed, on 18 August, Erdoğan explained:
The main point is to reach an understanding with the Afghan authorities. For example, we can achieve this with a bilateral agreement like we did in Libya.
And in July, Erdoğan admitted Turkey:
has nothing against the Taliban’s ideology, and since we aren’t in conflict with the Taliban’s beliefs, I believe we can better discuss and agree with them on issues.
we call for the establishment of a democratic front against the Taliban, we call upon all democratic, secular, anti-fundamentalist and anti-occupation forces, all our tormented women, girls and men, to say that nothing will come out of mourning. Let us rise and resist against the Taliban and their partners, in any way and at any level, and give them a taste of defeat and sorrow.
The Afghan people – particularly women and their supporters globally – are now the only true opposition to the fundamentalists.
The UK has pledged to take in 5,000 Afghan refugees in the first year. But many more refugees are currently stuck in the UK, a country they say does not recognise their fear of persecution. And they risk being sent back to a homeland they feel is unsafe.
One of them is Wrya Dara, an Iraqi Kurd whose plight is largely ignored by society.
Wrya Dara is a Kurdish asylum seeker (Pat Hurst/PA)
Three years ago he handed over one thousand US dollars (about £720) to smugglers at Kurdistan’s border with Turkey. He climbed into a refrigerated lorry container not knowing where he was or where he was going.
Three thousand miles later a police officer eventually opened the doors and told the dozen people inside: “This is England. UK.”
In limbo
Dara , a university graduate, had never asked to come to the UK. And he has since been denied leave to remain.
Many Kurds say the West doesn’t know how bad the situation is in Kurdistan. The Kurdish government controls much of the media and journalists are sometimes jailed.
Dara has campaigned for human rights in Kurdistan since coming to the UK in January 2018. He says this activism is enough to ensure he would be a target if he returned.
“If they send me back that will be like murdering me or something,” he said.
He fled after the terrorist group calling itself Islamic State invaded northern Iraq. Iraqi government-backed Shia militias then defeated the group in October 2017, in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Since then, Dara hasn’t heard from his father, mother, two brothers or sister. Moreover, the Red Cross has been unable to locate them.
Dara, whose first language is Kurdish, said:
I don’t know what happened to them. There is no authority there, the situation is getting really, really bad, killing people is a normal thing, daily happenings.
After being detained near London Dara was initially held in Croydon. He then stayed in an immigration hostel in Liverpool and is now living in Salford.
The Home Office told him if he can’t go back to Kurdistan he could go to Baghdad, Iraq, instead, which is not Kurdish and where he knows no one.
Banned from working, claiming benefits or education, he relies on the charity of other Kurds in the UK as he tries to find out what happened to his family and raise awareness of what’s going on at home.
Isolation
Akam Ali crossed from Turkey to Greece crammed into a small boat and was imprisoned once he arrived.
He said:
I stayed in jail for two months because they say, ‘You are coming to this country illegally’. I say, ‘I’m running from war. You want me to get a passport? A jacket? I’m running from war’.
I’d never been abroad. Sometimes it’s not in your hands. If you pay a smuggler they are going to put you in a truck and you don’t know where you go, you’ve never been here, you’ve never been in Europe.
You don’t know where you are going because it is not legal.
The Home Office has rejected his plea for asylum. He lived alone in Stockton-on-Tees for two years, feeling lonely and “ashamed” at his lack of English, desperate for someone to talk to.
Ali, who now lives in Rochdale, said:
Being an immigrant is not easy, some people, not only English, German people, all the other countries that have got immigrants, they think, you sitting and taking benefits and you just want to use the country.
It’s not like this. Believe me, it’s really tough. Not easy at all.
I never ever wished to be an immigrant but when you have nothing, you have to leave your country, your parents, you leave everything, friends, it is not easy.
Ali values the religious and political freedom in the UK. He wants a job and family but is allowed neither as he waits in immigration limbo. He added:
I’m just a human being like everyone else. Even listening, that means so much.
I really appreciate listening to us.
Hostile Environment
Home secretary Priti Patel has put forward sweeping reforms of the asylum system but campaigners have criticised the plans. They include making it a criminal offence to arrive in the UK without permission, with tougher sentences for people smugglers.
As of March 2021, there were a total of 109,000 “work in progress” asylum cases. That’s according to House of Commons Library statistics.
Of these, 52,000 cases were awaiting an initial decision at the end of 2020. Moreover, 5,200 were awaiting the outcome of an appeal. And approximately 41,600 cases were subject to removal action.
A Home Office spokesperson said:
The UK has a proud record of providing protection to the most vulnerable people in need of our protection.
If an individual is found to have a well-founded fear of persecution they will normally be granted protection in the UK, and no-one at real risk of persecution or serious harm in their country will be expected to return there.
Armenian, Cypriot, and Kurdish organisations have condemned Turkish aggression in Kurdistan. In a press release, they called for sanctions and diplomatic efforts to stop the Turkish assault on the region.
Bombings of refugee camps and border villages have already been carried out, the groups said. And they warned that the Turkish authorities were also trying to cause conflict between Kurdish groups in the region.
Anniversary
They said the Turkish government launched its assault on Kurdish land on 24 April, the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The genocide began in 1915, with some estimates putting the number of people murdered or expelled at 1.5 million.
The letter cited the recent Azerbaijan-Armenian war:
In light of Turkish support for Azerbaijan in the 44-day war with Armenia last year, the Turkish state’s general stance in its bordering regions can only be described as aggressive. Further, persistent reports show that the Turkish military deploys chemical weapons and uses jihadist mercenaries in conjunction with their own military efforts.
Past atrocities
The groups said they also feared a repeat of Turkey’s past actions in Cyprus:
Following Turkey’s devastating invasion of Cyprus in 1974, we are worried about the possibility of history repeating itself if the UK doesn’t do more. Turkey is a fellow NATO country to the UK, and therefore these military actions must be of concern to the Government.
They called on the UK government to stop the assault through diplomatic pressure.
We urge the Government to use its diplomatic position to stop the invasion and prevent an intra-Kurdish war. We particularly ask for the Government to put in place sanctions to be lifted only when Turkey ceases its military operations in South Kurdistan.
The communities speaking out for Kurdistan have all been affected by Turkish aggression in the past. And they fear that history will repeat unless pressure is put on the current Turkish regime.
New York, July 23, 2021 – All parties in northern Syria must do their utmost to ensure that members of the press can work safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Since July 16, unidentified attackers and Syrian Kurdish security forces have attacked and detained at least five members of the press throughout areas in northern Syria controlled by groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and at least two journalists remain in detention, according to news reports and posts on social media by those journalists and their families.
“The recent string of attacks on journalists in northern Syria shows that members of the press are not safe anywhere in the country,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa representative, Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “All parties in northern Syria must do everything in their power to ensure the safety of journalists and allow them to do their jobs freely and without fear of reprisal, and must release any journalists still in custody at once.”
On July 16, two masked men in the northwestern city of Azaz stabbed and robbed cartoonist Hadeel Ismael, who works for the news website Syrian Press Center, according to newsreports and Mohammad Ismael, a communication officer with the press center, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app and email.
The attackers stabbed Ismael in the back and stole her purse shortly after she received a wire transfer of 15,000 Turkish lira (US $1,750) at a post office in Azaz, according to those sources. Mohammad Ismael told CPJ that the cartoonist was taken to the National Hospital in Azaz, where she was given 10 stitches and then released.
Previously, on June 19, an unidentified person driving a car with tinted windows and no license plates chased Hadeel Ismael down a street in Azaz, called her by name, threatened to kill her, and told her to stop drawing cartoons of Nasr al-Hariri, the former head of the Syrian opposition coalition, Mohammad Ismael said.
Mohammad Ismael added that local authorities have stalled in their investigations into the stabbing attack on the cartoonist, which he said he believed was retaliation for her work and not a simple robbery, citing the previous threats she had received.
Azaz is under the control of the Turkish-backed National Syrian Army, according to news reports.
Liyani’s brother, Gulal, wrote on his Facebook account that Asayish security forces raided the journalist’s home at 2 a.m. and brutally arrested him. Agents took Liyani to an undisclosed location, seized his phone, and have not informed his family of his whereabouts or the reason for his arrest, according to a statement by the London-based human rights organization Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Gulal Liyani told CPJ via messaging app that local authorities have refused to give the family any information about Liyani’s whereabouts or the charges against him.
Liyani recently covered power cuts in rural areas, drought, and the positive economic impact of remittances in northeastern Syria for ARK TV, a broadcaster affiliated with the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP), which is based in Iraqi Kurdistan and rules the autonomous region. Liyani was previously arrested by Asayish security forces in May 2017 and held in jail for several months, CPJ documented at the time.
Also on July 17, members of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces arrested Ezzedinne al-Mala, a reporter and columnist for the newspaper and news website Kurdistan, in front of his home in Qamishli, according to a statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights and those reports by Skeyes and the journalists’ association.
The statement added that his family was not aware of the reasons for his arrest or his whereabouts, and said his cell phone had been seized.
According to newsreports, both Liyani and al-Mala are members of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan-Syria, a member of the Kurdish National Council, an opposition party in the autonomous region of northeast Syria.
On July 18, reporter Qusay al-Ahmad and camera operator Mohanad al-Ahmad, both with the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera Mubasher, survived a car bomb attack in the northwestern city of Afrin, according to news reports and pictures of the charred car shared on social media.
Qusay al-Ahmad wrote on his Facebook page that he and Mohanad, his brother, were about 20 meters away from their car and were planning to travel to interview internally displaced Syrians during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha when the vehicle exploded. He wrote that the explosion completely destroyed the car and injured his brother’s ear.
According to the news website Damascus Countryside Reporters’ Network, al-Ahmad survived an assassination attempt in February 2020, when unknown people plated a hand grenade under his car.
Areas under the control of the National Syrian Army, including Afrin, have seen several recent car bomb attacks and assassinations of military and police officers affiliated with the opposition Syrian Interim Government, according to reports.
In an email to CPJ, the Syrian Democratic Forces’ Office for Media and Information said that any legal action concerning civilians in northeast Syria falls under the responsibility of Internal Security Forces (Asayish) and the SDF did not have the authority to take legal action against civilians.
CPJ emailed the Asayish and the Syrian Interim Government’s media office for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.
The Turkish government’s crackdown on protests at Boğaziçi University earlier this year has brought together the broadest coalition of AKP opponents since the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
About 13,000 Kurdish refugees from south-eastern Turkey live inside the UNHCR-recognised Makhmur refugee camp, which is being attacked by Turkish forces, reports Peter Boyle.
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NO WAR ON NORTHERN SYRIA – Block, Disturb and Occupy Turkish Airlines! 
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