Sozdar Dêrik, commander of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) speaks to Cristina Mas, in Barcelona.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Around a dozen Kurdish people launched a protest on Wednesday inside the European Parliament. 15 February is the anniversary of Turkey’s capture of Kurdistan Worker’s Party co-founder Abdullah .
Protesters halted the debate session for three hours. Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) left the chamber as banners were unfurled bearing ‘s image, and demonstrators shouted slogans critical of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
One MEP told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the protesters were on an upper deck above the Strasbourg chamber, some sitting on a balustrade and dangling their legs above the parliament’s floor.
International solidarity
Demonstrations for the Freedom of were in held in Rojava in northeast Syria and in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan. Protests were also held all over Europe, including in Rome, Geneva, Lausanne, Paris and Greece.
A freedom for conference was held in London, at the House of Lords. Over 120 people also took part in an annual long march for his freedom. This year marchers walked from Switzerland to France.
Six Basque trade unions released a manifesto demanding release. They underlined his vital role in peace negotiations:
The current Turkish government run by Erdoğan held negotiations with Öcalan for two and a half years, during which the Kurdish leader proposed a gradual plan to achieve peace, from confidence-building measures, through a disarmament process under international surveillance, to a permanent political solution to the Kurdish question. Although the negotiations broke down in 2011, Öcalan’s proposals, included in his “Road Map”, continue to be of the utmost importance to address and seek a negotiated solution to the so-called ‘Kurdish question’
The statement continued:
The demand for Öcalan’s freedom is vital to break the military logic of the conflict and thus divert attention towards peaceful negotiations and towards a democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict
24 years of imprisonment
Ocalan was arrested in Kenya by Turkish agents on February 15, 1999 and sentenced to death in June of the same year. Now 73, his sentence was reduced to life in prison in 2002 and supporters continue to demand his release. His capture involved collaboration between the Turkish state and several other states. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement calls it the international ‘conspiracy’.
According to the International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan!”:
On 15 February 1999, a new phase in the war against the Kurds and other communities raised its head with the NATO-led abduction of Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan from Nairobi, Kenya. A series of actors in Europe and in the Middle East as well as the US were behind this operation.
The statement continued:
The US and Europe, who led this operation against the Kurdish people’s leader, continue to legitimize the colonization and occupation of Kurdistan and condemn any resistance to it as terrorism, and are the ones that brewed this genocidal fascist regime. This is because the Turkish state paves the path for them to further ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism in the region. The indigenous peoples’ existence is a resistance to these.
Ideas that ‘inspired millions of people to fight’
is currently imprisoned on the island of has written at least 12 books in prison. His ideas inspired the Rojava revolution, ongoing in northeast Syria since 2012
Internationalists released a video statement to commemorate the anniversary. The international volunteers had joined the revolutionary struggle in Rojava.
The life and philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan inspired millions of people to fight for democracy, ecology and women’s liberation. As Internationalists, we came to join the Rojava Revolution because we found inspiration within the revolution that is based on Öcalans philosophy. As internationalist members of YPG/YPJ [peoples’ protection units], we condemn the conspiracy. But however they try to attack our longing for freedom, they will never be able to take what we found here: hope.
Abdullah Öcalan’s ideas continue to ignite hopes for revolution and freedom, despite nearly two and a half decades in prison. His supporters see his liberation as essential for bringing an end to Turkish fascism, and achieving peace in Kurdistan.
You can find out more about the UK Freedom for Öcalan campaign by clicking here.
Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse
Featured image via Screenshot/ANF Firat
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on Canary.
-
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.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
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
-
Jiyan Tolhidan (Salwa Yusuf), a leader of the Syrian Defence Force (SDF) Counter Terrorism Units, and who led the fight against ISIS, was murdered by Turkey in a drone strike on July 22, reports Sarah Glynn.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Australian cinematographer Jake Lloyd Jones talks to Peter Boyle about the ongoing “David and Goliath struggle” between the Kurds and the Turkish state from Bashur (South Kurdistan) in northern Iraq.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Three socialist parties from the Asia-Pacific region have supported the call by 34 political parties in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, for the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone over the region to stop a threatened invasion by Turkey.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Bordered on all sides by hostile reactionary forces, Rojava stands defiantly as a beacon of hope. John Tully reports on ten years of the Rojava revolution.
-
July 19 marked ten years of the Rojava Revolution in North and East Syria. SDF general commander Mazloum Abdi marked the occasion, expressing the determination to extend the revolution’s social and political achievements, reports Medya News.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Sweden’s Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) released a statement opposing the deal with Turkey to clear the way for Sweden’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
Peter Boyle reflects on the achievements of the Rojava revolution in north and east Syria, which continues in the face of great adversity to inspire activists around the world.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement has launched a new initiative to build strategy and connections in the global struggle against capitalism.
The Academy of Democratic Modernity
The new web-based platform is dubbed the Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM). It aims to be a space for revolutionary thought and strategy. The site looks at revolution through the lens of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s new paradigm, based on three foundational pillars of social ecology, radical democracy, and women’s freedom.
The new paradigm is inspired by the defence writings of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founder .
The movement sees the global peoples’ struggles going on today – for example in Kurdistan, Ukraine or Palestine – as the continuation of the ever-present struggles of people against power, which have existed throughout history. Today’s struggles are being waged by ‘democratic forces’ against ‘capitalist modernity’.
Capitalist modernity is the dominant global system today, characterised by a drive for unending profits over people, by the nation state and by imperialist oppression.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement opposes capitalist modernity, and rejects the concept of nation states. Instead, the movement seeks to bring ‘democratic modernity’ to the forefront through the practice of radical democracy.
These ideas have been taking shape in Northeast Syria since the 2012 Rojava revolution. The revolutionaries of Rojava have created a system of governing society from the bottom up, through communes cooperating together at the street and neighbourhood level. These then send delegates to cooperate at regional and wider levels. This system is known as democratic confederalism.
Building internationalism
The ADM issued a statement marking the launch of its new website. This called for dialogue and the creation of new forums to discuss ‘democratic modernity’. To do this, it said, it is necessary to connect our struggles against capitalism
we consider the creation of networks and connections between democratic forces as a fundamental prerequisite for building Democratic Modernity. Through the creation of forums and platforms, we want to contribute to the strengthening of the international exchange of experiences and connect existing struggles.
The statement continued by calling for a greater degree of organisation in our struggles against global capitalism. In this way, the ADM hopes to rival the highly organised forces of ‘capitalist modernity’:
Based on the realization of our analysis of the world political situation and the crisis of the democratic forces, we think that it is time to deepen the discussions about ways out of the crisis and the construction of Democratic Modernity. Because while the Capitalist Modernity is a highly organized and global system, the alternative remains until today unorganized, fragmented and without a strategic and unifying proposal of common organization.
The ADM aims to contribute to the creation of democratic confederalism on a global scale:
The areas of work of the Academy are, among others, the organization of social educational work, the connection of democratic forces, and the expansion of democratic politics as a contribution to the construction of Democratic World Confederalism.
The website is available in English and German, and will soon be available in Spanish.
“Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life”
Laying out its vision of how world democratic confederalism can be constructed, the ADM stated:
If we succeed in expanding democratic politics in everyday life – through alliances, councils, communes, cooperatives, academies – the huge political power of society will unfold and be used to solve social problems. Through the expansion of democratic politics and the building of Democratic World Confederalism, the much-needed offensive of the paradigm of Democratic Modernity will succeed.
The site’s authors point out that it is not only possible, but necessary and urgent, to begin building democratic confederalism on a global scale. They write:
Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life. Another world is not only possible – given the world situation, it is sorely needed. Let us start building our future world together in the present, because to wait any longer would be madness.
Featured image via The Academy of Democratic Modernity
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
-
Fionn Skiotis spoke to Peter Boyle about the newly-formed North and East Syria Solidarity group, that is both seeking to inform people and collect material support for the revolution in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
For more than 14 months, Libre Flot has been incarcerated in a French prison. He languishes in solitary confinement; a political prisoner who hasn’t even faced trial yet.
For the last month, he has been on hunger strike. A few days ago, he was hospitalised for a second time after suffering from chest pressure and sharp pain in his heart. He is getting weaker and weaker, and is finding it difficult to move.
So, what is Libre Flot accused of, and why is he imprisoned?
Fighting ISIS
Flot is one of many internationalists who travelled to North and East Syria (commonly known as Rojava) to join the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the fight against Daesh (ISIS), and to defend the anti-capitalist revolution in the region. After returning to France, he was one of seven people who was arrested in December 2020 and accused of being part of “a criminal association planning a terrorist attack”. He says that he has been framed because of his links to the YPG, and that he was spied upon by the French state including being:
followed, traced, bugged 24 hours a day in my vehicle, my home, spied on even in my bed.
The six others were released, but Flot remains in prison, in what he describes as “hellish and permanent solitude”. He says:
it is my political opinions and my participation in the Kurdish YPG forces in the fight against Daesh that they are trying to criminalize. It has been more than 14 months that 7 people who do not know each other are accused of being part of a criminal association.
Flot argues that the investigation against him is biased, and that the state “investigates only for the prosecution and never for the defense.” He continues:
[The investigating judge] allows himself [to give me] the most unacceptable insult by referring to the barbarians of the Islamic State as my “friends from Daesh”. Although verbal, this remains an unfathomable act of violence. It is inadmissible that this judge grants himself the right to insult me to the highest degree, tries to smear me, and thus spits on the memory of my Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Turkmen, Armenian, Turkish and international friends and comrades who have fallen in the struggle against this organization. I am still outraged by this.
European states criminalising revolutionaries
Flot isn’t the only international who has found themselves behind bars after joining the revolution in North and East Syria. The UK has also charged and prosecuted a number of its citizens. There’s 18-year-old Londoner Silhan Ozcelik, who was imprisoned in 2015 after she attempted to go and fight against Daesh in Rojava. There’s Jim Matthews, who was charged with terrorism offences for fighting in the YPG in 2018. The charges were finally dropped against him. And then there’s Aidan James, who was sentenced to prison for terrorism in 2019. He also fought in the YPG against Daesh. Like Flot, James was remanded in prison for a number of months before his trial even began. Then, in July 2020, terrorism charges against three British men were also dropped after an “extraordinarily misplaced prosecution”. Those who were charged included Paul Newey, a 49-year-old father from Solihull, who sent £150 to his son Dan, a volunteer with the YPG. Another of those charged, Daniel Burke, spent eight months in prison on remand before the charges were dropped.
But it’s not just YPG volunteers who are targeted by European states. Matt Broomfield, a professional journalist from the UK, was detained 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. Broomfield hasn’t actually been told what his crime is, but he is certain it is because he volunteered as a journalist in Rojava. Others who have volunteered in North and East Syria have faced similar Schengen bans.
So why are these people such targets? It’s because they have volunteered in a region of the world where revolution has succeeded, against all odds; a region that is anti-capitalist, attempting to give power to the grassroots. And it is a society that centres on women’s liberation, religious tolerance, and minority protection as key. This is, of course, a very real and direct threat to the world’s powerful, particularly those who rule under a thinly-veiled guise of ‘democracy’.
International day of action
Activists have called for an international day of action in solidarity with Flot. They say:
The 4th of April will be his 36th day of hunger strike.
The 4th of April is also his birthday.
On this day, we call for an international day of solidarity. We call upon all comrades and every decent human being with a sense of justice to protest outside French embassies, consulates or institutes, or to find any other way to voice their objection to this blatant injustice.
For radicals around the world, the prosecution of those who have risked their lives in Rojava should continue to be of massive concern. As capitalist states begin to see their rule threatened, they will come for more of us. Whether it is the fighters in the YPG or the activists who defended themselves against the police in Bristol, more and more of us will begin to see our freedoms being taken away.
Featured image via Xavier Malafosse / Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons 1.0 license, resized to 770 x 403px
By Eliza Egret
This post was originally published on The Canary.
-
The Australian Greens leadership pledged support to the Kurdish struggle for freedom, justice and peace at a well-attended function in the Democratic Kurdish Community Centre. Peter Boyle reports.
-
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 You can read his account of his experiences here.
A threat to European ‘democracy’
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
By Eliza Egret
This post was originally published on The Canary.
-
Mira Ibrahim, Shelan Khodedah and Zeynep Korkmaz share their personal stories illustrating the struggle for liberation of the Kurdish and Yezidi people.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
-
This is the revolutionary Anna Campbell. Monday 15 March marks three years since she was murdered by the Turkish state in Rojava, north-east Syria.
Anna was an anti-fascist, feminist and queer internationalist. She joined the women’s revolution in Rojava in May 2017 during the fight against Daesh (ISIS/Isil). Turkey invaded Rojava’s Afrin region in 2018, and Anna joined the YPJ’s armed resistance against the invasion. She was murdered by a Turkish missile strike in March 2018, along with her friends Sara Merdin and Serhildan, as they tried to help refugees flee Afrin.
Fighting for a “free and dignified life for everyone”
Rojava is a region of around 3 million people, organising themselves using a model of direct democracy, attempting to give power to the grassroots. It is a society that centres on women’s liberation, religious tolerance, and minority protection as key. According to Anna’s friends:
It was anti-fascism, peoples’ democracy and women’s liberation that first attracted Anna to Rojava.
But, like all of her comrades in Rojava, Anna wasn’t just fighting for direct democracy in that region. She was fighting for a free and dignified life for everyone, and she was fighting for women’s liberation everywhere. The people of Rojava don’t see their struggle as separate from here. They see it as a small part of a global struggle.
Organising in the UK
Anna was an anarchist and anti-capitalist organiser, working tirelessly before going to Rojava. Her friends say:
[Anna was] involved in every type of resistance in the UK and Europe, from distributing food, protecting the environment, resisting detention and deportation of refugees and immigrants, to prison abolition.
In the UK, Anna stood on the streets against fascists. The Canary’s Tom Anderson recalls:
We both stood our ground alongside fellow anti-fascists one day in Dover, as the National Front lobbed bricks at us. The Front was trying to hold a racist march through the city.
Her friends say that Anna:
knew how to fight fascism, but that fight was not limited to street punch ups or macho posturing. Anna was humble and she gave meaning to every action, serving the people.
“Her loss leaves a legacy”
If Anna were alive in the UK today, she would no doubt be outraged by the systematically misogynist UK state, which fails to protect women and, in many cases, doesn’t even bother to investigate their murders. She would be disgusted by the fact that a man murders a woman every three days in this country, and that 62% of these victims were murdered by a spouse or former-partner. She would be using her education in Rojava to build a different society in the UK: one that actually tackles patriarchy and misogyny head on, and one that ensures that women are actually safe in their own homes.
Her friends say:
Remembering those we have lost in the struggle against capitalism, fascism, and patriarchy reminds us of the need for revolutionary commitment, grief and love. The present is born in every moment from the past, and we walk in the paths trodden by those who came and left before us.
We miss Anna every day, not just at the time of this anniversary. Her loss leaves a legacy; we must keep revolutionary fires burning…
They continue:
Let’s keep the momentum going in 2021, in the name of Anna Campbell, of Sara Merdin, of Serhildan, and of every person who has fallen in our struggle for freedom and dignity.
We have the power to create a society where gender liberation is at the forefront. But we can’t rely on our government to do it for us. The majority-Kurdish women’s struggle in Rojava and Bakur (within Turkey) is perhaps the strongest women’s movement in the world right now. Let’s learn from these revolutionary women so that Anna, Sara and Serhildan, and all of their comrades haven’t died in vain.
Featured image via Anna’s friends, with permission
By Eliza Egret
This post was originally published on The Canary.
-
Perhaps the strongest women’s movement in the world right now is the Kurdish Women’s Movement. On International Women’s Day, The Canary takes a look at these revolutionary women.
Kurdish women came to world attention in 2014, gaining global media headlines in their fight against Daesh (ISIS/Isil) in Rojava, Syria. Yet, as is typical in a patriarchal society, western media outlets usually depicted the Kurdish Women’s Movement as young, beautiful twenty-somethings with guns, even appearing in women’s magazine Marie Claire. But Kurdish women, from the young to the very old, were struggling against patriarchy and fascism for decades before Daesh existed.
Kurdish people are the largest stateless group on Earth. Most live in the geographic region of Kurdistan, which lies within Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Kurdish people have experienced generations of oppression in all four countries, from Saddam Hussein’s Anfal genocide in Iraq, to the torture and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of people and the burning of villages in Turkey.
Sakine Cansız
Yet this oppression contributed to the creation of one of the largest women’s struggles in the world in the Kurdish regions within Turkey and Syria. One of the biggest icons of this struggle is Sakine Cansız (in the left-hand image at the top of the page). She was a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978 with Abdullah Öcalan. The PKK began an armed struggle against the Turkish state in 1984. Kommun Academi writes:
Sakine Cansız was tasked by the leadership to build the women’s movement, a duty that she took very close to her heart. She single-handedly managed to gather large groups of young women, often students, for discussion and educations. On November, 27th 1978 only at the age of 20, Sakine Cansız became one of the two female co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, when she participated in the party’s founding congress.
Cansız was imprisoned and tortured in Diyarbakır prison from 1979-1991. Kommun Academi continues:
The resistance of Sakine Cansız in Diyarbakir prison led to a new approach towards women in Kurdish society. It encouraged women to join revolutionary structures in the cities and moved women towards politicization in the villages. Starting with her prison resistance, Kurdish women’s activism gained increasing respect and support among the popular masses.
After her release from prison, Cansız continued in the PKK, and later as an educator of the Kurdish Freedom Movement in Europe. She was murdered in Paris in 2013, along with Leyla Şaylemez and Fidan Doğan, both central women in Kurdish organising.
Decades of organising
Long before the 2012 Rojava revolution in northern Syria, the Kurdish movement was developing structures for radically changing how society was organised. If you speak to any women in Kurdistan, they will tell you that this struggle didn’t start during the Arab Spring, or in the fight against Daesh. It began more than 40 years ago, through women such as Cansız, who organised tirelessly from prison.
Democratic confederalism – an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal and anti-state ideology – was created by Öcalan from his prison cell. Democratic confederalism ensures that power that would usually be held by governments is given to people at the grassroots level. Local communes were set up within the Kurdish part of Turkey in 2007, empowering people to make decisions over areas of their lives. In Syria, people began putting the ideas of democratic confederalism into practice in 2005.
Within the Kurdish Freedom Movement, women’s councils, academies, and cooperatives have been created, while positions of power are always held by co-chairs, at least one of whom identifies as a woman.
A crucial ideology within the Kurdish Freedom Movement is jineoljî, or women’s science. A role of jineoljî is to transform the patriarchal mindset:
The patriarchy of the government, which has constructed itself on the basis of women’s bodies, feelings, ideas, beliefs and labour, intervenes constantly in our daily lives. It invades our space with violence, exploitation denial, murder and creating illusions. As important as tearing off these masks and organising a strong self-defence against these patriarchal attacks is the construction of a mindset. Jineoloji, which we have reached by setting out from a paradigm based on freedom, will succeed in achieving this.
Continuing the struggle
Cansız and the many other women who have died in their struggle for women’s liberation, continue to be a source of inspiration not just in Kurdistan, but around the world. Within Turkey, thousands of Kurdish women continue to be imprisoned, including Leyla Güven (to the right of the photo at the top of the page), who survived a 200-day hunger strike in 2019. The women currently imprisoned gain their strength from those who have struggled before them.
In the UK, Kurdistan Solidarity Network Jin (‘Jin’ means ‘women’ in Kurdish) released a statement for International Women’s Day. They said:
As feminists, we know that struggle involves work and it involves love. It is militant just as much as it is joyful. Whether we look to you, our sisters and comrades who have been imprisoned by the Turkish state, to the women fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan, or the women building new ways of life across society in all four parts of Kurdistan, we see this same love and dedication in their actions.
They continued:
We join your call to continue the struggle, to stand side by side as free women and raise our voices, to oppose all forms of injustice and fascism, to strive for building a society where justice and equality prevail and where the rights and dignity of women are respected.
We call for unity and solidarity, against feminicide and in defence of a free life and free society everywhere. United we will overcome. We salute you and wish you peace and strength.
“Women, Life, Freedom” is an important slogan of the Kurdish Women’s Movement. On this International Women’s Day, we must stand in solidarity with all women like Güven, locked up as political prisoners, and we must remember all those who have died in their fight against misogyny and patriarchy.
Featured images via ANF English
By Eliza Egret
This post was originally published on The Canary.
