NATO’s second largest army Turkey is currently leading attacks on northern Syria that have caused a severe humanitarian crisis. And its primary target is what former British diplomat Carne Ross calls “an egalitarian feminist, ecologically-conscious society” which has been at the forefront of the fight against Daesh (Isis/Isil) for over a decade.

The Canary spoke to Ross to see why he believes this war should be a much bigger news story, what it says about Western racism and “post-imperial arrogance”, and what the world needs to do to stop it.

Turkey in Syria

After the invasion of Iraq, Ross gave “secret evidence to the Butler Inquiry” and resigned his post as a British diplomat. He knew the government had lied, failed to pursue alternatives to military action, and broken UN resolutions. And this experience profoundly changed his political views. In 2015, he visited the multi-ethnic but largely Kurdish area of northern Syria (aka Rojava), eager to find out about the “bottom-up self-government” developing there in the middle of the country’s brutal war. Vice News previously called the process in Rojava “the most feminist revolution the world has ever witnessed”.

Ross described his experience of the revolution to the Canary, saying:

there is such a system of bottom up self-government starting at the communal or the village level, where people take decisions for themselves in a very egalitarian atmosphere which is women-led. Women are co-chairs of all forums, including the system of justice…

He added that:

systems of self-government are often described as implausible in the West. But there in Rojava, it’s actually happening.

And he emphasised:

I think it’s an extraordinary political experiment that’s underway there that deserves to be known about and preserved and protected against aggression.

Turkey’s war against Rojava in Syria

NATO member Turkey, however, “has long seen the Kurds as an internal enemy” and sees Rojava “as a threat”. The state long oppressed its Kurdish population, and this sparked resistance from the PKK. It has also pushed its allies to designate the PKK as terrorists. But as Ross stressed:

I don’t believe really in designating groups as terrorists, and therefore kind of putting them beyond the pale where you won’t talk to them or deal with them. The PKK represents something real which is the need for self-defense of the Kurdish people in Turkey.

The Rojava Revolution shares ideological roots with the PKK, but as Ross stated:

The Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF], which is the force that defends Rojava, has stated that it is separate from the PKK.

In reality, Ross insisted, “Rojava is run by Syrians for Syrians”:

they’re not a kind of Kurdish separatist movement. They are, as I’ve described, a democratic and inclusive dispensation which is defending itself, has defended itself, particularly against Isis, for the last decade or so.

But if people in Rojava have been a key part of the on-the-ground resistance to Daesh, why have Western nations participating in the fight against Daesh allowed Turkey to attack them?

Western complicity with Turkish war crimes

Regarding the West’s shameful failure to challenge Turkey in any meaningful way, Ross said:

it is extraordinary that the West is willing to tolerate extensive human rights, abusive abuses, political repression, and violent, including violent repression by Turkey, and now attacks on northeast Syria where the the local militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, have been an ally to the West in fighting Isis.

He called it:

a strange kind of alliance when your allies let you be attacked by another country without response… so ‘ally’ would certainly be an inappropriate term in that regard.

And he explained that:

there’s a traditional reason for that, which is Turkey is seen as a kind of bulwark at the eastern end of NATO, a pivot between East and West, and therefore a vital ally to have in the Western alliance. There is a more insidious, pernicious reason now, which is Turkey has agreed to stop the flows of refugees across the Mediterranean and Aegean into the EU, and the West more generally, in return for Western acquiescence in, you know, authoritarianism in Erdogan’s Turkey.

Considering if there’s any red line Turkey could cross, he added:

I don’t know what the limits of Western hypocrisy are… I find the West’s position on Turkey, and what the Turks have done to the Kurds both in Turkey and in Syria, extraordinary and reprehensible. And yet they continue to do it. It’s one of those… platitudinous eternals of Western foreign policy, a bit like ignoring the rights of Palestinians and allowing them to be killed in large numbers. There’s a degree of racism in it. There’s a degree of post-imperial arrogance in it. The idea that you’re kind of moving chess pieces around the world to ensure stability for your allies, and thus for yourself.

Ross is fully aware of the impact Israel’s impunity in Gaza has had, too. As he stressed:

Turkey will have noticed the impunity with which Israel has carried out war crimes in Gaza. The US has… basically allowed this to happen – indeed, has fueled it by providing huge amounts of weaponry to Israel – and what Turkey will have learned is that you can get away with it. You can get away with abuses and war crimes of the kind that Israel has practised, and that Turkey is now practicing by aggressively attacking northeast Syria and Kurdish regions. And particularly in the dark latter days of the Biden administration, where there’s literally weeks left of that administration, it’s a very good moment to take advantage of the turmoil in Syria to pursue your own national ends, which is clearly what Turkey is doing.

Why the media should be focusing more on Turkey’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rojava, Syria

Simply on a humanitarian level, Ross asserted:

The SDF currently controls about 40% of eastern Syria. That’s a very big chunk of the country, and if there is turmoil and war there that will affect a great many people. There’ll be a humanitarian disaster. There already is a humanitarian disaster in terms of the people who have been expelled from the Aleppo region by Turkish-backed militias – the Syrian National Army [SNA], as they’re called… Tens of thousands of people have been ethnically cleansed effectively from the Aleppo area.

Adding to his comment about racism and “post-imperial arrogance”, meanwhile, he addressed journalistic bias in the mainstream media, insisting that:

it is absolutely the responsibility of journalists to reflect the facts accurately, not to ignore human suffering, not to ignore certain areas, not to give different moral weights to different peoples… Evidently, they have done in the Israel-Palestine case, where you know individual Israelis are named and given personal histories, their families are interviewed… but Palestinians are just reduced to numbers talked about in the tens of thousands of deaths. There is a clear inequality between the way different groups of people are talked about, and I think a minimum requirement of journalism is to treat people equally.

He believes that most people absolutely would respond with empathy if that had the full story, and said:

we respond to the suffering of others when that is presented to us. Of course we won’t, respond if it is not presented to us, if it is ignored as is the case currently in northeast Syria, where what is going on in northeast Syria is being ignored in the discourse of what has happened to Syria.

Rojava is an alternative to the divisive and destructive status quo

On the left in particular, Ross argued that Rojava is a real sign of hope. Apart from being “one of the only examples in the world today of what a truly self-governing… society looks like”, he said:

I believe it’s a plausible alternative to the way we organize things in the West. In the West, we have top-down government, which is in basically the enforcement mechanism for capitalism, which is basically an exploitative economic system where one human exploits another and where we exploit nature. I believe in a more collaborative, shared economy of benefit to all where we practise mutual aid to support one another, and the concomitant of that is, it’s shared. Government where everybody has an equal say, rather than a hierarchy which is intrinsically corruptible, because when the few take decisions for the many, access to the few is always limited, so that access will always be won by the most powerful, the richest. And that’s what we see in our society today, where the interests of the most powerful and the most wealthy warp the whole system in their direction, and government has diverged from what popular wishes truly would be if they were expressed in a more egalitarian setting.

He added:

And that’s the lesson of Rojava, that they are doing that in Rojava and creating an egalitarian, feminist, ecologically conscious society in wartime. It’s not an easy thing.

So what can we do to help?

Ross doubts that the West is willing to take meaningful action to stop Turkey’s attacks. But he knows that polite requests don’t work. Speaking about autocratic Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he said:

He’s a bit like [war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. Diplomatic rhetoric is water off a duck’s back to him, just as it is to the Israelis. You can say you want ceasefires and restraint all you want. What matters is force and coercion. And I’m not saying use military force on Turkey, but tell them in no uncertain terms that relationships will be damaged if they continue in this vein.

Only legislation, sanctions, or other concrete, tangible changes would have an impact. But that’s unlikely to come unless there is massive pressure from voters in the West. This could be demonstrations, writing to MPs, or writing to the media. As he said:

Write to your MP. It’s not nothing to write to your MP. MPs take notice of that. They have to forward the letters to ministers for reply… As much as possible, talk about it. Demand that the press cover it much more. I’ve been writing to the Middle East editors of various newspapers and broadcast media saying, ‘Why aren’t you covering this? This really matters.’

Watch our full interview below:

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.

War criminal Turkey has been taking advantage of the jihadist victory in Syria to intensify an anti-Kurdish campaign of terror in the north of the country. Ten years ago, in 2014, NATO’s second-biggest army looked on from across the border as Daesh (Isis/Isil) terrorists advanced on the largely-Kurdish city of Kobanî.

The resistance of left-wing revolutionaries, however, attracted the world’s attention, forcing it to offer limited strategic support. They eventually defeated Daesh in Kobanî, and across the north of Syria. But now, Turkey is looking to finish off the job Daesh couldn’t.

Turkey’s engineering of “a humanitarian disaster” in Syria

Turkish-led mercenaries have been advancing their occupation in the north of Syria amid the collapse of the Assad regime. And as the Kurdish Red Crescent said on 9 December, “a humanitarian disaster is escalating in northern Syria” as a result. The group explained that:

In just two weeks, more than 120,000 people have been displaced from the Shahba (Til Rifat) to northern Syria.

Doctors Without Borders is currently “providing critical aid to tens of thousands of displaced people” who have fled to “the areas of Tabqa, Raqqa and Hassakeh”. The co-chair of the Kurdish-led administration’s health committee for the Shahba area, Alia Mohamed, spoke to the Canary about the refugee situation in northern Syria as a result of the expansion of Turkish-led occupation. Speaking from Tabqa, she told us that:

Following the displacement from the Sheba regions, the situation in Tabqa is dire. The lack of adequate shelter is a significant concern, with many individuals resorting to sleeping in the open. The prevailing circumstances are severely challenging, particularly for children who are among the most vulnerable. The lack of access to essential resources, including medicine and food, further exacerbates the situation.

And it seems Turkey’s anti-Kurdish offensive is just getting started.

Turkey-led mercenaries advance on Kobanî in northern Syria

“Turkish proxies, with support from Turkish airstrikes”, wrote journalist Amberin Zaman on 10 December, “advanced today toward the town of Kobani“. As she explained:

Kobani emerged as a symbol of Kurdish resistance when the town was besieged by ISIS in 2014 and Erdogan appeared to cheer them on, saying “Kobani is falling.” His perceived support for the jihadis provoked bloody riots inside Turkey, accelerating the collapse of peace talks between the government and the PKK and a ceasefire with the militants that formally ended in July 2015.

In short, the victory of Kurdish-led revolutionaries in Kobanî pushed the autocratic Turkish regime to end peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The NATO superpower had long repressed its domestic Kurdish population. And seeing that there was new momentum for the cause of Kurdish freedom, Turkey opted to restart its anti-Kurdish war.

Kobane has no strategic value, no economic resources, a very small population.

Before the war, many Kurds hadn’t even heard of it, let alone Turks, Syrians or Westerners.

Turkey only wants this city because it did not fall to ISIS in 2014, despite Erdogan’s best efforts. pic.twitter.com/D7nvPeBErS

— Meghan Bodette (@_____mjb) December 10, 2024

My heart is with all my friends in Kobane and Rojava right now. These people have given so much to humanity. They deserve peace and freedom. pic.twitter.com/6cBTmUUGx8

— Meghan Bodette (@_____mjb) December 10, 2024

Turkey has increased its attacks on the left-wing, Kurdish-led Rojava revolution in northern Syria ever since international attention waned after Daesh’s defeat in 2017. For years, it has subjected the multi-ethnic but largely-Kurdish communities of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to a humanitarian crisis, with a campaign of regular attacks, ethnic cleansing, and illegal occupation.

Kurdish-led defence forces were among the “most effective” ground forces in the battle against Daesh. And they have been protecting the formation of a democratic, co-operative system; one that is secular, feminist, multi-ethnic, and which opposes all religious discrimination. But US and UK governments simply piggybacked on their bravery to claim victory over Daesh before then repeatedly throwing them to the Turkish wolves.

Turkish ethnic cleansing campaign kills ’31 civilians in 48 hours’

As the Rojava Information Center reported on 10 December, Turkish-led forces killed “at least 31 civilians” in just 48 hours. Having invaded and occupied the city of Manbij, which local self-defence forces had liberated from Daesh in 2016, the Turkish proxies have sought to advance on Kobane.

The important Tishreen Dam has also come “under heavy attack”, and is now out of service due to shelling by Turkish proxies. According to the Northeast Syria NGO Forum:

Damages sustained to the infrastructure itself could lead to the loss of lives and livelihoods of up to one million people in the downstream subdistricts should the dam collapse.

A Turkish drone also reportedly:

targeted an ambulance belonging to Kobani Hospital, near Tishreen Dam, while it was transporting wounded people, which led to the death of the ambulance driver and one of the wounded, and the injury of a nurse and another person.

Rojava Information Center also noted:

Field executions of wounded individuals in a hospital by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) caught on camera, alongside other atrocities

In the early days of the latest Turkish-led attacks in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) – “a political assembly representing political parties and organizations in North and East Syria” – urged:

the international community to take swift action to protect all Syrian civilians from the imminent threat posed by Turkish-backed groups, which have previously committed war crimes, genocide, and forced displacement.

It warned that Daesh could exploit the situation, and emphasised “its openness to engage in dialogue with Turkey, rejecting all pretexts used to justify further occupation of Syrian territory”.

It has also pledged “to continue working to establish a democratic and pluralistic state that guarantees equality, justice, and respect for diverse components of the Syrian society”. But it has highlighted “the necessity of addressing… the expansionist plans of Turkey”.

Who wants peace? Who wants war?

Turkey is clearly the belligerent in northern Syria. It seems to be making the most of the international community’s clear inability to prevent war crimes (see the Gaza genocide) to bully Syrian people into submission. It aims to destroy the only good thing to come out of Syria’s war – the democratic, cooperative, ecological, gender-egalitarian Rojava Revolution.

In Britain, genocide apologist prime minister Keir Starmer has just claimed the UK is “protecting the most vulnerable in Syria” and aiming to “support stability”. But that’s clearly bullshit. Because vulnerable people are suffering right now and, yet again, Starmer’s inaction shows he’s siding with a powerful war criminal ally instead.

Turkey needs to be stopped. And again, in the absence of government action, the responsibility falls on people around the world to spread the message and take action.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.

Under cover of Israel’s genocidal crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, Turkey has intensified its own efforts to force an entire population into submission in the last year. NATO’s second-largest army has been destroying civilian infrastructure in northern Syria in a campaign that has left over a million people with a severe water shortage. And as a new BBC investigation documents, this is likely a “severe violation of international law”.

There are a number of similarities between Turkey’s actions and Israel’s. The ethno-religious nationalist regimes in both countries, for example, have a record of ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation under their belts. And they both prefer to use their massive military machinery over diplomacy in efforts to defeat those who challenge their power.

Collective punishment of a civilian population. This time, in Syria.

Like Israel, Turkey has long subjugated a native population. And British colonialism played a role in setting things up there too. Around the First World War, the UK and France artificially divided the Middle East between themselves (and the emerging state of Turkey), leaving people like the Kurds stateless. Turkey has repressed its Kurdish population almost ever since.

A left-wing Kurdish-led revolution emerged in northern Syria at the start of the country’s civil war. And its fighters defeated Daesh (Isis/Isil) despite Turkey putting up obstacles. So Turkey stepped up its efforts to suppress the movement at home and abroad. As the Canary reported in 2018, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal found that Turkey had committed numerous war crimes during this campaign.

Turkey, like Israel, seeks to demonise its opponents by calling them terrorists. Accordingly, autocratic Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan calls the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) a “terror state”. But in reality, it’s Turkey that’s been terrorising the AANES. And the BBC‘s latest investigation has used a variety of sources to confirm the scale of the damage Turkey has caused by attacking civilian infrastructure there. As it reported:

Turkish air strikes in drought-struck north-east Syria have cut off access to electricity and water for more than a million people, in what experts say may be a violation of international law.

Since Turkey illegally occupied parts of northern Syria in 2019, the key Alouk water station has been under the occupation’s control. Two years later, the UN criticised the regular interruption of the water supply to the people of the AANES. This combined with a severe drought to worsen conditions in the region. Then, in October 2023, Turkey’s foreign minister insisted that “infrastructure, superstructure and energy facilities” in the hands of progressive Kurdish forces would be “legitimate targets” for attacks. Accordingly, Turkish planes targeted electricity infrastructure, which cut the power supply to Alouk. It has been out of action since then.

Another Western ally committing war crimes against a civilian population with impunity

If the Gaza genocide has taught the world anything, it’s that Western allies can commit war crimes with impunity. And that’s precisely the case with Turkey. Because just as international opposition has been unable to stop Israel or hold it to account, it has been equally impotent at stopping Turkey’s crimes.

As the BBC reports, “Turkey carried out more than 100 attacks between October 2019 and January 2024 on oil fields, gas facilities and power stations” in AANES. The investigation includes comments from legal experts. For example, a February 2024 UN commission said Turkey’s infrastructure attacks “could amount to war crimes because they deprived civilians of access to water”. Barrister Aarif Abraham, meanwhile, suggested Turkey’s campaign “could constitute a severe violation of international law”. And lawyer Patrick Kroker stressed that “the indications that international law was violated here are so strong that they should be investigated by a prosecutorial authority”.

Turkey is ‘using the water crisis just like a military campaign’

The water board co-director of the city of Al-Hasakah told the BBC “north-east Syria is facing a humanitarian catastrophe”. At the start of the BBC‘s documentary, a man says [1:48] “we’re dying here without water”. Towards the end, meanwhile, a woman says Turkey is “slowly killing people by cutting off the water”.

Things have deteriorated significantly as a result of the cutting of Alouk water station. Tankers bringing water in from elsewhere are an expensive, temporary, and insufficient solution. Well owners say that the water levels are down 80% from last year. And there are scenes and words of desperation from the struggling inhabitants of the region.

Near the end of the documentary, a local woman explains that Turkey’s attack “was on the civilian population”. She adds:

Turkey wants to put pressure on the local authorities, to provoke people, get them on the streets protesting. Turkey is using these tactics against us. They use the water situation against us, just like the military campaign.

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.