Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shakes hands with NTO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, during the NATO Conference in Madrid on 28 June 2022. A handshake of betrayal, as Turkey accepted Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership.
One wonders what forces have influenced Erdogan to betray Russia in particular and the East in general, when accepting NATO membership of the two Nordic countries, against the interests of Russia.
Why would Turkey want to dance on two fiestas, the western lying, deceiving and collapsing NATO / G7+ wannabe empire, and the progressive, growing and peace seeking fast developing East, or better the Greater Global South?
Erdogan is a bit like India’s PM Narendra Modi, who wants to be part of the new expanded eastern alliance, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the ASEAN ten-countries’ block, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the association of 11 former USSR Republics.
At the same time Modi, like Erdogan would not want to “lose out”, in case the west may not collapse, or not as quickly as it should. Do they not realize that their “misbehavior”, a benign term to camouflage betrayal, is only tolerated in the case of Turkey because of its geostrategic and geographic location, and in the case of India, because of its sheer size – 1.4 billion people, about the same as the most populous country, China?
But, under their current leadership, neither country can be trusted as a reliable ally. Not by the east, and not even in the tarnished west.
Whether the Kremlin had hoped Turkey would stick to her objection against Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO access is immaterial. What counts is that Turkey is no reliable partner and ally for Russia which had already been proven earlier, when Turkey aggressed Syria for her own petty interests, while Russia fought and won Syria’s war against unfounded US aggressions.
“The concrete steps for our accession to NATO will be agreed among NATO allies over the next two days, but that decision is now imminent,” said Finland’s President, Sauli Niinisto. “I am pleased that this stage on Finland’s journey towards NATO membership has been completed.”
According to RT (28 June 2022), Turkey will support inviting Finland and Sweden into NATO at the bloc’s summit in Spain, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto announced on Tuesday after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
A note on Sweden and NATO: For over 300 years, Sweden and Russia have lived conflict-free side by side. Entering the aggressive NATO clan means a Swedish aggression against Russia.
The three countries, Sweden, Finland and Turkey, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the NATO meeting on 28 June, organized with the support of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The MOU stated, for example, that Finland and Sweden pledged to “condemn terrorism in all its forms” and end their support for organizations Ankara has designated as terrorist – including the Kurdish groups PKK and YPG, as well as the movement led by the exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen, Erdogan’s archenemy.
“Turkey got what it wanted,” Erdogan said after the deal was announced.
This was another lie because terrorism from Sweden and Finland were never serious threats to Turkey. They were just used by Erdogan to pressure the NATO / G7 “alliance” into some vital concessions.
Could it be lifting of the killing economic sanctions initiated by Washington and supported by the EU?
Or, could it be, like in the case of Ukraine – a step towards acceding the corrupt and faltering European Union? A Turkish quest that is already at least two decades old.
Maybe the luminary Mme. Ursula von der Leyen, unelected Fuehrer of the European Commission, has the answer.
The Turkish state is engaged in a massive campaign of repression against the Kurdish Freedom Movement – one which has been dubbed a political genocide by the movement. There are currently 10,000 political prisoners being held in Turkey on charges related to the movement.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s dictatorial regime is both socially conservative and deeply misogynist. Erdoğan has said publicly that women are “not equal to men due to their delicate natures”, and that Islam has “defined a position for women: motherhood.” The patriarchal nature of the Turkish regime is reflected in its vicious attack on Kurdish women.
The women of the Kurdish Freedom Movement have paid a high price. For example, Ayşe Gökkan – spokeswoman of the Free Women’s Association (TJA) – was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2021. And Leyla Güven, the co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), was sentenced to 22 years in 2020. The state has opened a new case against Leyla in an attempt to extend this sentence even further.
An attack against women’s autonomous media
This attack has widened to the targeting of women’s news agencies. Earlier this month the Turkish state arrested 20 journalists – including several from the women’s media organisation Jin News. 16 of them were remanded in prison.
Days after the mass arrests, radical journalist İnci Hekimoğlu was detained in a dawn raid on her home in the Turkish city of Izmir. The arrest was reportedly due to İnci’s social media posts.
However, the state’s attack on radical Kurdish women’s media has been raging for a long time. Women’s news organisations have been censored and criminalised, and female journalists have been targeted.
In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s most frequent jailer of journalists, and the country is still locking them up in huge numbers. But the repression is strongest against Kurdish women.
Threatened with 20 years in prison for radical journalism
Over the past six months, I have been part of two grassroots political delegations that travelled to Bakur – the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders – in solidarity with the movements there. The delegations included people from UK anti-repression organisations, Kurdistan solidarity groups, a radical trade union, and three journalists from The Canary.
Our delegation interviewed radical journalist Nurcan Yalçın about the state’s attempts to imprison her for her involvement in autonomous women’s media.
When we met Nurcan she had been sentenced to three years and seven months in prison. She was awaiting the judgement of Turkey’s court of cessation (in Turkey, defendants do not normally serve their sentence until their appeal has been processed).
Nurcan is banned from travelling abroad, and has had to surrender her passport to the police.
Nurcan has been involved in women’s autonomous journalism since 2013. She started off by working for JinHa women’s news agency. JinHa has been made illegal by the Turkish state – but was relaunched as NuJINHA (which means ‘new Jinha’). Later on, Nurcan began working for the Jin TV production company. Jin is the Kurdish word for ‘woman’.
Nurcan explained that, at Jin TV, all of the roles are carried out by women, whether it’s presenting the news to camera or doing the technical work behind the scenes. She said that Jin TV is run democratically, and all of the journalists and members make decisions together.
“We try to make the voice of women heard”
She said that the Kurdish radical media combats elitism by sharing skills amongst its journalists and not relying on formal educational qualifications. Nurcan herself never went to university.
Nurcan said that at Jin TV:
We try to make the voice of woman heard all around the world. We want to be the voice of women who are oppressed, who are subjected to violence, who face domestic violence.
She added that Jin TV focuses on women’s traditions and culture, and politics relating to women.
In Turkey, all non-mainstream journalists are targeted
The Turkish state opened an investigation into Nurcan in 2015, for ‘making propaganda for a terrorist organisation’. She said that all non-mainstream journalists are targeted by the state, but this is worse if you are a Kurdish woman:
If you are not a journalist working for mainstream media then you are targeted. If you are a woman journalist or Kurdish you will surely face more challenges.
Nurcan told us that the state had started the case against her after she was involved in reporting for JinHa from Northeast Syria. She also reported on the uprising in Bakur – where people in many cities declared their autonomy from the Turkish state. A further charge was brought against her because she posted photos of her family members who were killed taking part in the uprising.
Secret witnesses
Finally, charges were also brought against Nurcan for joining Rosa Women’s Association, an organisation set up for women’s empowerment and to combat all forms of violence against women. Rosa Women’s Organisation has been heavily criminalised, and many of its members have been arrested and sent to prison accused of ‘terrorism’.
Nurcan told us that the prosecution relied entirely on secret witnesses, who could not be cross-examined by her defence lawyers. She said:
It is common for people to appear in court because of the statements of secret witnesses. You cannot ask any questions to them. My lawyers wanted to question the secret witnesses, but they [the witnesses] were never brought to court.
Arrested while trying to do her job
Nurcan said that she had previously been arrested in 2019, in the town of Mardin, while trying to report on the Turkish state’s sacking of the town’s elected co-mayors, who were part of the radical People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The HDP mayors were being replaced by a state appointee – a process that has been repeated all across Bakur. Nurcan told us:
we had our cameras and everything, so everyone knew that we were journalists, but the police detained us – me and four other journalists. I was held in detention for eight days.
The five of them were eventually charged with obstructing a police officer. They were all eventually acquitted of the charge.
“We ask you to make our voices heard”
Nurcan told our delegation that Turkey’s radical journalists need international solidarity. She said:
When foreign people [like you] come to Kurdistan, then you see what kind of challenges we face, as both male and female journalists. We have faced many challenges here. We ask you to make our voices heard all around the world This will be a great support for us.
The featured image is of Nurcan Yalçın, via NuJinHa
This interview was carried out collaboratively with other members of my delegation.
This is part one of a series of interviews The Canary has carried out with Jin News journalists about Turkish state repression. You can read our previous interview here.
The Turkish state is currently in the midst of a brutal campaign of repression against the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
Twenty journalists were arrested last week in Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s Borders. Since then, 16 of them have been remanded.
However, the arrests of the journalists are only the tip of the iceberg in what’s been dubbed a campaign of political genocide. 10,000 people are currently in prison facing charges relating to the Kurdish Freedom Movement. The scale of this repression is hard to comprehend: the number of prisoners, for example, is over double the total number of Palestinians imprisoned by the state of Israel.
Those imprisoned include members of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. The HDP is calling for a radical democratisation of the Turkish state. One HDP member told our delegation:
We are not a political party in the classical sense…we are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-nation state.
6000 HDP members have been imprisoned in Turkey since 2015. But they are not the only one’s facing repression, in fact, those the Turkish state has branded as terrorists include radical lawyers, the women’s movement, and people involved in co-operatives and refugee support organisations.
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
Here in Kurdistan you can be anything – a lawyer, or a journalist for example – except a Kurd. when you show your Kurdish identity you’ll be attacked
I have visited Bakur twice in the past six months, in December 2021 and more recently in June 2022. I was part of two delegations from UK anti-repression organisations, Kurdistan solidarity groups, and a radical trade union.
During our visits, we met with members of the Amed Ecological Society, which is part of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM). These ecological organisers are also experiencing state repression. They spoke to us about their decade-long struggle, but asked us not to name them for fear of state repression.
MEM is a confederated organisation with branches in many cities across Bakur. At its height, its ecological councils had thousands of members. State repression is currently limiting MEM’s organising, but it still has hundreds of members in some cities.
MEM is perhaps most famous for its part in resisting the construction of the Ilısu dam. Sadly, the dam was completed in 2020. This happened despite a fierce international struggle which forced European banks to pull out of the project.
The dam displaced nearly 80,000 people. The beautiful 12,000-year-old town of Hasankeyf was tragically submerged beneath its reservoir.
MEM was also involved in a successful campaign to prevent the destruction of the ancient Hevsel gardens in the city of Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish). In 2014, Turkish state violence was rapidly escalating, which caused damage to the gardens. The Turkish state threatened to destroy the ancient gardens completely.
Local people – including MEM – stepped in to protect the historic site. People brought tents and held demonstrations to protest the gardens’ destruction for 21 days. Then, in 2015, UNESCO listed the gardens as a World Heritage Site, affording the Hevsel a degree of protection.
MEM aims to prevent the destruction of Kurdish culture and natural heritage. The MEM members we spoke to told us that the organisation is involved in cataloguing the history of Kurdish villages which the state burned down in the 1990s. It’s also involved in campaigning against Turkish state social-cleansing policies in Amed.
Refugees from the burnt villages settled in Amed’s old city of Sur. Sur was one of many Kurdish cities to declare autonomy from the Turkish state in 2015. People barricaded the narrow streets to prevent the police and army from entering. The state responded with military force, eventually destroying a third of Sur. The majority of the past residents of the destroyed neighbourhoods have not been able to return.
State gentrification policies used to destroy Kurdish culture
Now, the Turkish state is trying to destroy other Kurdish communities in order to break people’s solidarity with one another. MEM is opposing state plans to destroy the Dicle and Ferit Köşk neighbourhoods to build new housing.
One MEM member told us that the poor people in those areas won’t be able to afford to live in the new developments and will be forced to move to other parts of the city, or perhaps out of Amed entirely. They said:
They burnt the villages, but in the cities they are using urban transformation to destroy Kurdish lifestyle and culture.
As well as protecting Kurdish communities from the state’s social engineering policies, MEM also tries to preserve Kurdistan’s natural heritage. The organisation helps to run an agroecology project in Amed which hosts a library of heirloom seeds. Seed saving is a way to protect the rich biodiversity of the area, which is constantly under threat from industrial agriculture.
The project shares space with a herb farm and a herbal medicine project and clinic. This is aimed at preserving people’s knowledge of natural medicine. The site boasts several beautiful mud-brick structures, built in the traditional style of Bakur. Amed Ecological Society also has a sapling commission, which aims to protect endemic species by planting indigenous saplings. All of these practical projects are acts of resistance against the state’s attacks on Kurdish heritage and culture.
Finally, the movement has a strong focus on education. Amed Ecological Society aims to bring ecology into mainstream consciousness in Amed. To do this, they often speak in public, hold debates, or go to speak to people in other organisations. They place particular emphasis on organising with women and children. One MEM member told us:
women and kids are so important in our society. we want to show them how we can produce in an ecological way and we want to make the connection between nature and humans.
They continued:
The main problem is the capitalist system. capitalist modernity. Our main aim is to challenge capitalist modernity. We are struggling against a profit driven society, the nation state and industrialisation.
Sentenced to prison for protecting nature
We heard that five members of MEM have been sentenced to over six years in prison each. Fortunately, they were able to escape to Europe before they were imprisoned. Two more members are currently awaiting sentences.
MEM was founded in 2012, in the midst of the struggle for direct democracy in Bakur. The organisation sent seven delegates to the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), a confederated umbrella organisation. The DTK brings together social movements, trade unions, political parties and NGOs from all over Bakur. It intended to build direct democracy in Bakur and act as a counterforce to the Turkish state.
The inspiration for the movement for autonomy, which the DTK is a part of, came from the ideas of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founderAbdullah Öcalan. Öcalan’s new paradigm proposed a system of direct democracy, known as democratic confederalism, as an alternative to the power of the nation state. He explained how democratic confederalism differed from the state system:
Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organisational blueprint of a democratic nation.
Öcalan‘s ideas also inspired the directly democratic revolution – based on ideas of stateless democracy – that’s existed in Rojava (Northern Syria) since 2012.
Repression intensifies
From 2013 to 2015, there was a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK. This period of relative stability allowed the movement for democratic confederalism to flourish. However, since 2015 the Turkish state has set about dismantling the institutions of people’s power that were created during that period. The DTK itself was finally made illegal in 2020.
The MEM members we spoke to told us that the organisation’s delegates to the DTK had been sentenced to imprisonment for being alleged members of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK). The KCK is an umbrella structure which aims to bring about democratic confederalism in all four parts of Kurdistan (split between Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria). The Turkish state deems the KCK a terrorist organisation.
The situation became even more repressive after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan responded by doubling down, calling a referendum to give himself dictatorial powers, and arresting thousands of people. The vast majority of the HDP’s elected mayors were replaced by state appointees – known as Kayyims. After this happened things got dramatically worse. One MEM member told us:
after the trustees the repression got worse, and it has continued to get worse for us. For example, two years ago we did a press briefing of around 20 people and there were 200 cops who came just for this. this is one example of how we are living in Amed.
MEM told us that they are not even able to speak directly to the press anymore, as “declarations to the press are forbidden”.
The Rojava revolution is just the beginning
Despite this, the MEM comrades told us that their struggle will continue. One of them said:
we are working for the freedom of all societies in the Middle East. Kurdish society is struggling for democracy, the women’s movement and human rights. We are a powerful movement in the Middle East.
The Rojava revolution became known all over the world, but this is just the beginning of the revolution. For sure the pressure became very deep for the Kurdish society [inside the Turkish state]. This pressure is really a lot for us, every activity we do becomes a criminal thing for the government. We are a target for cops and judges. It is hard to continue with the struggle. but our struggle will be long-lived and we will continue with our work.
The webinar on Thursday 23 June will be a rare opportunity to hear directly from members of the Mesopotamiam Ecology Movement. Ticket sales for the event will also be raising funds for Kurdistan Solidarity Network’s work with MEM. The tickets are priced on a sliding scale, so no one will be turned away if they can’t afford to pay.
This interview was carried out collaboratively with other members of my delegation.
Featured Image is of Amed’s Hevsel gardens – via Wikimedia Commons/MikaelF, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Cropped to 770x403px)
It’s 9 pm in Thessaloniki, Greece, and on the third floor of a beaten-up office block on the outskirts of town, a presentation is taking place. The lights are switched off, and the audience settles in across two sofas and a scattering of plastic stools.
“Yes, that’s good,” the presenter says. “Next slide please.”
The presenter is Elaine Harrold, an employee of the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) in Greece. She turns to the large dust sheet behind her. Propped up across two clothes rails, the sheet has a shaky projected image cast across its center.
“Here’s just one report of a pushback we collected in 2021,” Harrold says. “Pushbacks consist of forcing individuals across national borders without documentation or the provision of basic rights like access to translation. They are illegal, often violent, and stand against every piece of refugee protection legislation in Europe.”
Harrold turns, pointing to the pixelated satellite image behind her. “On September 12, 2021, the respondent we interviewed described being approached by a group of armed police in the center of Thessaloniki, where he was detained, loaded into a van and transported to a cell on the outskirts of the city.
“After two days spent in the cell, a time in which the respondent reports multiple accounts of physical and mental abuse, he was loaded into a police bus with around 30 others, and driven four hours east to Feres. Feres is a border town on the Evros river. The surrounding region is somewhat of a dark zone for media access, but reports speak of ‘warehouse style’ asylum-seeker holding facilities, where basic welfare standards and human rights protections are completely disregarded.
“Here the respondent was collected with around 90 others and driven to the border. At the edge of the river, the groups were forced onto dinghies and ordered to cross to Turkey. The authorities selected individuals from the detainee population themselves to drive the boats, promising the drivers reentry into Europe if they agreed.”
Harrold tracks her finger across the border to Turkey, “The river crossing here is very dangerous and the site of countless asylum-seeker disappearances. The crossing is highly weather dependent, and the detainees are sometimes forced onto the islands in-between the two nations and guarded from accessing either side of the riverbank.
“In the hierarchy of political and geographical privilege, less powerful states like Greece and Turkey are offered massive incentives to limit asylum seekers entering the EU. The issue of harboring and managing the migrating populations is outsourced to these countries, and with the geographical distance and complexities of shared responsibility, the EU politicians who fuel the subsequent human rights abuses rarely have to answer for them directly.”
Detention as Default
The following afternoon in Thessaloniki, at the headquarters of the city’s largest refugee support organization, a mother in a giant puffer jacket shields her daughter from the wind. Beside her stand two young men, one of them leaning up against a wall with a crutch in his hand.
These individuals are part of the community of “People on the Move” (POTM) in Thessaloniki. “People on the Move” is the most recent descriptor for the complex population of migrants on European soil, encompassing both refugees and asylum seekers. Many of these individuals lack documentation, and, unable to gain access to the labor market or health care system, they often rely on volunteer organizations for help.
But today this small group will be turned away. It’s mid-afternoon and they’ve missed their chance to be treated. The volunteer organization space is dual-use, and in the afternoon the makeshift hospital becomes a distribution center, packed with donated clothes and vegetables. There is a great requirement for such services in the city. The community of POTM here are mostly homeless or living in temporary government housing. They exist in various states of engagement with the Greek asylum system, many of them deterred from interaction with the police by the threat of long-term detainment.
On November 16, 2021, Oxfam released “Detention as default,” a briefing on the asylum situation in Greece. Across this 31-page document, Oxfam paints a damning picture of the Greek asylum system, suggesting that Greece and the EU are colluding against asylum seekers, creating an inhumane and hostile environment, and using detainment centers to undermine any real attempt to form a productive asylum system.
Referencing figures from June 2021, Oxfam cites the 3,000 migrants in administrative detention, meaning detention without criminal charges, arguing that, although detention used to be considered a final resort for migrants in Greece, recent shifts in the law have moved it to the center of the asylum process.
The line of waiting POTM is long that afternoon, and during food distribution, an old saloon car pulls up with a plain clothes police officer in it. “They usually don’t bother us too much anymore,” says Bill O’Leary, a retired teacher from the United Kingdom, and the coordinator for that afternoon’s distribution, “They just come here to count the POTM, … trying to track the numbers in the city.”
Second-Class Humans
It’s Friday evening in Thessaloniki, and the waterfront promenade is busy with shoppers, bar-hoppers and teenage couples walking hand in hand. Here is a city organized around the sea, and to the east of the promenade, a wooden pier, dotted with benches and groups of teenagers, stretches out into the Mediterranean.
“When I was in Turkey, we worked every day,” says Robin, one of the community volunteers. “I was a tailor, working in a T-shirt factory. It’s not very complex work you understand, very basic and hard.”
Robin is Afghani. He’s in his mid-20s with a boyish face and impeccable English. “You take one piece of fabric,” he says, mimicking the action with his hands. “You attach it to another. It is good to have work, but the conditions are very bad and the migrants have no security.”
Behind Robin’s head, the lights of a pirate-themed tourist ship sail peacefully across the bay. “You work all month, and at the end of the month, the boss decides to pay you or not. It is unfair, but the migrant has no power or protection.” The group around him nod solemnly.
Ever since the Syrian civil war in 2014, the context of migration in Turkey has been increasingly problematic. Following the breakdown of government in Syria, huge waves of displaced people crossed the border into Turkey, or fled onward toward Greece and Italy.
To react to the necessary demand for refugee registration, Turkey created “Temporary Protection” (TP), a new status of legal registration for migrants. In its original conception, the TP status would be a short-term crisis measure, offering speedy and basic protections while avoiding the complexities and international guarantees around the status of asylum seekers. But with the wider economic and political situation at play, this “short-term” plan for TP registration was to come under pressure.
With the signing of the EU Turkey agreement in March 2016, 6 billion euros in financial aid was promised to Turkey, to support and harbor refugees, and to limit the number coming to Europe. This was the groundwork for a huge refugee outsourcing economy, and with Turkey now operating as an active asylum-seeker barrier, the role of temporary protection status would be instrumental in managing the additional population.
“You have not worked hard enough,” Robin says dramatically, lifting the blade of his hand into the air. “You are not worth your full salary. I pay you only half.” He drops the act and smiles, “It is very bad treatment we know. But the migrant has no documents, so they cannot argue.”
***
Eight years after the Syrian migrant crisis began, the country now holds the largest population of refugees in the world, the majority of whom are registered under temporary protection. With the breakdown of democracy in Afghanistan, a new wave of refugees is now moving into Turkey. But along with this great increase of displaced people at the border, there are other, more insidious growth factors at play.
In June 2021, following consistent pressure from the EU, Greece designated Turkey as a “safe third country” for asylum seeker deportation. As a premise, the use of such “safe third countries” is simple. If a prospective asylum applicant has passed through, or has a sufficient connection with a previous country where they could have applied for asylum, then they can be returned to that country to pursue an asylum application there.
“The concept of a safe third country presupposes the provision of a level of protection in accordance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees by the third country,” stated Vasilios Papadopoulos, president of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and member of the Greek Council for Refugees. It also suggests “the existence of an essential link between the asylum seeker and that country and the consent of the third country. In the case of Turkey, none of the above is the case.”
According to its critics, adding Turkey to the “safe-third-country” list had not only endangered the human rights of the asylum seekers but further extended the means for asylum-seeker outsourcing. With the “safe-third-country” principle in play, a dangerous legal framework had been extended, and the EU now had greater freedoms to use financial and political incentives to pressure Turkey into harboring asylum seekers.
A Crossroads for Europe’s Refugee Policy
As the spring months roll on through Thessaloniki, the Balkan migratory routes become more easily passable again, and the foot traffic increases. But where the mountains and borders of the European landscape remain unchanged, the advent of war in Ukraine has created a vastly different geopolitical climate.
Make no mistake, Russia’s aggressive invasion has catalyzed both an acute European refugee crisis and a very long tail of humanitarian support required across the region. To put the numbers into perspective, in 2015, at the peak of the Syrian migrant crisis, 1.3 million refugees crossed the borders into Europe. Flash forward to 2022, and the last three months have seen more than four times that number crossing the Ukrainian border, an estimated 7.2 million people in need of immediate refuge and long-term support.
So how will this new crisis affect the already-strained context for migrants on the continent? Stepping back to view our present moment in history, it seems the next five years could bring a final pinch point in the story of immigration policy in Europe.
With this huge growth in POTM on the continent and an already unstable economic climate, governments will now face unavoidable questions, and the dangerous practice of outsourcing refugee support to less-stable nations will be forced into the public conversation.
As to the results of those discussions, it is perhaps too early to tell. But in the face of increasing crisis and hardship, the morality of European citizens will be truly tested: Are they ready to open up to the realities of human displacement and war on their border, or are they prepared to close their eyes, close their borders, and use their financial, political and geographic privileges to remain insulated?
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.
In the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, we take a look at some of the recent resistance waged by two nations rendered stateless by British cartographers.
First we visit Palestine where tensions have flared into several violent confrontations between Israeli settlers and the Palestinian intifada. Then we go to Kurdistan where neighboring Turkey has renewed it’s expansionist dreams putting Kurdish occupied areas under threat.
Finally a rather troubling weather report investigates the latest effects of climate change around the globe.
On May 18, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Norwegian named Jen Stoltenberg, stood on a stage, flanked by the ambassadors to NATO of Finland and Sweden, Klaus Korhonen and Axel Wernhoff, respectively.
It was one of those made-for-television moments that politicians dream of — a time of high drama, where the ostensible forces of good are faced off against the relentless assault of evil, which necessitates the intervention of like-minded friends and allies to help tip the scales of geopolitical justice toward those who embrace liberty over tyranny.
“This is a good day,” Jen Stoltenberg announced, “at a critical moment for our security.”
Left unsaid was the harsh reality that hundreds of miles to the east the military forces of Russia and Ukraine were locked in deadly combat on Ukrainian soil.
Turkish police arrested 170 protesters around Istanbul’s Taksim Square on May 31, as crowds gathered to mark the 9th anniversary of the nationwide anti-government demonstrations that began in nearby Gezi Park, reports Medya News.
Complacency has been the hallmark of NATO expansion. Over time, it has even become a form of derision, notably directed against Russia. As with many historical matters, records ignored can be records revisited, the second time around sometimes nastier than the first.
With the Ukraine conflict raging, a few of Russia’s neighbours have reconsidered their position of military non-alignment and neutrality. Last month, both Sweden and Finland submitted membership applications to formally join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This reconsideration must be taken with the heaviest of qualifications. Sweden and Finland, while they have claimed neutrality and non-alignment status, have hardly been neutral on the subject of cooperation with NATO. Since the 1990s, Sweden has become an increasingly important partner of the alliance, using its military in concert with NATO exercises. Finland, with its 280,000 troops and 900,000 reservists, also boasts an interoperability function with the alliance.
Admission to the security club does, however, come with the requirement of unanimity from current members. As things would have it, one country has shown little enthusiasm to acquiesce to the plan. Turkey, at times the large fly in the pact’s ointment, sees an opportunity to extract concessions and muddy the pool of consensus. With the Russian invasion, the Erdoğan regime has broadened its military and political efforts against its long-term enemies, the Kurds. Militarily, Turkish forces have intensified efforts in Kurdish-run parts in northeast Syria. Politically, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hopes to have Sweden and Finland surrender a number of Kurdish dissidents, or terrorists, as he prefers to call them.
The point for Turkey regarding the Kurdish issue is far from new. In 2009, Erdoğan kicked up a fuss by blocking the appointment of former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO chief, citing Denmark’s sympathies for “Kurdish terrorists”. He also accused Rasmussen of failing to heed Turkish requests to ban ROJ TV, a Danish-based station linked to the Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party, the PKK. The appointment did eventually come through after much haggling and a solemn promise from President Barack Obama that a Turk would be given a prominent leadership role.
Be it NATO relations with Israel, efforts to bolster Eastern European states against Moscow, or the acquisition of Russia’s S-400 missile defence system, Erdoğan has proved a determined spoiler. In 2020, he sorely tested NATO relations by teasing Greece with a gas-exploration ship backed by fighter jet support. The Oruç Reis was sent to waters in the East Mediterranean claimed by Turkey, with the purpose of exploring hydrocarbon reserves. France deployed its own ships in support of Greece. NATO had gotten into a squabble with itself.
The PKK continues its unrelenting guerrilla campaign on behalf of the large Kurdish minority within Turkey, one it has waged since 1984. While the party is listed as a terrorist group by the EU and the United States, Sweden and Finland have generally opposed extradition of its members and sympathisers. For its part, Sweden has welcomed somewhere in the order of 100,000 Kurds since the 1970s. Erdoğan, in typically blunt fashion, has accused Sweden of being a “hatchery” for “terrorist” organisations.
Ankara is also unlikely to have forgotten the condemnation by Finland and Sweden of its military incursion into Syria in 2019, a move that was accompanied by restrictions on weapons sales.
Last month, Turkey’s Justice Ministry noted the rejection by Helsinki and Stockholm of the request “for the extradition of people with links to the PKK and Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ)”. In terms of numbers, six members of the PKK and six from FETÖ have been sought for the last five years, while a further 21 “suspects” have bulked the list.
The affair has become something of a spectacle. Sweden has extended an arm to Ankara, hoping to pacify Erdoğan even as he tells members of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) about the devious way Stockholm and Helsinki have tried to rebrand the PKK in other theatres, such as Syria.
The propitiating move has caused tremors of worry within Sweden. “If you want to sell everything for NATO membership,” stormed Swedish lawmaker Amineh Kakabaveh, “then go ahead but I think it’s awful.”
A note of determined stroppiness has also been struck. “Let’s not fall into Erdoğan’s trap,” urged 17 cultural and literary figures in an opinion piece published by Dagens Nyheter. Other Swedish papers, including Aftonbladet, Expressen and Svenka Dagbladet also ran the piece titled “Do not hand over the publishers to Erdogan!” The key concern: the demand from Ankara that various journalists, writers and publishers be surrendered to Turkish authorities.
This point is particularly biting, given that many of these figures have become Swedish citizens. But it is also of concern given Turkey’s notoriously poor record in treating members of the fourth estate. The stern op-ed recalls “the attacks and assassination attempts against prominent journalists, Can Dündar, in Istanbul, Erk Acarer in Berlin, and Ahmet Dönmez in Stockholm.”
There is a certain irony in the Swedish and Finnish decision, not least in claimed efforts to bolster their security against an authoritarian Russia. NATO, despite supposedly promoting liberal democratic values, has members (Turkey and Hungary spring to mind) who are much at odds with them.
An authoritarian Turkey, argue the 17 signatories, is fiendishly attempting to insinuate its own values into the Swedish political and legal system. The Turkish leader’s “political manoeuvre to extradite the people who took refuge in Sweden to be free as an attempt to export his own understanding of freedom of expression to our country, Sweden.”
Despite the tangle, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is convinced “that we will be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the membership”. In the final heave-ho, all eyes will be on what concessions will go Erdoğan’s way.
CORRECTION: During the production of this episode we were working with the most up to date information at the time when we had said nobody had died at the May Day protests in Chile. Unfortunately we have since learned that Francisca Sandoval, a journalist age 29 died several days later in the hospital. Our condolences go out to her family and loved ones.
Welcome to another episode of System Fail. In the news this week we do a quick rundown of May Day celebrations around the world. Although there were other May Day festivities we focused on Montreal Santiago de Chile, Istanbul, Berlin and Paris.
For our next segment we cover the drastic curtailing of reproductive rights in the United States as foreshadowed by the leak of Supreme Court documents. We also take a look at the acts of resistance and the obnoxious recuperationist conspiracy theorists who try to discredit them.
Later, we see how comrades in Greece are resisting Law 4777 which would station police on university campuses, where they have historically not been allowed to go.
Finally, we cover a violent insurrection in Sri Lanka where protesters have ousted the corrupt Prime Minister and torched two of the President’s houses and his presidential Lamborghini.
On May 16 2022, Finland and Sweden decided to become members of NATO.
Not only is this totally against the 1991 US / NATO promise to then Russian President Gorbachev, that “NATO will not move an inch eastward from Berlin”. Then total NATO members were 14, two in the Americas – US and Canada – and 12 in Europe. By late 1990’s, expansion started rapidly and today NATO counts 30 members, 28 in Europe and the same two in the Americas. Most of the new ones are East of Berlin.
Finland shares a 1,340 km border with Russia. Thus, as a NATO country, it would become another real threat for Moscow. Also, during WWII, Finland allied with Nazi-Germany fighting the Soviet Union, when the USSR lost some 27 million people, soldiers and civilians. Finland does not have a clean record vis-à-vis Russia.
On the other hand, Sweden shares no border with Russia and has not been at war with Russia in 300 years. Sweden, like Finland, has not been threatened at all by Russia. So, Sweden teaming up with Finland against Russia – there is something quite weird going on. A country does not overnight seek or make an enemy when there was absolutely not a minimum threat from the “assumed” enemy. What’s going on?
Given the circumstances of these two “neutral” countries suddenly changing from “neutral” to “aggressive” against Russia, there must have other reasons than Russia attacking Ukraine. Both of these countries know exactly the background for the Russian war on Ukraine.
While war should, under all circumstances, be avoided and replaced by negotiations, one cannot ignore Russia’s worries -– preoccupations enhanced by the fact that many proposals for negotiations advanced by Russia before the war were rejected by Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy. Likewise, after the beginning of the armed conflict, proposal for Peace Talks, notably by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were, though first accepted, then rejected, which made Mr. Lavrov assume that Mr. Zelenskyy is not his sovereign own man, but follows instructions. See his interview with Al Arabia media.
Could it be, or is it highly probable, that both Finland and Sweden were coerced by Washington, and likely by Europe / NATO to decide and ask for immediate NATO membership? Sweden, because of the North Sea, where Russia has a dominant presence?
The NATO Czar, Stoltenberg, has repeatedly said that NATO would apply special measures (or create special rules?) to accelerate NATO membership for these two countries. He reiterated on several occasions that by June 2022 Finland and Sweden could already be active members. Normally, it takes at least a year for a new NATO member to enter the Alliance. So, what’s the hurry, if there is no threat?
Before the Ukraine-Russia war, and before the billion-dollars-worth of western anti-Russia campaign, only about a third, max. 40% of the people of both countries, were somewhat favorable towards NATO – a clear minority.
After the beginning of the war, and the utterly distorted anti-Russia lie-propaganda campaign, the popular support for NATO-entry allegedly jumped to about 70%. Yet, this figure advanced by the two NATO-candidate countries, would have to be scientifically verified as both nations have a highly educated population. They know the risks they are taking by becoming de facto enemies of Russia by NATO membership.
Ukraine was a candidate for NATO long before the 2014 Maidan Coup. In fact, the Maidan Coup was an instrument to accelerate Ukraine’s NATO membership. Russia – President Putin – from the very beginning said Nyet to Ukraine NATO membership. Not only was he referring to the 1991 promise, but also to the Minsk Agreement of 2014.
After the US planned and directed the Maidan Coup in Kiev, the Minsk Protocol was negotiated by France and Germany. Under the Minsk Accord, Ukraine was to remain neutral, de-militarized, no NATO ever. The Protocol also demanded a De-Nazification of Ukraine, as well as a special status for the two Donbass Republics — Donetsk and Lugansk.
De-Nazification refers primarily to the Nazi Azov Battalion(s) that were, for the last 8 years, lambasting and attacking mostly civilians in the two “independent” Donbass Republics, causing some 14,000 deaths, about one third of which are children.
Russia – President Putin and most of the Kremlin – are particularly sensitive to the Ukraine Nazis, as they collaborated with Hitler’s Nazi-Germany in WWII in the war against Russia, when some 27 million Russians were killed. NATO knows about it. Therefore NATO, under the guidance of Washington and followed by Brussels, kept — and keeps — provoking Russia with first sending military “advisors” and clandestinely weapons to Ukraine. For NATO countries a key objective is to conquer Russia – primarily for her riches in natural resources, as well as the enormous landmass, the globe’s largest country – and for the power the dominance of large and rich Russia would bestow in this sick western personal and corporate oligarchy.
In the preparation of the war, weapons were relatively clandestinely delivered from the west to Ukraine. Now, weapon deliveries from the US and from European NATO countries in the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars-worth equivalent, are fully open. No secret. Not even hidden anymore. NATO countries feel they have the right to indirectly use Ukraine to fight Russia.
But what is RIGHT?
The last two decades at least, were exacerbated by the fake WEF (World Economic Forum)-imposed covid scare — lockdown, killing of the world economy, killing of common people’s livelihood, killing of children’s future – reflected in the skyrocketing teenager suicide rate and more untold misery, all of which eradicated the human notion of RIGHTS and WRONGS.
The last two decades at least, were exacerbated by the fake WEF (World Economic Forum)-imposed covid scare, lockdown, killing of the world economy, killing of common people’s livelihood, killing of children’s future – reflected in the skyrocketing teenager suicide rate and more untold misery; all of which eradicated the human notion of RIGHTS and WRONGS.
During this period, International Rule of Law has completely disappeared. Nobody respects it anymore. The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of The Hague, so far have not accepted any claim that goes against the interests of the Cabal, mostly Anglo Saxon-led westerners – plus the insanely wealthy financial corporations — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. See also Ukraine-Russia and the World Economic Forum (WEF): A Planned Milestone Towards “The Great Reset”?
But now comes the hick. Just a little detail. According to Article 10 of the NATO Constitution, all 30 members of the Alliance have to agree to a new member.
Turkey, a key NATO member, in a particularly strategic geographic and geopolitical position – opposes entry of Finland and Turkey into NATO. And this under the pretext, according to Turkish President Erdogan, that “the two Nordic countries are “guesthouses for terrorist organizations.” He [Erdogan] was referring to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP/C), which have been outlawed by Ankara”.
“These countries do not have a clear unequivocal stance against terrorist organizations. Sweden is the incubation center of terrorist organizations. They bring terrorists to talk in their parliaments… We wouldn’t say ‘yes’ to them joining NATO, a security organization… They were going to come on Monday to convince us. Sorry, they don’t have to bother,” Erdogan said.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry said on Monday [16 May 2022] that senior official from Helsinki and Stockholm would travel to Turkey to discuss the matter. Erdogan, however, indicated at the press briefing that such talks would be senseless. See this from Le Monde International.
Turkey may be a NATO country, one of the most important ones for the Alliance, due to its geographically strategic location and position. However, Turkey is also an ally of Russia. And in recent months, years, Erdogan has been tilting more to Russia, to the east in general, than to the west, towards her western NATO allies. Has Erdogan noticed how unreliable and deceptive, and trickery the West / NATO is and behaves around the world? It’s very likely.
Anticipating such a move, Jens Stoltenberg had already said days ago, that if Turkey, or any other NATO member, would oppose entry of Finland and Sweden into the Alliance, NATO would apply special measures to overrule NATO’s Article 10. He did not elaborate what measures he would apply.
But in a world without rules, everything is possible.
When in 2017, Turkish President Recep Erdogan brokered a deal reportedly worth $2.5 billion with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the purchase of the highly sophisticated Russian S-400 air defense system, there was talk of Turkey possibly exiting the Alliance. Indeed, Turkey has been “sanctioned” for doing so, and many, if not all, of the nuclear war-heads stationed in Turkey were removed and placed in Europe, most of them in Italy.
Might this be again a moment for Turkey to say and, indeed, decide to exit NATO and seek closer alliance with Russia and China – and the east in general? The Eurasian Economic Commission might welcome a strategic Turkey in its fold. For Turkey quite a positive alternative option to the constant threats and sanctions by the west.
Would NATO fall apart, if Turkey decided to leave? Good riddance! It would be a blessing for the world.
Abdullah Bozkurt in the Nordic Monitor of 18 May 2022 points out that Turkey is nominating an unsuitable candidate for membership on the UN Human Rights Committee.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has nominated a person with a poor human rights record for membership on the UN Human Rights Committee. According to UN documents Hacı Ali Açıkgül, head of the human rights department at Turkey’s Justice Ministry since 2015, was officially nominated to become one of nine new members of the Human Rights Committee.
Açıkgül, a loyalist and partisan official in the Erdoğan regime, hushed up cases of torture and abuse in Turkey’s detention and prison facilities where many people, including journalists, human rights defenders and activists, were subjected to harsh treatment.
The widespread and systematic practice of torture and abuse is approved by the Erdoğan government as part of an intimidation campaign to silence critical and independent voices in Turkey. Complaints of rights abuse fell on deaf ears, while officials who were involved in ill-treatment and torture were granted impunity.
He issued opinions to challenge complaints filed by victims with the Constitutional Court on violation of fundamental human rights and secretly and illegally coordinated with judges and prosecutors to ensure the continuous imprisonment of government critics. He defended the Erdoğan government in cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights.
Açıkgül used his position in the department not only to bury torture and abuse allegations and complaints, but also helped whitewash them when queried by organizations such as the Council of Europe.
The 2022 laureates are: professional basketball player and human rights advocate Enes Kanter Freedom, Iranian artist project PaykanArtCar, and Ukrainian-born Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova. This year’s laureates will receive their awards on Wednesday, May 25, during the 2022 Oslo Freedom Forum.
Enes Kanter Freedom is a professional basketball player and vocal advocate for human rights. Since the start of the 2021 NBA season, he has used his global platform to consistently raise awareness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s human rights abuses. Using his basketball shoes as the canvas for his messages, he wore multiple artistic designs highlighting issues such as the Uyghur genocide, the occupation of Tibet, slave labor at the Nike shoe factories, and the intolerance of China’s dictator. As a result of his creative dissent, he is now banned from China and was dropped by both the Boston Celtics and the Houston Rockets, despite being only 29 years old and in the prime of his career. Freedom’s perseverance has captured the attention of international media and informed millions of sports fans about the global struggle for individual rights in places like Tibet and the Uyghur region. At a time when professional athletes display incessant hypocrisy, unlimited greed, and double standards, Freedom emerges as the moral conscience of professional basketball. Freedom first came to international attention as an outspoken critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, making him a target of Turkey’s government — he was deemed a “terrorist” by the regime, stripped of his passport, and was publicly disowned by his family. In late 2021, he changed his name and added “Freedom” as his official last name. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/525e5018-7f56-4009-85b8-3f3cce9a8810
The PaykanArtCar unites the talents of contemporary Iranian artists in the diaspora with a beloved symbol of Iranian national pride — the Paykan automobile — to advocate for human rights in Iran. The car used was once gifted by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran to the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and was purchased at an auction to serve as the canvas for artwork by Iranian artists in exile. Each year, PaykanArtCar commissions an exceptional Iranian artist-in-exile to use the car to capture the Iranian struggle for human dignity and basic freedoms. The inaugural PaykanArtCar was designed by Alireza Shojaian and features a historic Persian design with a provocative message about the brutality and ruthlessness faced by the marginalized and oppressed LGBTQ+ community inside Iran. The PaykanArtCar represents brave, creative dissent against the human rights abuses of Iran’s theocratic dictatorial regime. The PaykanArtCar will travel to Norway to be present at the Oslo Freedom Forum as part of Human Rights Foundation’s Art in Protest exhibit and will be parked at the event venue. The second edition of PaykanArtCar will be painted by a female Iranian artist and will advocate for women’s rights in Iran.
Marina Ovsyannikova is a Ukrainian-born Russian journalist and activist, who staged a live protest against the war in Ukraine during a news broadcast of Russian state TV. Ovsyannikova was a longtime editor at Russia’s Channel One, where her job was to assist those engaged in disinformation to be distributed to the Russian people. After thinking through ways in which she could protest, she chose to interrupt a live broadcast, holding a sign calling for “no war.” Following her demonstration on live TV and a subsequent anti-war video, Ovsyannikova was held overnight in a police station, denied access to a lawyer, and ultimately fined 30,000 roubles — she disappeared without contact for more than 12 hours. The Kremlin denounced her protest as “hooliganism,” and Ovsyannikova faces up to 15 years in prison under Russia’s disinformation laws. In a recent article, she expressed profound regret for her years as a participant in “the Russian propaganda machine” where her job was to create “aggressive Kremlin propaganda – propaganda that constantly sought to deflect attention from the truth, and to blur all moral standards,” she says: “I cannot undo what I have done. I can only do everything I possibly can to help destroy this machine and end this war.”
Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the refusal by a public office to register a baby with the name “Ciwan” — which contains the Kurdish letter “W” — was constitutional, reports Medya News.
On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretaries Blinken and Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion.
The top priority of Russian airstrikes in Ukraine has been to destroy as many of these weapons as possible before they reach the front lines of the war, so it is not clear how militarily effective these massive arms shipments really are. The other leg of U.S. “support” for Ukraine is its economic and financial sanctions against Russia, whose effectiveness is also highly uncertain.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting Moscow and Kyiv to try to kick start negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Since hopes for earlier peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey have been washed away in a tide of military escalation, hostile rhetoric and politicized war crimes accusations, Secretary General Guterres’ mission may now be the best hope for peace in Ukraine.
This pattern of early hopes for a diplomatic resolution that are quickly dashed by a war psychosis is not unusual. Data on how wars end from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) make it clear that the first month of a war offers the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement. That window has now passed for Ukraine.
An analysis of the UCDP data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that 44% of wars that end within a month end in a ceasefire and peace agreement rather than the decisive defeat of either side, while that decreases to 24% in wars that last between a month and a year. Once wars rage on into a second year, they become even more intractable and usually last more than ten years.
CSIS fellow Benjamin Jensen, who analyzed the UCDP data, concluded:
The time for diplomacy is now. The longer a war lasts absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict… In addition to punishment, Russian officials need a viable diplomatic off-ramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.
To be successful, diplomacy leading to a peace agreement must meet five basic conditions:
First, all sides must gain benefits from the peace agreement that outweigh what they think they can gain by war.
U.S. and allied officials are waging an information war to promote the idea that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia, even as some officials admit that that could take several years.
In reality, neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into.
In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a peace agreement already exist. They are: withdrawal of Russian forces; Ukrainian neutrality between NATO and Russia; self-determination for all Ukrainians (including in Crimea and Donbas); and a regional security agreement that protects everyone and prevents new wars.
Both sides are essentially fighting to strengthen their hand in an eventual agreement along those lines. So how many people must die before the details can be worked out across a negotiating table instead of over the rubble of Ukrainian towns and cities?
Second, mediators must be impartial and trusted by both sides.
The United States has monopolized the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for decades, even as it openly backs and arms one side and abuses its UN veto to prevent international action. This has been a transparent model for endless war.
Turkey has so far acted as the principal mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but it is a NATO member that has supplied drones, weapons and military training to Ukraine. Both sides have accepted Turkey’s mediation, but can Turkey really be an honest broker?
The UN could play a legitimate role, as it is doing in Yemen, where the two sides are finally observing a two-month ceasefire. But even with the UN’s best efforts, it has taken years to negotiate this fragile pause in the war.
Third, the agreement must address the main concerns of all parties to the war.
In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup and the massacre of anti-coup protesters in Odessa led to declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The first Minsk Protocol agreement in September 2014 failed to end the ensuing civil war in Eastern Ukraine. A critical difference in the Minsk II agreement in February 2015 was that DPR and LPR representatives were included in the negotiations, and it succeeded in ending the worst fighting and preventing a major new outbreak of war for 7 years.
There is another party that was largely absent from the negotiations in Belarus and Turkey, people who make up half the population of Russia and Ukraine: the women of both countries. While some of them are fighting, many more can speak as victims, civilian casualties and refugees from a war unleashed mainly by men. The voices of women at the table would be a constant reminder of the human costs of war and the lives of women and children that are at stake.
Even when one side militarily wins a war, the grievances of the losers and unresolved political and strategic issues often sow the seeds of new outbreaks of war in the future. As Benjamin Jensen of CSIS suggested, the desires of U.S. and Western politicians to punish and gain strategic advantage over Russia must not be allowed to prevent a comprehensive resolution that addresses the concerns of all sides and ensures a lasting peace.
Fourth, there must be a step-by-step roadmap to a stable and lasting peace that all sides are committed to.
The Minsk II agreement led to a fragile ceasefire and established a roadmap to a political solution. But the Ukrainian government and parliament, under Presidents Poroshenko and then Zelensky, failed to take the next steps that Poroshenko agreed to in Minsk in 2015: to pass laws and constitutional changes to permit independent, internationally-supervised elections in the DPR and LPR, and to grant them autonomy within a federalized Ukrainian state.
Now that these failures have led to Russian recognition of the DPR and LPR’s independence, a new peace agreement must revisit and resolve their status, and that of Crimea, in ways that all sides will be committed to, whether that is through the autonomy promised in Minsk II or formal, recognized independence from Ukraine.
A sticking point in the peace negotiations in Turkey was Ukraine’s need for solid security guarantees to ensure that Russia won’t invade it again. The UN Charter formally protects all countries from international aggression, but it has repeatedly failed to do so when the aggressor, usually the United States, wields a Security Council veto. So how can a neutral Ukraine be reassured that it will be safe from attack in the future? And how can all parties be sure that the others will stick to the agreement this time?
Fifth, outside powers must not undermine the negotiation or implementation of a peace agreement.
Although the United States and its NATO allies are not active warring parties in Ukraine, their role in provoking this crisis through NATO expansion and the 2014 coup, then supporting Kyiv’s abandonment of the Minsk II agreement and flooding Ukraine with weapons, make them an “elephant in the room” that will cast a long shadow over the negotiating table, wherever that is.
In April 2012, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan drew up a six-point plan for a UN-monitored ceasefire and political transition in Syria. But at the very moment that the Annan plan took effect and UN ceasefire monitors were in place, the United States, NATO and their Arab monarchist allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pledged virtually unlimited financial and military aid to the Al Qaeda-linked rebels they were backing to overthrow the Syrian government. This encouraged the rebels to ignore the ceasefire, and led to another decade of war for the people of Syria.
The fragile nature of peace negotiations over Ukraine make success highly vulnerable to such powerful external influences. The United States backed Ukraine in a confrontational approach to the civil war in Donbas instead of supporting the terms of the Minsk II agreement, and this has led to war with Russia. Now Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavosoglu, has toldCNN Turk that unnamed NATO members “want the war to continue,” in order to keep weakening Russia.
Conclusion
How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine and their neighbors.
If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations, and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.
Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the Annan plan in Syria in 2012.
One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia, and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.
So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.
Roketsan’s Cruise Missile ÇAKIR, which can be launched from land, naval and, air platforms, is set to become a new force multiplier for armed forces with its state-of-the-art features and effective warhead. Roketsan continues to create new concepts on the battlefield with its new technologies. ÇAKIR – Roketsan’s new Cruise Missile – can be launched […]
A Turkish court has acquitted Öztürk Türkdoğan, co-chair of Turkey’s oldest human rights group, the Human Rights Association (İHD), of charges of membership in a terrorist organization. The ruling was issued by the Ankara 19th High Criminal Court on Tuesday 19 April 2022.
Türkdoğan said he was targeted for urging authorities to carry out an investigation into the killing of 13 civilians on February 15, 2021 during a military operation in northern Iraq’s Gare province.
“The Turkish state loves to accuse all citizens, human rights defenders, politicians, activists, union members and students of membership in a terrorist organization. There’s probably no other country in the world that accuses so many of its own citizens,” he added.
Announcing the court verdict in a statement, the İHD said, “We will not give up on defending human rights.“
In his defense in the first hearing of the case at the Ankara 19th Heavy Penal Court, Türkdoğan had said the lawsuits were intended to intimidate rights advocates: “I know the lawsuit against me was filed by the ministry of Interior. I am a rights advocate. My legal activities were cited in the indictment“.
The other two lawsuits were filed for “insulting the Turkish nation” and “insulting Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu.”
When Russian and Ukrainian delegations meeting in Turkey on March 29 reached an initial understanding regarding a list of countries that could serve as security guarantors for Kyiv should an agreement be struck, Israel appeared on the list. The other countries included the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy and Poland.
One may explain Israel’s political significance to the Russian-Ukrainian talks based on Tel Aviv’s strong ties with Kyiv, as opposed to Russia’s trust in Israel. This is insufficient to rationalize how Israel has managed to acquire relevance in an international conflict, arguably the most serious since World War II.
Immediately following the start of the war, Israeli officials began to circumnavigate the globe, shuttling between many countries that are directly or even nominally involved in the conflict. Israeli President Isaac Herzog flew to Istanbul to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The outcome of this meeting could usher in “a turning point in relations between Turkey and Israel,” Erdogan said.
Though “Israel is proceeding cautiously with Turkey,” Lavan Karkov wrote in the Jerusalem Post, Herzog hopes that “his meeting with .. Erdogan is starting a positive process toward improved relations.” The ‘improved relations’ are not concerned with the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and siege, but with a gas pipeline connecting Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, to southern Europe via Turkey.
This project will improve Israel’s geopolitical status in the Middle East and Europe. The political leverage of being a primary gas supplier to Europe would allow Israel even stronger influence over the continent and will certainly tone down any future criticism of Tel Aviv by Ankara.
That was only one of many such Israeli overtures. Tel Aviv’s diplomatic flurry included a top-level meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and a succession of visits by top European, American, Arab and other officials to Israel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel on March 26 and was expected to put some pressure on Israel to join the US-led western sanctions on Russia. Little of that has transpired. The greatest rebuke came from Under-Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, when, on March 11, she called on Israel not to become “the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars”.
For years, Israel had hoped to free itself from its disproportionate reliance on Washington. This dependency took on many forms: financial and military assistance, political backing, diplomatic cover and more. According to Chuck Freilich, writing in Newsweek, “by the end of the ten-year military-aid package agreed (between Washington and Tel Aviv) for 2019-28, the total figure (of US aid to Israel) will be nearly $170bn.”
Many Palestinians and others believe that, if the US ceases to support Israel, the latter would simply collapse. However, this might not be the case, at least not in theory. Writing in March 2021 in the New York Times, Max Fisher estimated that US aid to Israel in 1981 “was equivalent to almost 10 percent of Israel’s economy,” while in 2020, the nearly $4 billion of US aid was “closer to 1 percent.”
Still, this 1 percent is vital for Israel, as much of the funds are funneled to the Israeli military which, in turn, converts them to weapons that are routinely used against Palestinians and other Arab countries. Israeli military technology of today is far more developed than it was 40 years ago. Figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) place Israel as the world’s eighth-largest military exporter between 2016-2020, with an estimated export value of $8.3 billion in 2020 alone. These numbers continue to grow as Israeli military hardware is increasingly incorporated into many security apparatuses across the world, including the US, the EU and also in the Global South.
Much of this discussion is rooted in a document from 1996, entitled: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”. The document was authored by Richard Perle, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, jointly with top leaders in the neoconservative movement in Washington. The target audience of that research was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister.
Aside from the document’s detailed instructions on how Israel can use some of its Arab neighbors, in addition to Turkey, to weaken and ‘roll back’ hostile governments, it also made significant references to future relations Tel Aviv should aspire to develop with Washington.
Perle urged Israel to “make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality – not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes.” This new, ‘self-reliant Israel’ “does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it.” Ultimately, such self-reliance “will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.”
An example is Israel’s relations with China. In 2013, Washington was outraged when Israel sold secret missile and electro-optic US technology to China. Quickly, Tel Aviv was forced to retreat. The controversy subsided when the head of defense experts at the Israeli Defense Ministry was removed. Eight years on, despite US protests and demands that Israel must not allow China to operate the Israeli Haifa port due to Washington’s security concerns, the port was officially initiated in September 2021.
Israel’s regional and international strategy seems to be advancing in multiple directions, some of them directly opposing those of Washington. Yet, thanks to continued Israeli influence in the US Congress, Washington does little to hold Israel accountable. Meanwhile, now that Israel is fully aware that the US has changed its political attitude in the Middle East and is moving in the direction of the Pacific region and Eastern Europe, Tel Aviv’s ‘clean break’ strategy is moving faster than ever before. However, this comes with risks. Though Israel is stronger now, its neighbors are also getting stronger.
Hence, it is critical that Palestinians understand that Israel’s survival is no longer linked to the US, at least not as intrinsically as in the past. Therefore, the fight against Israeli occupation and apartheid can no longer be disproportionately focused on breaking up the ‘special relationship’ that united Tel Aviv and Washington for over 50 years. Israel’s ‘independence’ from the US entails risks and opportunities that must be considered in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement has launched a new initiative to build strategy and connections in the global struggle against capitalism.
The Academy of Democratic Modernity
The new web-based platform is dubbed the Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM). It aims to be a space for revolutionary thought and strategy. The site looks at revolution through the lens of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s new paradigm, based on three foundational pillars of social ecology, radical democracy, and women’s freedom.
The new paradigm is inspired by the defence writings of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founder Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned for the last 23 years by the Turkish state.
The movement sees the global peoples’ struggles going on today – for example in Kurdistan, Ukraine or Palestine – as the continuation of the ever-present struggles of people against power, which have existed throughout history. Today’s struggles are being waged by ‘democratic forces’ against ‘capitalist modernity’.
Capitalist modernity is the dominant global system today, characterised by a drive for unending profits over people, by the nation state and by imperialist oppression.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement opposes capitalist modernity, and rejects the concept of nation states. Instead, the movement seeks to bring ‘democratic modernity’ to the forefront through the practice of radical democracy.
These ideas have been taking shape in Northeast Syria since the 2012 Rojava revolution. The revolutionaries of Rojava have created a system of governing society from the bottom up, through communes cooperating together at the street and neighbourhood level. These then send delegates to cooperate at regional and wider levels. This system is known as democratic confederalism.
Building internationalism
The ADM issued a statement marking the launch of its new website. This called for dialogue and the creation of new forums to discuss ‘democratic modernity’. To do this, it said, it is necessary to connect our struggles against capitalism
we consider the creation of networks and connections between democratic forces as a fundamental prerequisite for building Democratic Modernity. Through the creation of forums and platforms, we want to contribute to the strengthening of the international exchange of experiences and connect existing struggles.
The statement continued by calling for a greater degree of organisation in our struggles against global capitalism. In this way, the ADM hopes to rival the highly organised forces of ‘capitalist modernity’:
Based on the realization of our analysis of the world political situation and the crisis of the democratic forces, we think that it is time to deepen the discussions about ways out of the crisis and the construction of Democratic Modernity. Because while the Capitalist Modernity is a highly organized and global system, the alternative remains until today unorganized, fragmented and without a strategic and unifying proposal of common organization.
The ADM aims to contribute to the creation of democratic confederalism on a global scale:
The areas of work of the Academy are, among others, the organization of social educational work, the connection of democratic forces, and the expansion of democratic politics as a contribution to the construction of Democratic World Confederalism.
The website is available in English and German, and will soon be available in Spanish.
“Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life”
Laying out its vision of how world democratic confederalism can be constructed, the ADM stated:
If we succeed in expanding democratic politics in everyday life – through alliances, councils, communes, cooperatives, academies – the huge political power of society will unfold and be used to solve social problems. Through the expansion of democratic politics and the building of Democratic World Confederalism, the much-needed offensive of the paradigm of Democratic Modernity will succeed.
The site’s authors point out that it is not only possible, but necessary and urgent, to begin building democratic confederalism on a global scale. They write:
Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life. Another world is not only possible – given the world situation, it is sorely needed. Let us start building our future world together in the present, because to wait any longer would be madness.
Featured image via The Academy of Democratic Modernity
Turkish Aerospace (TAI) has big plans for Malaysia, whether or not it wins the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s (RMAF’s) competition for a light combat aircraft/fighter lead-in trainer (LCA/FLIT). Speaking at DSA, the company’s president and CEO Prof Temel Kotil described a firm strategy to expand its recently-opened technology centre in Cyberjaya near Kuala Lumpur to […]
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Turkish Aerospace will participate in the DIMDEX 2022 fair, that will be held on March 21-23, 2022 in Qatar, an important place among the Gulf countries. The company will display of GÖKBEY and HÜRKUŞ mock-ups as well as mock-ups of other platforms which are indigenously designed and developed by Turkish Aerospace engineers. The GÖKTÜRK-2 model […]
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from International Women’s Day in Istanbul to ‘kill the bill’ protests in Cambridge
Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has delivered two of six T129B ATAK helicopters ordered by the Philippine Air Force (PAF), the service announced via its social media channel on 9 March. The PAF said the two new helicopters arrived at Clark Air Base along with associated logistical and support equipment aboard two Turkish Air Force Airbus […]
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!
Seven political parties, meeting on February 26 in Turkey’s capital Ankara, to discuss the creation of a democratic front, released a joint statement on the war in Ukraine, reports Medya News.
A show trial of 108 of Turkey’s radicals is ongoing in Ankara. The trial has been ongoing since April 2021. 21 of the defendants are currently remanded in prison. All 108 face aggravated life sentences.
Many of the defendants are from the left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. Others are connected to civil society organisations and to the Kurdistan freedom movement. The chief prosecutor in the case has demanded that Selahattin Demirtaş – the former HDP co-chair – face the extraordinarily long sentence of 15,000 years in prison if he’s convicted.
Despite its role as an electoral party, the HDP is part of the struggle for radical democracy in Turkey. The HDP is not only anti-capitalist but part of a movement which critiques the concept of the state itself. This movement intends to move beyond nation states by encouraging the reliance on people’s directly democratic organising at the street or neighbourhood level, confederated across regions.
The allegations against the defendants relate to demonstrations that broke out across Turkey in 2014, following Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan’s support for the siege of the city of Kobanî in Rojava – Northeast Syria – by Daesh (ISIS/ISIL). Erdoğan’s AKP government was preventing vital supplies from reaching the besieged city.
Kobanî was eventually liberated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). Many radicals from inside Turkey’s borders crossed into Rojava at that time to join the YPG’s fight. The charges against the defendants on trial in Ankara are serious, and include terrorism and murder. One of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanîtrial, Ibrahim Bilmez, spoke to The Canary about the case.
A purge to silence the movement for radical democracy
The ‘Kobanî case’ is part of an onslaught by the Turkish state, aimed at silencing political radicalism within Turkey. That onslaught includes plans to criminalise and ban the HDP.
Last year I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez, who is one of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanîtrial. Bilmez is personally representing Ayla Akat Ata from the HDP and Sebahat Tuncel, the former co-leader of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Overall, his firm is representing all of the 108 defendants on trial, and is working with many other lawyers as well.
Strengthening the state’s hand in the attempt to ban the political opposition
I asked Bilmez whether he thought the trial in Ankara was connected to the moves to ban the HDP. He replied:
There definitely is a connection. They’re trying to push the Kobanî case through and speed it forward. So that they can say ‘look at all these HDP ‘terrorists”. And then it would be very easy for them to shut down the HDP by pointing to them already being convicted in this Kobanî case
Bilmez said that the Ministry of justice had tried to speed up the Kobanî case by replacing a judge – who wasn’t moving things along fast enough – and replacing him with a judge “who’s more racist and closer to their ideas”. The assistant judges in the case have also been changed. According to Bilmez:
Whenever they want they can just change the judge. You can’t talk about justice in this kind of situation.
Bilmez argued that the Ministry of Justice is “answering directly to Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan”. He said:
basically the political system and political power politics is interfering with and directing the Kobanî case, and moving the case forward.
The Turkish state meddling with the judicial system is nothing new. Since Turkey’s failed coup attempt in 2016, nearly 4,000 judges and prosecutors have been sacked.
Blaming the victim
The Kobanî case relates to a tweet by the HDP executive council from October 2014, calling on people to take to the streets in solidarity with Kobanî. The message read:
Urgent call to our peoples […]! The situation in Kobanê is extremely critical. We call on our peoples to take to the streets and support those who are already on the streets to protest against the attacks of ISIS and against the embargo of the AKP government.
People took to the streets to protest in support of the people of Kobanî, and against Daesh’s siege of the city. Supporters of Daesh and Kurdish Hezbollah – an Islamic group which received arms from the Turkish state – attacked the demonstrators, and terrible bloodshed ensued. Up to 53 people died over the course of three days of the uprising. Bilmez told me that the majority of those who died were supporters of the HDP.
According to a report by the Human Rights Association (IHD), 682 people were injured during the protests. At least 323 people were arrested. In the course of the uprising, there were also arson attacks on shops and public facilities. The government holds the HDP responsible for the incidents.
According to Bilmez:
So now they’re turning it around on the HDP years later, and saying ‘you called those people to the streets. You encouraged this violence to happen… and you’re responsible for the deaths that happened’
He continued:
The strange thing is that basically they’re accusing HDP of being responsible for sending HDP people to their deaths.
Bilmez also pointed out that, in the years since 2014, people have already stood trial for charges relating to the uprising, and that it’s a basic principle of law that people should not be convicted twice for the same allegation.
A strategy to neutralise the opposition
The Turkish state has good reasons for taking an interest in the Kobanî case. Several people who are close to the HDP believe that the state wants to carefully stage-manage the banning of the HDP in order to benefit the ruling AKP party in the next election. Erdoğan‘s AKP is likely to face decreasing public support because of the crashing Turkish economy and spiralling government debt.
It would benefit the AKP greatly if the HDP is banned just before the next election.
“A form of abuse”
Bilmez told me that a trial like the Kobanî case would normally take 5-7 years to hear all of the evidence. He said that the case was being rushed in order to obtain convictions, which would provide the evidence for the banning of the HDP.
As of December 2021, Bilmez told us the trial was taking place at two week intervals with the court sitting for two weeks and then breaking for one. Hundreds of files of evidence have been served by the prosecutor, and “every day there is a new dossier”.
Bilmez told me it was impossible for his clients to adequately prepare a defence in these circumstances, as there was no time being allowed to consider the huge volumes of prosecution material. This was why the lawyers in the case staged a protest last year, walking out of the proceedings. Bilmez said that the current conditions were “a form of abuse” against the defendants.
“You can’t say that there is justice in Turkey”
Bilmez said that countering the ‘blatant attack’ posed by the Kobanî case was bringing radical lawyers together:
for Kurdish lawyers and for Left-wing lawyers in the country, we see that it’s a blatant attack. So there’s a lot of solidarity to come together and be active.
He concluded:
Turkey is moving away from having any kind of just government. You can’t say that there is justice in Turkey.
Featured image of HDP flags taken by Emily Apple, picture of Erdoğanvia YouTube
All charges against Öztürk Türkdoğan, the co-chair of Turkey’s most prominent human rights organisation and a respected lawyer, should be immediately dropped, Amnesty International said ahead of the start of his trial. Öztürk Türkdoğan, the co-chair of the Human Rights Association (IHD), faces baseless charges of “membership of a terrorist organization”, “insulting a public official” and “insulting the Turkish nation and the Turkish state” for public statements he made in relation to his association’s human rights work. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/22/turkey-arrests-and-backsliding-on-femicide/.
“The prosecution of Öztürk Türkdoğan is an undisguised attack on this one human rights defender and also on all those who speak out for human rights in Turkey,” said Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Research for Europe. “With these spurious charges against the co-chair of Turkey’s longest-standing human rights organisation, the prosecuting authorities send a chilling message that increases the climate of intense fear among Turkey’s already beleaguered human rights community.”
According to IHD’s records, over 200 separate criminal investigations and prosecutions of IHD members and elected representatives of the organization are ongoing across Turkey.
“The criminalization of human rights defenders and of the Human Rights Association are the true insults here. The authorities’ unrelenting attack on Öztürk Türkdoğan and Turkey’s civil society movement has to end,” said Julia Hall. “Turkey must immediately drop all charges against Öztürk Türkdoğan and create an enabling, protective environment for civil society in line with its obligations under international human rights law.”
In December 2021, the Turkish authorities initiated three separate prosecutions against Öztürk Türkdoğan. He was tried under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code allegedly for “insulting” a public official in a statement published on the IHD website on 29 June 2018. The first hearing of this prosecution, in which the Minister of Interior is the alleged victim, was held on 18 February 2022. The next hearing will be held on 11 May.
He was also charged with “membership of a terrorist organization” under Article 314/2 of the penal code after the authorities detained him and searched his home on 19 March 2021. During the search, his phone and laptop were confiscated. The first hearing for this case will take place on 22 February 2022.
