<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div id="container" class="container font-size5">
<div style="display: block;" id="reader-header" class="header"> <b><small><small><a
href="http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/r/kurdish/"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/r/kurdish/">http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/r/kurdish/</a></a></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Understanding the Kurdish Resistance:
Historical Overview & Eyewitness Report</h1>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div style="display: block;" id="moz-reader-content">
<div xml:base="http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/r/kurdish/"
id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div class="text">
<p>Until recently, few in the Western world had heard of
the Kurds, let alone their revolutionary history.
Brought into the spotlight by their fight against the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), they have
received a great deal of attention both from the
mainstream mass media and from radicals and
revolutionaries around the world. </p>
<p>Romanticized and often summarized superficially as a
population fighting Islamists, the Kurds have a
tradition of self-defense extending across several
national borders. They have been fighting for their
liberation since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire,
if not prior; the religious revolts led by Sheikh Said
in 1925 and the uprising against assimilation in Dersim
in 1937 are only two examples out of a long legacy of
Kurdish resistance. But without a doubt, the most
long-lasting and effective Kurdish rebellion has been
the one launched by the PKK (Partiye Karkerên
Kurdistanê—Kurdish Workers Party) 40 years ago. The
resistance to ISIS in Northern Syria (western
Kurdistan—Rojava)<sup class="refnumber">1</sup><small><span
class="fnumber">1.</span> Geographically, Kurdistan
is defined by cardinal directions. So western
Kurdistan, which is in northern Syria, is called <em>Rojava</em>
(West); northern Kurdistan, which is in southeastern
Turkey, is <em>Bakur</em> (North); southern
Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, is <em>Bashur</em>
(South); and eastern Kurdistan, in southwestern Iran,
is <em>Rojhelat</em> (East).</small> and the fight
for the autonomy of Kurds in Turkey (northern
Kurdistan—Bakur) are the culmination of the PKK’s
decades-long struggle. Yet the PKK looks very different
today than it did during its formation, and its
aspirations have evolved alongside its political
context. </p>
<p>What follows is my attempt to share what I have learned
and observed during my visits to Kurdistan, in both
Bakur and Rojava. It is a long and complex story filled
with difficult contradictions, some of which will be
presented below. In the face of incredible odds, the
resilient Kurds have been able to put theory into
practice alongside a well-crafted strategy. To
understand their movement today, lets start by looking
at how it emerged.</p>
<h2>The Early Days of the PKK</h2>
<p>The PKK is the product of two different historical
processes. The first and more fundamental one is the
formation of the Turkish nation-state, a project based
upon the elimination of all non-Muslims and the
assimilation of all non-Turkish ethnicities. The second
and more immediate accelerant is the powerful youth and
student movement of the late 1960s and ’70s in Turkey. </p>
<p>To understand contemporary Turkish politics, be it the
official denial of the Armenian Genocide or the
repression of the Kurdish movement, we must recognize
how deeply ultra-nationalism is woven into the fabric of
society. It is analogous to the Baathist regimes
elsewhere in the region, which are now meeting their
expiration dates. All the ingredients are there: a
formidable and charismatic leader, Mustafa Kemal;<sup
class="refnumber">2</sup><small><span class="fnumber">2.</span>
Known as Atatürk—the great Turk—after 1934.</small>
the creation of a national identity, Turkishness; and
assimilation into a hegemonic yet constructed culture.
In Turkey, the formal creation of the nation-state in
1923 was a modernizing project in its own right. Various
vernacular languages (e.g., Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian,
Greek) as well as the Arabic alphabet (modified and used
in written Ottoman, Kurdish, and Persian in addition to
Arabic) were scrapped in favor of the Latin alphabet; a
language called Turkish was re-invented, by modernizing
vernacular Turkish with a heavy dose of European
influence. Forms of religious expression, from public
gatherings to clothing, were repressed in the name of
modern secularism. At the same time, Islam became
regulated by the state, kept in reserve to mobilize
against leftists or minorities. As a nation-building
project, Kemalism essentially sowed the seeds of its own
destruction; ironically, it is responsible for both the
neoliberal Islam of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP,
and the Democratic Confederalism of Öcalan and the PKK. </p>
<p>The degree to which this ultra-nationalism is hammered
into those who live within the borders of Turkey is
difficult for a Western audience to grasp. Every morning
of her official schooling, a Kurdish schoolchild has to
take an oath that begins “I am Turkish, I am right, I
work hard,” only to file into a classroom with a
portrait of Atatürk staring down from the wall, where
she will hear teachers present the history of the
Ottoman Empire and emphasize that Turkey is surrounded
by enemies on all sides. She must go through the motions
of patriotic holidays several times a year: the
anniversary of the declaration of the republic (OK), the
anniversary of the death of Atatürk (well . . . fine),
the Youth and Sports holiday (seriously?), the
Sovereignty and Children’s Holiday (give me a break).
For men, compulsory military service<sup
class="refnumber">3</sup><small><span class="fnumber">3.</span>
Although Turkey has universal conscription, it also
has laws which permit one to pay nearly $10,000 to be
exempt from it. In addition, those with higher-level
education are often able to land safer positions. Thus
those who actually fight the wars are predominantly
poor.</small> is a rite of passage into manhood and a
precondition of employment. It’s common to see rowdy
street rituals in which young men are sent off to do
their military service by crowds of their closest male
friends.</p>
<p>Nationalism comes not only from the Right but also from
the Left, and the 1968 generation was no exception. In
contrast to their counterparts in other countries, this
generation resembled the old Left more than the new.
Many of the most revered veterans and martyrs of the
leftist student movement saw themselves as continuing
Atatürk’s project of national liberation from
imperialist powers. It’s telling that the most promising
move on the part of the leftist student movement
involved launching a failed coup of their own with
dissident members of the military. This powerful youth
movement occupied many universities and organized large
marches, including an infamous march in which members of
the US Navy’s 6th Fleet were <a
href="http://www.turksolu.com.tr/245/konuksever245.htm">“dumped
in the sea”</a>—playing on the mythical imagery of
Atatürk’s national liberation army dumping the Greeks
into the Aegean Sea, a fairytale often repeated to
Turkish schoolchildren. Though it was eventually crushed
by the military coup of March 12, 1971, this student
movement left a legacy of armed groups, including Deniz
Gezmiş’s THKO (Turkish People’s Liberation Army) and
Mahir Çayan’s THKP (Turkish People’s Liberation Party).<sup
class="refnumber">4</sup><small><span class="fnumber">4.</span>
Mahir was killed in a military raid during the
kidnapping of NATO technicians with the demand of
freeing Deniz and two others who would also be
executed, Hüseyin Inan and Yusuf Küpeli. Deniz was
hung by military rule.</small></p>
<p>One of the students active in the post-coup second wave
of the student movement in Turkey was Abdullah Öcalan.
Born in 1949 in the Kurdish territories of southeastern
Turkey, Öcalan came to the Turkish capital of Ankara in
1971 to study. He was impressed by the student movement,
which had gone as far as torching the vehicle of the
American ambassador. Alongside the Turkish student
movement, which left little space to talk about the
Kurds, there was a new incarnation of Kurdish socialism
on the rise, especially in the form of the Eastern
Revolutionary Cultural Houses (DDKO). Other Kurdish
groups had even started to <a
href="http://bianet.org/biamag/siyaset/151883-dr-sivan-belgeselinden-bugune-ipuclari">organize
guerillas in Kurdistan</a>. Öcalan entered this milieu
and advanced his idea of Kurdistan as an internal colony
of Turkey, quickly gaining adherents. Comprising a
nucleus of political militants, this dozen or so people
came to be known as <em>Apocular (Apoers)</em>, a term
used for the followers of Öcalan’s thought to this day.
Not all the members of this initial cadre were Kurds,
but they all believed in Kurdish liberation from the
Turkish state. </p>
<p>This core group left Ankara to foment revolution in
Kurdistan. The ideological flavor of the day, especially
with Turkey in NATO, was Marxism-Leninism; founded in
1978 at a meeting in the village of Fis, the PKK
(Partiye Karkerên Kurdistanê—Kurdish Workers Party)
modeled itself on those principles. The first manifesto
written by Öcalan that year closes by professing that
the Kurdish Revolution was a part of the global
proletarian revolution that started with the Russian
October Revolution and was growing stronger through
national liberation movements. The group acquired its
first AK–47 from Syria and started carrying out small
actions and agitating in towns in Northern Kurdistan.
Öcalan traveled constantly, presenting lengthy lectures,
sometimes day-long sessions, which were a major
component of these initial efforts. This form is still
seen in the political education sessions that all
participants in the Kurdish movement are expected to
complete, guerrillas and politicians alike.</p>
<p>This initial phase was cut short by another military
coup only ten years later, in 1980—much bloodier in its
consequences, with at least 650,000 arrested, more than
10,000 tortured, and fifty people hanged by the state.
Öcalan had fled the country shortly before, and many of
the initial cadre followed in his footsteps. Their
destination: Syria. In fact, Öcalan crossed from Suruç
in Turkey into Kobanê in Syria—two towns that have
become symbols of the Kurdish resistance, and a crossing
hundreds if not thousands of Kurds have made this past
year to join the fight against ISIS. From Syria, Öcalan
started his project in earnest and began to make contact
with the Kurdish leadership in the region, arranging
meetings with Barzani and Talabani, tribal leaders with
a bourgeois nationalist line. He arranged for the first
trainings of Kurdish guerrillas in Palestinian camps,
and later in more independently run camps in Lebanon.
The trained members of the PKK crossed back into Turkey
to begin the armed struggle announced by their first
large-scale action in August of 1984, the raids on the
towns of Eruh and Şemdinli. </p>
<p>The PKK entered the 1990s with a guerrilla army of more
than 10,000 and started launching attacks on Turkish
military positions and other state interests such as
government buildings and large-scale engineering
projects. At the same time, what had begun as a
concentrated effort by a core group of militants began
to take hold within the entire Kurdish population in the
region. Newroz 1992 was a turning point in popularizing
the Kurdish liberation struggle. </p>
<p>Newroz, celebrated until recently mostly across Iran
and Northern Iraq, represents the new year and the
welcoming of spring. Although this celebration was even
observed in central Asian Turkic communities, Turkey
rejected it; the PKK advanced the idea of Newroz as a
national holiday of resistance for Northern Kurdistan.
Since the late ’80s, March 21 has been a day of mass
gatherings, often culminating in epic clashes with the
police. Newroz of 1992 was especially brutal, as the
ruthless police state that was to devastate Northern
Kurdistan began to show its face; <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROqnwlymgEc">the
killing of fifty people during Newroz 1992 in the town
of Cizre was the opening act</a>. The ’90s in
Kurdistan saw the dirtiest of civil wars, with the state
employing paramilitary groups culled from both
ultra-nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists. To dry
out “the sea in which the guerrilla swam,” 4500 villages
were evacuated or burned to the ground. Most of the
40,000 who have died in the war in Northern Kurdistan
perished in the 1990s. </p>
<h2>Öcalan’s Prison Years and the Peace Process</h2>
<p>Öcalan’s eventual capture on February 15, 1999 is a
tale to be told, referred to by the Kurdish movement as
“The Great Conspiracy.” Threatened by Turkish military
action, the Syrian government finally told Öcalan that
his welcome was over and he had to leave. The
international cadre of the PKK scrambled to find him a
new refuge, but no country would touch him. Shuttled
between Greece and Russia, Öcalan finally found himself
under house arrest in Italy. Since members of the
European Union are not allowed to extradite prisoners to
countries where capital punishment exists, one early
morning Öcalan was shuttled to Kenya, where he was
picked up by Turkish commandos. Drugged and tied up,
Öcalan was flown back to Turkey; <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBmvB4z-cU">the
video</a> of this had a chilling effect across
Kurdistan. </p>
<p>A new phase of the Kurdish Struggle was at the door.
The PKK had to reinvent itself with its leader behind
bars and sentenced to death, the only prisoner in an
island prison about 50 miles from Istanbul. In the end,
Turkey abolished capital punishment in its quest to join
the European Union, and Öcalan’s sentence was commuted
to life in prison; this also meant that the Turkish
state could utilize him in the future. Between 1999 and
2004, the PKK declared a ceasefire, although the Turkish
state massacred closed to 800 fighters as they were
attempting to leave the country to reach their main base
in Iraq. This was the closest the PKK ever came to
decomposition, and Öcalan’s supreme authority was
challenged. But as he himself has pointed out, “The
history of the PKK is a history of purges”—the PKK cadre
centered around Öcalan survived its challengers,
including his own brother. </p>
<p>In prison, Öcalan found time to read and write as he
immersed himself in a panoply of thinkers and subjects.
Many have referenced how he studied Murray Bookchin;<sup
class="refnumber">5</sup><small><span class="fnumber">5.</span>
Although Western leftists are fascinated by the
Bookchin-Öcalan connection, it is not as if Kurdish
militants are walking around with Bookchin under their
arms in the region. Sure, Democratic Confederalism
resembles libertarian municipalities, but pointing to
Bookchin as the ideological forefather reeks of
Eurocentrism.</small> he also studied Immanuel
Wallerstein and his World Systems Analysis, as well as
texts on the history of civilization and Mesopotamia.
Under the guise of formulating his defense for the
Turkish courts as well as to the European Human Rights
Court and providing a <a
href="http://gomanweb.org/GOMANWEB2/Yeni-Dosyalar/A.Ocalan_Yol_haritasi/ocalanin_yol_haritasi.pdf">roadmap
for peace in Turkey</a>, he penned several manifestos
in which he broke with his traditional views on national
liberation, with all its historical Marxist-Leninist
baggage, and formulated more palatable ideas under his
conditions of imprisonment. These ideas were Democratic
Autonomy and Confederalism.</p>
<p>A further development shifted the context of the
Kurdish question. In late 2002, the Justice and
Development Party (AKP), headed to this day by the
despotic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won the general elections
and came to power, ending more than a decade of
dysfunctional coalition governments. Modeling itself as
what can be termed Islamic neoliberalism, the AKP set
about integrating Turkey further into the global
financial system by means of privatization, enclosure,
and incurring debt. In effect, the debt once owed to the
IMF is now held by the private sector. At the same time,
Turkey was subjected to desecularization by a creeping
fundamentalist morality<sup class="refnumber">6</sup><small><span
class="fnumber">6.</span> There is no question that
Muslims were subjected to a conservative secularism in
Turkey prior to the AKP. Erdogan’s electoral successes
capitalized on the resulting frustration.</small> and
the authoritarian rule of Erdoğan. Erdoğan presented
this project as returning Turkey to its rightful
historical place by reincarnating its Ottoman heritage
and emphasizing economic growth for the nation.</p>
<p>In May 2004, the PKK once again began a phase of armed
struggle, ending the ceasefire that had held since 1999.
Kurds endured increasing repression by the Turkish State
and cross-border operations into PKK positions in
Northern Iraq. As he consolidated power, Erdogan came to
realize that peace with the Kurds would facilitate his
plans for regional domination that included petroleum
reserves in Northern Iraq and a number of oil pipelines
running through the region. By allying himself with the
large Kurdish population, he hoped to pass a number of
constitutional changes cementing his power. To put the
plans into place, in 2009, the Turkish Intelligence
Agency started to act as an intermediary in negotiations
between the AKP and PKK representatives in a meeting in
Oslo. </p>
<p>Despite the renewed dialogue and various other
overtures, the Turkish State continued its repression
against Kurds. Starting in April 2009, the KCK (Group of
Communities in Kurdistan) trials <a
href="http://bianet.org/konu/kck-davasi">sent
thousands of people to jail</a>. Militarily, one of
the most horrific attacks was the bombing of 34 Kurdısh
peasants on December 28, 2011 in Roboski, Şırnak. The
Turkish state claimed they were members of the PKK
crossing the border, but then had to admit that they
were common villagers involved in cross-border commerce.
To this day, no one has been brought in front of a judge
for those murders, and the victims of Roboski <a
href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnmujd_roboski-katliami-imc-ozel_news">remain
fresh in many people’s minds</a>. </p>
<p>The ceasefires came and went with increasing frequency
through those years; by the summer of 2012, the PKK had
gained considerable territorial power. In this
situation, compelled by his territorial ambitions,
Erdoğan announced that meetings had been taking place
with Öcalan. Three months later, during 2013’s Newroz, a
letter from Öcalan was read in which he announced
another ceasefire. This ceasefire was relatively
long-lasting, remaining in place until July 24, 2015.
But just when it seemed like stability was returning to
Turkey, a chasm opened in Turkish reality on May 31,
2013. This was the Gezi Resistance.</p>
<h2>Gezi</h2>
<p>The Gezi Resistance was the largest and fiercest social
movement the Turkish Republic has seen <a
href="https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/03/03/18751818.php">enacted
by its non-Kurdish population</a>. A movement sparked
by <a
href="http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2013/06/19/postcards-from-the-turkish-uprising/">a
struggle against the development of a park in central
Istanbul</a> grew to an all-out national revolt
against Erdoğan and his neoliberal policies. Kurds were
present in the Gezi Resistance, too, especially after it
matured into a non-nationalist and pro-revolutionary
event. But for the first time in Turkish history, the
Kurds were not the main protagonists of an
insurrection. </p>
<p>The participation of the Kurdish movement in the Gezi
Resistance is still a controversial topic. A subtle
bitterness can be felt on both ends. Many in western
Turkey felt like the Kurds were at best too late to join
the uprising and at worst did not even want to, for fear
of jeopardizing their negotiations and peace process. In
response, Kurds in the region pointed to the lack of
meaningful solidarity from ethnic Turks during massacre
after massacre committed against them over the preceding
decades. In reality, both of these positions are
caricatures. Many Kurds participated in the clashes
around Gezi from day one; shortly after the park was
taken from the police, the Kurdish political party of
that time (BDP) set up a large encampment at its
entrance and flew flags with Öcalan’s face over Taksim
Square—a <a
href="http://www.globaluprisings.org/taksim-commune-gezi-park-and-the-uprising-in-turkey/">surreal
sight</a>. Additionally, Kurds were already engaged in
their own civil disobedience campaign against the
construction of fortress-like military bases in their
region.</p>
<p>In the run-up to the Gezi rebellion, the aboveground
wing of the Kurdish movement was in the process of
forming the HDP (Peoples’ Democracy Party) after more
than a year of consultations as the HDK (Peoples’
Democratic Congress). One of their MPs stood in front of
a bulldozer along with only a dozen or so people to
block the uprooting of the trees during the first
protests in Gezi, well before it became a massive
uprising. It is no coincidence then that when it was
time to select a logo for the HDP, they chose an image
of a tree. </p>
<p>Regardless of grudges, Gezi forever transformed
Turkey—and with it the Kurdish liberation movement’s
relationship to Turkish society in general and towards
the AKP and the peace process in particular. Many Turks
who were on the receiving end of police brutality had
the veil lifted from their eyes and were finally able to
imagine the suffering taking place in southeastern
Turkey. The media blackout of the Gezi Resistance made
it clear to the participants that they must have been
kept in the dark about what was actually transpiring in
Kurdistan. At the tail end of the Gezi resistance, when
a Kurdish youth named Medeni Yıldırım was killed
protesting the construction of a fortress-like police
station in Kurdistan, the movement saw him as one of its
own and organized solidarity demonstrations with the
Kurds.</p>
<p>This furious yet joyous rebellion, initiated by a
generation that came of age under successive unstable
coalition governments only to become adults under
Erdoğan’s decade-long iron rule, served to consolidate
hatred against Erdoğan. This generation had been defined
as apolitical or even anti-political, but in reality
they were what Şükrü Argın has identified as <a
href="http://agorakitapligi.com/yazarlar-2/yazarlar/sukru-argin/">counter-political</a>.
</p>
<h2>The Wild Youth of Kurdistan</h2>
<p>Cizre is the epicenter of a region in Northern
Kurdistan called Botan. The towering mountains in this
region are the location of many PKK camps, and the towns
at their base are some of the most rebellious. Cizre in
particular continues to play an important role to this
day. Cizre is where the 4th Strategic Struggle Period of
the PKK materialized, shifting the point of conflict
from mountainous landscapes dotted with guerrilla camps
to urban epicenters in which cells of Kurdish militants
organized. </p>
<p>In June 2013, in the town of Cizre, <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuIfo1AyNCo">a
group of 100 youth standing ceremonially in formation</a>
announced the beginning of the Revolutionary Patriotic
Youth Movement (YDG-H).<sup class="refnumber">7</sup><small><span
class="fnumber">7.</span> The word for “Patriotic”
in YDG-H is <em>yurtsever</em>, which means more
accurately “one who loves his or her homeland.”</small>
With members ranging from their early teens to well into
their twenties, this new organization coordinated urban
guerrilla activity within every major metropolitan
center inside Turkish borders. Kurdish youth began to
employ Molotov cocktails instead of stones. The recent
spike of urban combat in Kurdish towns and neighborhoods
can be attributed to this new organization. Rebellious
Kurdish youth were especially effective October 6–8,
2014, when it appeared that the city of Kobanê in Rojava
was about to fall to ISIS. With the sanction of the
official Kurdish leadership, Kurdish youth <a
href="http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/129905/koban-serhildani-gercegi-i">went
on the offensive</a>, devastating state forces. The
implicit demand in the riots was for Turkey to stop
providing logistical and material support to ISIS, and
to allow Kurdish forces passage across its borders—for
example, by allowing some heavier artillery to cross
Turkey to reach Kobanê from Iraq. After the deaths of
fifty people and the imposition of curfews in six
different cities and martial law in the Kurdish capital
of Amed, the Turkish government finally permitted the
Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga of the KDP to reach Kobanê with
their weapons.</p>
<div class="bigimage">
<p class="video-container"> </p>
<p>Announcing the formation of the YDG-H in Cizre.</p>
</div>
<p>There are great political differences between the PYD
and by extension the PKK and the KDP, the current regime
of Kurds in Northern Iraq who have had autonomy since
the first Gulf War in 1991. The PKK/PYD are fighting for
a social revolution based on self-governance,
self-defense, autonomy, and women’s liberation, with an
emphasis on ecology and a critique of all hierarchies,
most notably state power. The KDP, on the other hand, is
cultivating a national Kurdish bourgeoisie and acts as a
close ally of Erdoğan. In the 1990s, the KDP fought
together with Turkey against the PKK. Tensions remain
high.</p>
<p>The YDG-H is perhaps strongest in Cizre. After the
uprising in defense of Kobanê, Cizre entered the
national discourse again when youth rose up following
the funeral of Ümit Kurt, taking control of the three
neighborhoods of Sur, Cudi, and Nur. They were able to
create an autonomous zone within these neighborhoods
for two months by <a
href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ijq0v">digging
a total of 184 ditches around their neighborhoods</a>.
The Turkish state effectively lost control of this area
as the youth took over, burning down at least five
buildings belonging to the state or its associated
interests—including a school where many of them were
also students. </p>
<p>On a tour of Cizre, I asked some of the members of
YDG-H why they dug ditches rather than building
barricades, the traditional revolutionary method of
asserting autonomy since time immemorial. My host, Hapo,
explained that since the youth are armed with AK–47s,
rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms, the police
cannot exit their armored vehicles, but they can still
plow through barricades. But again, since they cannot
exit their vehicles, they also cannot traverse the
ditches. Hapo described how at first they used pickaxes
and shovels to excavate these ditches, but then they
commandeered construction vehicles. <em>The
construction vehicles of the municipal government,</em>
he said, sneaking a subtle smile. I realized he meant
the municipal government belonging to the aboveground
political party of the Kurdish Movement, the HDP.</p>
<p>The wild youth of Cizre are organized into “teams” of
around ten individuals. Hapo told me that once the
number of a team grows to more than thirty, they split
into smaller groups. The teams take their names form
Kurdish martyrs, often recent ones and sometimes from
Cizre itself—an eerie reproduction of martyrdom and
militancy. Teams claim their territory by tagging their
names on walls, much as graffiti crews do elsewhere
around the world. During the high point of clashes, each
neighborhood establishes a base where explosives,
Molotov cocktails, and weapons are stockpiled during the
day in preparation for the confrontations that occur at
night. The younger children are sometimes on the front
lines throwing rocks at armored police vehicles, but
they are always the ones who sound the alarm by running
through the neighborhood shouting: “The system is
coming! The enemy is coming!”</p>
<p>The division is clear for the Kurdish militants both in
the personal and the political. There is the system, and
there is struggle. Students leave the system
(universities) in order to join the struggle. The system
and capitalist social relations inevitably corrupt all
forms of romantic love; hence, real love is love for
your people, for whom you struggle. Young militants
twenty years of age are not allowed to succumb to their
carnal desires or fall in love. If they do, and they are
honest about it, they will have to provide a
self-criticism and hopefully get away with a punishment
only involving a further, perhaps collective,
self-criticism session <em>on the platform,</em> as
they say in the PKK.</p>
<p>It is clear that the PKK is at a turning point: a new
generation of militants is hitting the streets,
transforming the character of the movement. Perhaps the
formation of the YDG-H was a way for the old guard to
assert more control over the rebellious youth of the
Kurdish slums. Even if such a strategy was at play, the
youth are proving hard to control; the official
leadership is acknowledging that there are groups acting
outside of their directives. Only Öcalan himself could
reign them in. The future of the PKK and the Kurdish
movement will be determined by this rebellious youth:
will they will follow the party line lockstep, or come
up with their own ideas?</p>
<p>Ultimately, Öcalan had to intervene for the ditches to
be closed on March 2, 2015. When I brought this up to
Hapo, who consistently expressed skepticism about the
official leadership of the HDP and the peace process, he
said that Apo is the line they don’t cross, and that
their insurrection in Cizre has strengthened his
negotiating hand within prison. I was left wondering how
much of the leadership cult around Öcalan has to do with
his imprisonment, and whether the democratic structures
being put in place constitute an attempt to abolish
himself as the leader.</p>
<p>On September 4, the Turkish military and police invaded
Cizre and declared a curfew which would last for nine
days. They enforced this curfew by placing snipers on
the minarettes of mosques to shoot anyone out on the
streets. The siege was only broken under the pressure of
a march organized by Kurds from surrounding towns, which
was joined by the HDP's parliament members. When people
finally entered the town, they found 21 civillians dead,
15 of whom died on the spot after being shot; the others
died from their wounds or other illnesses because they
could not get to the hospital. Among them was a
35-day-old baby and a 71-year-old man who had attempted
to get bread during the curfew. The three rebellious
neighborhoods of Nur, Sur and Cudi were riddled with
bullets and larger ammunition. The state blamed the PKK
for the deaths, although not one member of the state
forces was injured—giving the lie to the pretense that
the neighborhoods were filled with “terrorists.” This
latest massacre in Cizre will be remembered for a long
time and fuel the Kurdish movement.</p>
<h2>The Revolution in Kurdistan</h2>
<p>Like the movements that preceded it, Gezi took great
inspiration from the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and
the Arab Spring that were able to topple dictators
swiftly. Although Erdoğan still sits on his throne in
the palace he built for himself for over a billion
dollars, Gezi was not a complete failure, as it opened a
new space for joyful revolt in Turkey’s future. Syria,
another country that rose up during the Arab Spring,
seems to have experienced a similarly bittersweet
outcome. Bashar Al Assad crushed the rebellion in the
central cities of Syria, while the periphery was thrown
into a brutal civil war that opened up the stage for
jihadist groups from Iraq and elsewhere to arrive and
eventually converge under the banner of ISIS. </p>
<p>The silver lining in Syria was supplied by the Kurds in
Rojava, who had been organizing clandestinely for
decades to support the PKK in the north and to establish
their own political and military structures. As in
Turkey, the Assad regime did not permit the expression
of the Kurdish identity or education in the mother
tongue, underscoring the similarity between Kemalism and
Baathism. A massacre in the city of Qamishlo, in which
the Syrian regime killed 52 people after a soccer riot
on March 12, 2004, is often cited as the forebear of the
Rojava revolution. The main Kurdish political party,
the PYD, is for all intents and purposes the sister
organization of the PKK; Öcalan’s portrait is ubiquitous
in Rojava.</p>
<p>The PYD and others organized under the banner of
Tev-Dem (Movement for a Democratic Society) took
advantage of the approaching instability in Syria to
declare autonomy on July 19, 2012. It was a relatively
smooth operation, as preparatory meetings had already
taken place in mosques throughout the region: more of a
takeover than a battle. They organized themselves into
three cantons running along the Turkish border,
separated from each other by primarily Arab regions.
These cantons are Afrin in the west, Kobanê in the
center, and Cizire in the East. It was almost
unbelievable that after decades of fighting, the
Kurds—now in pursuit of Democratic Confederalism—had
claimed their own territory.</p>
<p>Öcalan’s Democratic Autonomy and Confederalism is the
vision being implemented in Rojava. Autonomy, ecology,
and women’s liberation are the three central points of
emphasis. The most basic unit of this new society is the
commune. Communes exist from the neighborhood level to
workplaces including small petroleum refineries and
agricultural cooperatives. There are communes specific
to women, such as the Women’s Houses. All these communes
are organized into assemblies that go up to the cantonal
level. The current economic model in Rojava is mixed:
there are private, state, and communal properties. In
the <a
href="http://www.kurdishinstitute.be/charter-of-the-social-contract/">Rojava
Social Contract</a> (something akin to their
constitution), private property is not fully
disqualified, but it is said that there will be limits
imposed upon it. It is a society still in transition; so
far, it is much more anti-state than anti-capitalist,
but it is undeniable that there is a strong
anti-capitalist push from within. Time will show how far
the revolutionaries of Rojava are willing to take it. </p>
<p>The revolution in Rojava is a women’s revolution; the
Kurdish movement for liberation places women’s
liberation above anything else. In addition to having
their own army and autonomous women-only organizations,
almost every organizational structure from the municipal
governments to the armed PKK formations is run by
co-chairmanship of a man and a woman. Quotas are imposed
for memberships and other positions, so that equal
participation from both genders is ensured. March 8,
International Women’s Day, is taken very seriously by
Kurdish women, and even more so now with the women’s
resistance exemplified by the YPJ (Women’s division of
the People’s Defense Units—the YPG). In his writings,
Öcalan recognizes patriarchy and the separation of
genders as the first social problem in history. Perhaps
paradoxically, many Kurdish women militants attribute
their liberation to Öcalan and his thought.</p>
<h2>The Fighters</h2>
<p>Even though the Kurdish seizure of power in Rojava went
smoothly, the honeymoon was brief. After capturing a
large amount of military machinery from Mosul on June
10, 2014, ISIS pushed north in Iraq and in Syria. With
its advance came stories of massacres, enslavement,
displacement, and rape. A month and a half later, in
August, ISIS reached the Yazidi population, a non-Muslim
Kurdish speaking community near the Sinjar Mountains,
where they killed thousands and displaced near 290,000
people, 50,000 of whom were <a
href="http://tr.sputniknews.com/ortadogu/20150804/1016919391.html">stranded
on mountains without food or water</a>. ISIS fighters
seemed especially keen on wiping out this population
belonging to a pre-Islamic faith with many animistic
aspects, who had been persecuted for centuries as devil
worshipers, withstanding more than seventy massacres in
their history. The Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government
lacked the agility to intervene with its peshmerga
forces—in contrast to the PKK, who mobilized rapidly,
traveling across the country from its main base on the
Iraqi-Iranian border in Qandil. In coming to the rescue
of the Yazidi and arming and training this population
for self-defense, the PKK gained credibility in the
region run by Barzani and his KDP. Despite the tensions
between regional Kurdish forces, all the stories and
images ISIS circulated through social media had the
effect of unifying the once disparate Kurds, as the
PKK/YPG joined with the KDP in an uneasy alliance.</p>
<p>Of all of the Kurdish armed forces, the YPG is the
newest. The people’s defense forces were formed shortly
after the revolution, and their numbers quickly swelled
with volunteers joining to defend Kurdish territories
from ISIS. This wartime mobilization is also supported
by conscription, which has started to create tension
among young people who are not interested in fighting or
who say they have already done their military service
with the Assad Regime. But beyond this simmering point,
in places such as Kobanê, the YPG and the YPJ are
comprised of people defending their own towns and
cities. </p>
<p>Kobanê became ground zero in the resistance as ISIS
closed in little by little, taking villages on the
outskirts of the city thanks to their recently obtained
military superiority. ISIS was especially keen to
capture Kobanê, as it occupies the most direct route
between the Turkish border and the de facto ISIS capital
of Raqqa. In addition, Kobanê was also the launching
point of the revolution in Rojava. The YPG and YPJ
offered a heroic resistance with the little firepower
they had, mostly small arms supported by
rocket-propelled grenades and the higher-caliber Russian
<em>Dushkas</em> mounted on the backs of pickup trucks.
As they retreated further and further into the city
proper of Kobanê, the YPG and YPJ reached near-celebrity
status, thanks in part to the West’s romanticization and
objectification of YPJ women fighting the bearded hordes
of ISIS. Everyone from prominent leftist academics to <em>Marie
Claire</em> magazine, who featured the YPJ (to the
snickering of YPJ members in Kobanê), started singing
the praises of the Kurdish fighters. </p>
<p>One has to admit the neatness of the contrast on the
Rojava battlefield: a feminist army courageously
resisting misogynist bands of fundamentalists.
Apparently, many fighters within ISIS believe that if a
woman kills them, they will not enter heaven as glorious
martyrs. This belief is known by the members of the YPJ
and used in a form of psychological warfare on the front
lines. The women of the YPJ make it a point to sound
their shrill battle cry, a well-known Kurdish
exclamation of rage or suffering called <em>zılgıt,</em>
before they enter into battle with ISIS. They are making
sure the jihadists know they are about to be sent to
hell. </p>
<p>Hundreds of Kurds from Turkey crossed the border to
join the YPG forces defending Kobanê alongside PKK
guerrilla units that moved into the region. Turkish
leftists also started making the journey, becoming
martyrs themselves. In one case, Suphi Nejat Ağırnaslı,
a sociology student at one of the most prestigious
universities in Istanbul, influenced in his own writings
by the French journal <em>Tiqqun,</em> went to Rojava
only <a href="http://hayalgucuiktidara.org/">to be
martyred</a> after a few weeks. The nom de guerre he
had chosen was Paramaz Kızılbaş, a synthesis of the name
of a well-known Armenian socialist revolutionary
executed by the Ottomons and the Alevi faith,
historically repressed in Turkey. This exemplifies the
character of solidarity in the region: a Turkish
revolutionary, assuming the name of an Armenian one,
going to defend the Kurdish revolution. </p>
<p>As reported in the Western media, many Americans and
Europeans also made the journey to join the ranks of
fighters in Rojava. Some integrated into the YPG or YPJ;
others joined other units, such as the United Freedom
Forces (BÖG), <a
href="http://www.radikal.com.tr/dunya/kobanide_savasan_turkiyeli_solculara_isidciler_ne_sordu-1282919">comprised
of communists and anarchists</a>. Apart from
international revolutionaries arriving in solidarity
with the Kurdish struggle for liberation, there are also
ex-military or military wannabes from the UK or the US
who believe that the war against Islamic extremists that
they were tricked out of by corrupt British and American
governments has finally arrived. Some of these
internationals have started to warm to the political
philosophy of Democratic Autonomy as practiced by their
comrades-in-arms; others quickly got out, realizing they
were <a
href="http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/christian-fighters-abandon-anti-isis-kurd-group-because-1687800274">among
“a bunch of reds.”</a></p>
<p>The international revolutionaries fighting alongside
their Kurdish comrades will return to their homelands
with strategic experience in the battlefield and a
renewed sense of inspiration and perspective on what is
possible when people commit themselves to liberation.</p>
<p>In the middle of fall 2014, it appeared that Kobanê was
about to fall. Solidarity demonstrations were held
globally. Riots shook Turkey to pressure Erdoğan to stop
supporting ISIS. In the meantime, meetings were held
between the regional powers to figure out a response.
YPG members in Kobanê recount that it appeared to be a
matter of hours before the city would fall; they
retreated to a central part of the city, gathering their
ammunition to be destroyed rather than captured by ISIS.
It was at that moment, rather than a month earlier when
ISIS had not even entered the city, that the
much-promised US and French airstrikes finally began in
earnest.</p>
<p>Beyond a doubt, without that aerial support, the
minimally-armed YPG forces would not have emerged
victorious. The fact that the bombardment came at the
very last possible minute shows that, aside from
whatever backroom negotiations and deals were taking
place, NATO countries did not want an ISIS victory; but
at the same time, they apparently wanted the Kurds to
inherit a completely destroyed city. </p>
<p>NATO assistance in the Kurdish self-defense is a touchy
subject, to say the least—especially considering that
the capture of Öcalan was understood as a NATO
operation. When this reality is brought up among YPG
members in Kobanê, they first joke about “Comrade
Obama.” Pushed further, they point out that while the US
and Israel are bad, they aren’t nearly as bad as the
Arab Regimes. But really, at the end of the day, it is
simply a matter of survival. Ideally, the YPG would be
able to obtain the necessary weaponry to mount their own
defense; but lacking that, if the question is between
ideological purity and survival, the choice seems clear.</p>
<h2>Kobanê</h2>
<p>Immediately after its liberation from ISIS, Kobanê was
a war-torn ruin in which most buildings had lost their
upper floors to artillery fire. Aerial bombardment by
coalition forces also did significant damage. Mahmud, a
friend and comrade from Kobanê, showed me around the
city he had never left in his life; his eyes filled with
tears as he remembered all his friends who died in those
streets. We were walking in a ghost town where the only
people we saw were fighters or the small number of
holdouts who had stayed behind or just returned from
refugee camps in Turkey. They could be seen digging
through the rubble, trying to salvage anything from the
wreckage. Unexploded munitions and booby traps left
behind by ISIS continued to kill even after their
departure, with at least ten dead in the first two weeks
following the city’s liberation. Despite the high toll
paid by the Kurds—the number of fighters killed was
above 2000—there was a sense of excitement and victory
in the air, as news came in daily of ISIS units being
pushed back further and further. </p>
<p>Mahmud is one of three brothers, all of whom are
members of the YPG in one role or another. Like
practically all of the YPG who have been through the
conflict, they have shrapnel in their bodies and hearing
loss from explosions and gunfire. An experienced
machinist by training, he found a role in the ranks as a
gunsmith—not only fixing weapons, but also manufacturing
new designs, especially long-range sniper rifles. Yet he
was only able to play this part until ISIS entered the
city limits of Kobanê. After that, everyone took up arms
to fight, including his 13-year-old shop assistant.</p>
<p>Stories of heroism are everywhere, from the sniper who
blew up an ISIS tank by shooting his round into its
muzzle to others who gallantly climbed on top of another
tank to throw a grenade down its hatch. Stories pile
upon stories as Mahmud takes me through the city
streets, narrating the months-long battle of Kobanê.
During one stretch, he didn’t sleep for five days
straight—not only because they were under consistent
attack, but also because he was so afraid. He said that
at one point he wanted to die just so it would be over.
From his platoon of about a hundred people, only four
are still alive; we spend many hours looking at pictures
of his fallen comrades on his phone. Many of the YPG
have smartphones, including Mahmud and his brother Arif,
who would be reprimanded by their commander for checking
Facebook while they were engaged in trench warfare. His
brother Arif was a sniper. But he left the YPG after the
trauma of shooting a comrade by mistake.</p>
<p>The stench of death was strong in some neighborhoods,
with bodies still under the wreckage and the corpses of
ISIS fighters rotting alongside roads littered with
abandoned tanks destroyed by the YPG. To prevent the
spread of disease, the bodies of ISIS fighters were
usually burned; but the sheer number of corpses made it
impossible to deal with all of them. Even surrounded by
all this death and carnage, joyful moments were common,
perhaps due to the news of advances arriving from the
front. We spent our evenings hunting chickens with M16s
for dinner, then smoking <em>nargile</em> after <em>nargile,</em>
singing around a fire, waiting for the sun to rise over
the Turkish border in the distance.</p>
<h2>National Liberation from Borders</h2>
<p>Surreal as it was for US planes to assist radical
leftist fighters, the aerial bombardment started to
shift the tide towards the YPG as they took back
territory from ISIS bit by bit, eventually pushing them
to the western bank of the Euphrates and coming within
40 km of Raqqa. On July 1, 2015, joint operations
between the Free Syrian Army and the YPG liberated Tell
Abyad from ISIS. The significance of this was multifold.
First, this was the most coordination to occur yet
between the FSA and the YPG, perhaps appeasing some of
the concerns of Syrian revolutionaries who regard the
Kurds as pro-Assad. Second, an important ISIS border
access point into Turkey was captured, <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-driven-out-of-syrian-town-of-tal-abyad-by-kurds-and-rebels-near-turkish-border-10322472.html">closing
a corridor they had been maintaining into Syria and
Raqqa</a>. But perhaps most significantly of all, the
taking of Tell Abyad connected the Eastern canton of
Cizire with Kobanê, creating an uninterrupted stretch of
Rojava and breaking the isolation of Kobanê for the
first time. </p>
<p>The Kurds are one of the many casualties of borders
crossing the peoples of the world—in their case, the
borders drawn by Sykes-Picot at the end of the First
World War. These borders between Turkey, Syria, Iraq,
and Iran are the ones the Kurds are attempting to
remove, and it is this experience that informs their
critique of borders everywhere. The Kurds are often
mentioned as a people without a nation-state; the PKK
led a national liberation struggle for decades, and the
Kurdish liberation struggle can still be classified as
such—but not in the classical sense. It is almost like
national liberation updated for the 21st century. Both
in Turkey and in Syria, the Kurdish movement is trying
to provide a common fighting platform for all oppressed
peoples, leftist revolutionaries, and others—a
collective of peoples they often refer to as “the forces
of democracy.” This platform resembles the
intercommunalism of Huey Newton in that it promotes
solidarity and common action while preserving the
autonomy of each constituent.</p>
<p>This is evident in the politics of the HDP and, more
significantly, in the self-governance structures in
Rojava—especially in the eastern canton of Cizire, where
Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrians live together, participate
in communal-self governance, and mobilize fighting
forces within the YPG. For a region plagued by ethnic
division, the Kurdish proposition is a third way. This
is how they refer to their project to contrast it with
the choice between ISIS and the Assad regime on one side
of the border, and between the AKP and Turkish
nationalism on the other.</p>
<p>This proposition presents democratic modernity as an
alternative to capitalist modernity and self-governance
via confederalism as an alternative to the nation-state.
The Kurds are not the only ones attempting to break the
borders of the Middle East. In addition to ISIS who has
successfully redrawn the map, Erdoğan also has his own
ambitions under the rubric of the “Great Middle East
Project,” in which Turkey would assume its rightful role
(neo-Ottomanism) as the dominant regional power. Already
today, most of the foreign business in Barzani’s Kurdish
Region in Northern Iraq is Turkish capital. A strong PYD
and PKK in the region would be an obstacle to this
project.</p>
<h2>Elections and a Massacre</h2>
<p>For thirteen years, the AKP has won overwhelming
victories in Turkish national elections, holding power
as a single party. The HDP was able to harness
anti-Erdoğan sentiment with a clever political strategy
during the run-up to the historic elections of June 7,
2015. The Turkish electoral system has a 10% threshold:
unless a party receives 10% of the national vote or
above, it cannot enter parliament, and votes cast for it
are effectively void. To sidestep this, the Kurdish
movement has usually run independent candidates who,
after winning a seat, would become party members. While
this run-around strategy helped to get about thirty-five
representatives into parliament, receiving more than 10%
of the vote would secure at least twice as many
positions.</p>
<p>The election of June 7 presented the possibility to
displace the AKP and sabotage Erdoğan’s ambitions of
increasing his powers by means of constitutional changes
that would make him the ultimate patriarch of Turkey.
Selahattin Demirtaş, the youthful and charismatic
co-chairperson of the HDP, made “We won’t let him become
president!” one of his main campaign slogans. The hatred
of Erdoğan that had culminated in the Gezi uprising
intersected with discontent over Erdoğan’s support of
ISIS and enthusiasm inspired by the resistance of
Kobanê. Consequently, the HDP secured 13% of the
national vote and 80 MPs, creating a situation in which
no single party could form a government by itself and
necessitating that a coalition form to assume power.</p>
<p>The relationship between the armed PKK and the
electoral HDP is delicate yet complementary. The HDP
must strike a difficult balance: they receive their
legitimacy in the eyes of the Kurdish population as the
aboveground wing of the armed struggle, but they also
need to distance themselves occasionally in order to
play the political game successfully on the national
scale. Erdoğan and his cronies, who are shrewd and aware
of this, stoke the fires wherever they can by pitting
the HDP against the PKK and both of them against Öcalan,
whom they portray as more levelheaded—an easy task, when
communication with him is controlled by the state and no
one has heard from him in five months. The HDP is in a
precarious position as a legal and unarmed political
party often subject to the same repression as PKK
members. </p>
<p>Following the election, no one could work out how to
create a coalition government. As everyone’s attention
was focused on the electoral stalemate, Erdoğan made it
clear that he would push for early elections to give the
population another opportunity to bring the AKP to
power. Then came <a
href="http://bianet.org/english/2015/7/22">the
massacre in Suruç</a>.</p>
<p>It was just another delegation of young leftists from
Istanbul to Kurdistan. This one was organized by the
Socialist Youth Associations Federation with the goal of
giving a hand in the rebuilding of Kobanê, bringing toys
to refugee children, and planting trees in the region.
On the morning of July 20, 2015, SGDF organized a press
conference at the Amara Cultural Center, the de facto
convergence center for volunteers traveling to assist
with the refugee camps. In the midst of this, a suicide
bomber killed 34 people. This massacre shocked the whole
country, setting in motion a downward spiral of events.
Two days later, Erdoğan cut a deal with the US to allow
them use of the Turkish Incirlik Air Base against ISIS
in exchange for their tacit support of a new campaign of
annihilation against the PKK. Seizing upon the murder of
two police officers the day after the bombing for
justification (a retaliation later explicitly disowned
by the official channels of the PKK), the Turkish
government began a massive air campaign against PKK
positions in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. In
addition, raids took place across the country, resulting
in more than 2000 arrests and continuing to this day. So
belligerent were the actions of the AKP that they even
arrested one of the injured from the socialist
delegation bombed in Suruç. </p>
<p>The AKP claimed that it was going after all the
extremist terrorists in the country: the PKK, ISIS, and
the Marxist-Leninist group DHKP-C (The Revolutionary
Peoples Liberation Party - Front). Of these three, the
DHKP-C does not hold a candle to the others in terms of
numbers or effectiveness; it seems they were thrown in
for good measure. While the AKP and Erdoğan claim in the
media that they are also going after ISIS, in reality
this is nothing but window dressing. Of the 2544
arrested by the end of August, <a
href="http://www.ihd.org.tr/21-temmuz-28-agustos-2015-tarihleri-arasinda-tespit-edilebilen-ihlaller/">less
than 5%</a> were arrested on allegations of belonging
to ISIS, and many of those were later released. Of the
bombing campaign <a
href="http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/yazi/133708/akp-kdp-rudaw-ve-45-ucakla-kurdistana-bombardiman">totaling
approximately 400 airstrikes</a>, <a
href="http://www.evrensel.net/haber/256651/suriyedeki-isid-mevzileri-havadan-vuruldu">only
three targeted ISIS</a>. These airstrikes are
targeting PKK camps, especially the central one of
Qandil—but civilians have also been killed, such as ten
<a
href="http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/140861/akp-kandilde-katliam-yapti">in
the nearby Iraqi village of Zelgele</a>.</p>
<p>Although the Suruç bombing targeted the Kurdish
movement, it is being used as an excuse to decimate it.
As of this writing at the beginning of September, <a
href="http://www.ihd.org.tr/21-temmuz-28-agustos-2015-tarihleri-arasinda-tespit-edilebilen-ihlaller/">according
to the Turkish Human Rights Association</a> more than
47 civilians and 47 PKK guerrillas have been killed. The
PKK is hitting back hard wherever it can: as of now, at
least 92 policemen or soldiers have been killed, and 24
officials of the state or security forces kidnapped.</p>
<p>In response to this repression, Kurdish towns and
cities rose up with demonstrations and riots in every
single town for many nights in a row. The response by
the state was brutal; media pundits observed that the
country had regressed to the bloody 1990s. While this
was certainly the case from the standpoint of the state,
the Kurdish movement has evolved: Kurds in more than
sixteen towns took the initiative of declaring autonomy
from the state and began to emphasize their right to
self-defense. These declarations were met with more
brutality and arrests. Especially in the towns of <a
href="http://www.imctv.com.tr/silopide-keskin-nisanci-endisesi/">Silopi</a>
and <a
href="http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/haber/143340/cizrede-biri-cocuk-2-kisi-yasamini-yitirdi">Cizre</a>,
the state responded by using snipers to go after
children and citizens who weren’t even directly involved
in the conflicts. House raids and extrajudicial
executions soon followed. Bombings of the countryside
have resulted in catastrophic forest fires, inflicting
yet another form of anguish on the region. Many towns in
the region are still declared special security zones, a
designation akin to martial law; curfews and operations
by special forces are widespread. </p>
<p>A new early election has been called for November 1,
2015. It is already clear that the run-up to the next
election will result in escalations from the AKP and
Erdoğan, who has shown that he is willing to do anything
to hold on to power, even thrust the country into civil
war. It is possible that he will use his executive
powers to postpone the election for a year on the
grounds that there is a security risk for elections to
take place. The successes of the Kurds on both sides of
the Turkish-Syrian border, their smart political choices
and heroic fighting maneuvers have pushed the AKP and
Erdoğan to a breaking point. If the current drive for a
truly fascist police state is any indication, his fall
from power will be as brutal as his reign.</p>
<p>I am inspired by the perseverance of the Kurds who are
attempting to break out of stale leftist dogmas while
still insisting on revolution. The transformation of a
social movement of millions does not occur overnight,
but they have begun to implement new social relations
and structures that aim at abolishing the state and
other hierarchies, such as men over women or humans over
non-humans. From my observations, I believe that this
stubborn multigenerational struggle has the potential to
transform the world’s most sectarian region into
autonomous zones of cooperation and solidarity. As long
as they are able to survive ISIS and the Turkish State
and continue constructing their revolution from below,
they will have much more to teach those of us fighting
for liberation elsewhere. </p>
<div class="bigimage"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.freedomarchives.org">www.freedomarchives.org</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>