Are we standing by as spectators as a revolution is being strangled? Condemn Turkey's attack on Afrin and support Rojava's revolution!---Part 2

Today in Afrin

The Turkish state has been at war with the Turkish people for generations. In 1930, 1937, 1955, 1977, 1978, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2011, 2015, and 2017 there were massacres and pogroms instigated by the Turkish state or the “deep state” or their paramilitary and religious accomplices. The PKK came of age in these later conflicts, but it has not been alone in resisting repression and engaging in the strategies and tactics needed in times of undeclared civil war. The heroic Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, the Socialist Party of the Oppressed, and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey are some of the legitimate resistance forces. Mass rebellions by political prisoners in Turkey in 1996, and since 2000 and in 2006 and 2007 have ended with the deaths of well over 125 people, most of whom died from horrific state violence, self-immolation, or on hunger strike. Amnesty International tells us that conditions in Turkish prisons remain terrible, and at one recent point Turkey led the world in the number of imprisoned journalists. The most reliable reports come from the Human Rights Association (IHD), which is a target of the Turkish state. IHD has documented that 2016 was a particularly bad year for human rights in Turkey.

The legitimate liberal opposition in Turkey, such as it is, and the followers of the cleric Fethullah Gülen and many innocent people charged with being their accomplices also fill Turkey’s jails now after the 2016 coup attempt egged on by the deep state and the Gülenists. Turkey’s President Erdoğan has effectively married parts of the secretive deepstate to the state apparatus and to his clerical-fascist movement. He has done so as a servant of the major banks and financial institutions and the most reactionary sectors of heavy industry and the political forces which look to Iran or to the Gulf States for leadership.

Women prisoners who survived repression

The U.S. and the western powers have created a narrative which says that Turkish intervention in Syria is justified by supposed links between the PKK and the PYD and that Turkey does not want a united Kurdish state or enclave on its border which can agitate and work for the liberation of Kurds in North Kurdistan (eastern and southeastern Turkey). This narrative is an entirely false and opportunistic one, but it is the one you hear on American media every day. The PKK is a liberation movement and a social system, not a terrorist organization. The PYD operates independently. Neither the PKK nor the PYD want a state; they both want a democratic and federative system which includes the region’s Kurds, Arabs, Syrians, Syriacs and Assyrians, Turkmen, Yezidis, Armenians and others on equal terms and advances the rights of women and all minorities. The Turkish government knows this and has set about attempting to strangle the revolution while militarizing North Kurdistan (eastern and southeastern Turkey) and seeking to reignite a civil war there. The HDP and the Left and the Kurdish people and the powerful women’s movements are the first targets of these attempts, but they extend to smashing unions, stopping the advances made by LGBTQIA+ people, closing the books on the genocides the Turkish state has carried out in the past, and assassinating activists in western Europe. It is disingenuous for the Turkish government and its American supporters to label the PKK and the PYD as “terrorists” under these conditions.

Past American administrations, and now the Trump administration, have found the Kurds to be helpful allies when needed. U.S. forces have used, or cooperated with, Kurdish fighters in Syria against ISIS and have relied on these fighters to win ground and time. Kurds and their allies were set up to be massacred in Halabja in Southern Kurdistan (Iraq) in 1988. The massacres in Sivas (1993) and Roboski (2011) and Suruc and Ankara (2015) likely happened with American knowledge and/or participation at some levels. Meanwhile, American, Turkish, and western European interests have cooperated to make sure that Kurdish self-government in Iraq is either derailed or corrupted and reactionary and opposed to Rojava’s revolution. The German government seemed to support human rights in Turkey for a time, but those are German tanks attacking Afrin today.

The Russians sought half-heartedly to push negotiations between the revolutionary cantons and the regime in Damascus; today they are cooperating with Turkey in the attack on Afrin. The Americans knew in advance of the attacks and likely okayed them, doing nothing for human rights in Turkey and doing nothing for the Kurds who helped beat ISIS in Syria. No government has come to the aid of the people in Qandil, constantly under Turkish attack, for that matter, and no one besides the PKK and the organizations affiliated with PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party) and KJAR (Eastern Kurdistan Free Women’s Organization) assists the oppressed Kurds in Iran (Rojhilat, Eastern Kurdistan).

Halabja

Are the Kurds naïve or are they regional agents of imperialism? No. Several years ago, when it looked as if the HDP would enter the Turkish parliament with cautious support from some western European powers, there were moments of great optimism. The PKK withdrew its fighters, disarmament and a peace treaty were attempted, the focus was on Rojava’s revolution, and the Obama administration might have negotiated a deal which got the leading party in Iraqi Kurdistan, the PYD, and the Turkish government talking. The Turkish government broke the deal and made progress impossible. Whatever suspicions or reticence regarding American and western European intentions existed at the time, the immediate threats posed by ISIS and Turkey and the gangs sponsored by Turkey weighed heavier on the Kurds and other progressive forces. The United States and Germany have different interests in the region, and the Americans settled for an increased military presence and attempted to push the revolutionary forces into an alliance with others closer to the U.S. position. That alliance has had certain immediate benefits, but it has a shelf life.

The Kurds exploited contradictions between the leding imperialist powers. The Iranian and Russian governments pursued their own divergent aims, and both played a double game of seeming to oppose Turkey’s interests in Syria while influencing Turkey’s internal affairs for the worse. The revolutionary minority in the region has had to rely on the people, a barely equipped army, and its ability to influence (rather than command) events elsewhere. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is one force willing to help today. The PUK has moved under the pressure of events from the center to the left. The Russian, Iranian, Egyptian, Swedish, French, and U.S. governments all state their concerns or opposition to Turkish state imperialism, but their lack of action on behalf of the revolutionary cantons and human rights in Turkey tells the real story. Mexico, Brazil, and some other governments and mainstream political forces in Europe and Latin America oppose the Turkish incursions. Volunteers have come from all over the world to join the revolutionary forces, including the U.S., but what is most needed is political solidarity organizing everywhere on behalf of the Kurdish-led revolution.

The path to peace in the region leads through the Kurdish people being able to hold a fully representative Kurdish national congress, Turkey freeing Öcalan and all progressive political prisoners, a Turkish troop withdrawal from Syria and from all Kurdish regions and a standing-down of military activity in North Kurdistan (eastern and southeastern Turkey), free and fair elections in Turkey which allow the HDP to campaign and elect representatives, the lifting of all laws in Turkey which join the state and religious institutions and which protect the deep state, the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Turkey, an end to genocide denial in Turkey, an end to Turkish-Israeli and Turkish-Azeri power relations, an end to compulsory military service in Turkey, and an end to all laws which oppress women and minorities within Turkey. Turkey must pay reparations for the genocides. The corrupt Iraqi Kurdish government should step down and new elections should be held, and the revenues from the oil produced and sold in this region should benefit, in the first place, the communities living in the Iraqi Kurdish region and in Iraq. Rojava must be given the resources needed to rebuild and to protect itself without strings attached. The Yezidi population must be guaranteed safety and social resources and the right to live where they choose. Negotiations between the PYD and the regime in Damascus should take place under peaceful and honorable conditions, and Rojava must be represented by the PYD at all international and regional conferences. The PYD must be recognized as a legitimate partner by all concerned parties. The attacks against Qandil must cease and the Qandil region must receive protection and guarantees for its existence. The Iranian regime must guarantee full civil and human rights to the Kurds and release all Kurdish political prisoners.

Turkey has no free mainstream media. That means that the American press, which approaches every world situation with American interests at heart and most often ignores Third World countries and complexities, must depend on so-called “experts” who are employed by universities and in think tanks. Many of these people have their jobs precisely because they are adept at carrying the Turkish line; many are paid to assemble selected “facts” in order to prove that there was no genocide of Armenians and others during times of Ottoman crises in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and to justify Turkish claims in the Kurdish and Syrian regions. And so it is that we hear daily the lies that the PYD is an offshoot of the PKK, that the PKK is a terrorist organization, and that the PYD represents a threat to the authoritarian Turkish state. They make the mistake of describing the cleric Fethullah Gülen, who now resides in Pennsylvania, as a moderate and ignore the Gülenist terrorist organization (FETO) and the fact that the conflict between President Erdoğan and Gülen is a fight between political cousins. The Gülenist terrorists and the Grey Wolves, a violent fascist organization with a well-developed intelligence service, represent real threats to society but somehow escape the attention of American media.

We rcommend that American readers visit the YPG site, the ANF website, JINNEWS, and Bianet for news. It's necessary to stay informed, but action is needed as well. Boycott Turkey and Turkish products, protest at the embassies and consulates, make your views known to American politicians, and make supporting Rojava and the social movements within Turkey part of your peace and justice work. Take up the slogan of "Jin, Jiyan, Azadi!" ("Women, Life, Freedom!") and make it your own.  

Will Afrin and Rojava’s revolution survive the Turkish attack and the apparent U.S., Russian, Iranian, and European government’s complicity in that attack? Turkey has announced that its forces will turn east after completing their attack on Afrin. Today the news is bleak, but the invader is taking more casualties than American media admits and this has become a costly misadventure for them whatever the final outcome. A Turkish loss in Rojava could turn things upside in Turkey. In the past the PYD could take advantage of the contradictions between the imperialist powers, but the differences between the criminal Trump and the criminal Erdoğan in Turkey are perhaps not so great.

It will indeed be great shame on us if Rojava’s revolution perishes before most Americans have even heard of it.

Are we standing by as spectators as a revolution is being strangled? Condemn Turkey's attack on Afrin and support Rojava's revolution!---Part 1

Are we standing by as spectators as a revolution is being strangled? Turkey is violating international law by crossing borders and attacking the Afrin region, a canton associated with revolutionary Rojava.

An optimistic map of the region

I thought that people in the U.S. might be forgiven for not paying more attention to events in Turkey, North Kurdistan, Western Kurdistan, and northern Syria. In fact, when we name these regions and when we say “Rojava”---the name of the most advanced center of the Kurdish revolution in the region---we get blank stares. The U.S. media is complicit in confusing people, partnering with the Trump administration, Turkey’s supporters, the German government, and others to make Turkey’s most recent violations of borders and attacks on the revolutionary enclaves about terrorism and not human rights and simple justice. People in the U.S. enjoy the privilege of not having to understand world geography, regional histories which are not our own, and the real human costs of imperialism and intervention. We look away, we resist learning and knowing because knowledge compels us to act and that means confronting the system here. The crises we live with often prevent us from understanding the dimensions of crises elsewhere, but if we are not about the business of understanding how oppression and exploitation here connect in systemic and deliberate ways with an international picture then we will forever be waist deep in quicksand, or we will go under.

So let’s start with some basics. Rojava is a revolutionary enclave located in what is often called northern Syria. More properly, Rojava should be understood as being made up of three cantons: Afrin Canton in the west, Kobane Canton in the center, and Cizre Canton in the east. These cantons comprise much of what should be understood as being Western Kurdistan. They border Turkey but they are not themselves contiguous.

Rojava has been attempting to build a revolutionary and democratic society for almost six years. In this sense “revolutionary and democratic” means decentralized, women-led and women-inspired, socialistic, based on regional cooperative models, and fluid. Popular organizations carry out the tasks normally performed by governments. Women have their own institutions, including a military structure. The turning point for Rojava’s advanced revolution came in 2014 and 2015 with the desperate Battle for Kobane. The poorly armed and isolated militias defeated ISIS and retook control of the region. From there, the peoples’ armed forces attacked other ISIS-held regions where Kurds formed majorities and, with varying success, established some forms of popular or revolutionary power. The Democratic Union Party (PYD) provided political leadership while the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) provided the needed military force.

The ideology and inspiration for Rojava’s revolution came in part from the writings of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Öcalan has been held as a political prisoner in Turkey since 1999. He was captured through the cooperation of the United States and Israel and, perhaps, the German and other governments. He has been held incommunicado for several years now, perhaps because he is one of the few people who could broker and help negotiate peace in the region. The Turkish government understands that Öcalan is a powerful symbol and uses his isolation and imprisonment as a means of humiliating the Kurds and prolonging war conditions.

Abdullah Öcalan

When last heard from, Öcalan was advocating views which are closer to forms of cooperative and ecological anarchism than they are to national liberation, Marxism, or historic socialism. He has worked out a sophisticated theory of Jineology (a “science of women”) and Democratic Confederalism, both of which are made real in Rojava and in the revolutionary Kurdish movements. The possibility that these ideas might spread through the Middle East and into other regions terrifies the ruling classes. Öcalan and his movement remain revolutionary despite their ideological proximity to anarchism. Murat Karayılan, Çiğdem Doğu, Kasım Engin, Besê Hozat, and Cemil Bayık are among the capable revolutionary leaders associated with the PKK and the Kurdistan Communities Union. We get the sense that in the last three years an ideological search has been underway which again centers feminism, socialism, self-reliance, and military preparedness. More attention is being given to conditions in Iran (Rojhilat, Eastern Kurdistan), particularly to the conditions of women and political prisoners there. The movements in Turkey and North Kurdistan must, on the other hand, center on democratic struggles at the municipal and regional levels, on protecting political activists and leadership, on labor and women’s and youth struggles, and on opposition to the war.

The Kurdish movement marks particular forms of revolutionary progress. First, it is inspired by, and inspires, a women’s liberation movement. It has created the space for all minorities to step forward. It has at times united Kurds who are divided by religion, politics, language, region, and class (peasantry, working-class, small capitalists, or professionals). It has spoken well for the Kurdish people, who really are tired of wartime conditions in Turkey, Iran, and in Syria. Through the People’s Democratic Party (HDP, see below) in Turkey the movement has united with labor, women, youth, LGBTQIA+ people, other national minorities, much of the left, and citizen’s movements and won representation for them and with them. The Kurdish people have paid for this progress with their lives.

There is no doubt that the Turkish government oppresses and exploits the Kurdish minority and others. The PKK was formed as a liberation movement in the late 1970s. It is unfairly and unreasonably described as “terrorist” by western powers, although these governments have frequently used Kurds for their own ends and have at times sought cooperation with people close to the PKK. In fairness, the PKK is today more of a social system than a party, and its fighters are centered in the Qandil Mountains near the Iraq-Iran border. Progressive and Kurdish interests in Turkey and North Kurdistan are best represented by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey and the Confederation of Public Employees' Trade Unions and associated peoples’ organizations. HDP has made great progress since its founding in 2012, but today its leadership and activists are facing violence and terrible repression as the Turkish government militarizes the country, enables the increasing exploitation and oppression of workers and national minorities, supports the armed religious fanatics in the region, and launches interventions in Syria. For a time the Turkish government actively supported ISIS. The Turkish government is trying to recreate something from the Ottoman past by creating a “security zone” which would take Kurdish, Syrian, and Iraqi land and resources and provoke additional conflicts.

Iran and the Western Left: What is our primary task?

Once again, we are assailed by a pointless debate on the left over whether the recent protests in Iran comprise a ‘genuine’ popular uprising or another imperialist-backed ‘color revolution’. Such debates highlight the national chauvinism that is deeply held in the thinking of many western leftists on both sides. Left unsaid is the fact that the Iranian people do not need our approval to manage their own affairs. It is not the task of western leftists to determine the proper course for Iran or any other foreign land. It is our task to fight imperialism, and the best way to do so is to organize the working class in our own countries. Does this mean we should ignore imperialism’s crimes in around the world? It does not. However, rather than attempting the highly complex and ultimately pointless task of determining the precise character of movements and organizations in countries thousands of miles away, we need only apply a simple principle: national self-determination. We ought to oppose any and all interference by our own imperialist governments in the affairs of other nations, and more importantly, we must recognize and respect the ability of other peoples to govern themselves. The development of working class power in the imperialist countries is the only way to decisively defeat imperialism and safeguard the independent development of the repressed nations. We should turn all our energies toward that task rather than second guessing the working class in other countries.