The way to deal with IS terrorism is not to “appease” Erdogan, but to recognize Rojava and end Islamist violence where it draws its power. Only the Rojava Revolution can ensure this.
The Rojava Revolution entered the world stage six years ago with the great resistance in Kobanê. This resistance is revolutionary, voluntary, libertarian, young, female and the harbinger of a new civilization. The real fight against IS began with the fight for Kobanê. The escape from IS ended in the city center of Kobanê. There the course of history has turned around. The strength of this resistance was that its horizon was not limited by national selfishness. It was the common resistance of all the peoples of northern Syria.
We have seen together what the human will can be capable of when it is released from its chains and becomes free. First the great resistance in Shengal and then in Kobanê showed that what seems impossible can be real. With the great victory in Raqqa it has been proven in practice that IS will be destroyed where the revolution dominates. A people supposed to be condemned to nothing became the forerunner of the renaissance of secularism and democracy. The price paid for it has no limit or calculation: more than ten thousand lives.
The Kobane resistance was not limited to itself. The first fruits were in Turkey. It has also become the cement of a democratic alliance against the IS collaborators AKP and Erdogan. In a rebellion of dignity against Erdogan, who welcomed the IS siege of Kobanê like good news, Turks and Kurds, Alevis and Sunnis united around the HDP in the elections in June 2015. This upset the balance of the regime and, despite oppression and violence, triggered the emergence of a third path, at the center of which the Kurdish people stood as an indestructible fortress. We too are a product of the Rojava revolution.
The revolutionary breakthrough in Rojava, Northern Syria, spread throughout the world, beginning with the four parts of Kurdistan from Turkey through Northern Iraq. The new ways of life, self-government, new social relationships and the new wave of freedom encourage the peoples of the region to realize their own revolutions. The thoughts and suggestions of Abdullah Öcalan, the intellectual driving force of this revolution, find a counterpart in the realm of contemporary social ideas from Great Britain to Argentina, from Kazakhstan to South Africa.
For the same reasons, the Rojava Revolution appears to be the major obstacle to a return to the pre-war status quo in Ankara, Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus. The strategic goal of the invasions in Afrin and Serêkaniyê, initiated by Russia and the United States, with their consent or silence, and the establishment of permanent Turkish military bases in southern Kurdistan, is to put out the revolutionary fire kindled in Rojava. The aim is to colonize Kurdistan again. Women are to be locked up again as slaves of the man in the kitchen and in the harem. It’s about racism and sectarianism, about a return to political Islam and fascism and the revival of colonialism. The Rojava Revolution is exposed to these threats. Because of this, our hearts and minds are more with Rojava than ever.
Rojava is a source of motivation for the rebirth of internationalism. While the stereotype that liberation ideologies always come from the “West” is coming to an end, thousands of “Western” revolutionaries of the new generation are sincerely striving to infuse their inspiration from the Rojava Revolution into the lives and struggles of their societies . The global mobilization for the freedom of Abdullah Öcalan is also growing in the hands of this new generation.
However, the hearts of states do not beat the hearts of peoples and revolutionaries. The Rojava Revolution provided the most important opportunity to end the Syrian civil war by banning ISIS from history. However, the European countries and the USA do not recognize the autonomous administration of northern and eastern Syria. Rojava is excluded from international forums in which the future of Syria is determined. The bans imposed on the PKK and Öcalan in the Cold War climate under pressure from Ankara are considered to justify the criminalization of the Rojava revolution.
This moral and political weakness of the international community is the main source of strength for the Erdogan regime and the IS. Whenever Trump and Putin are forced to choose between Erdogan and Rojava, their principles are not freedom and secularism. Your commercial, industrial, and military interests ultimately choose Erdogan. They have undermined the fight against IS with their own hands and pushed Syria even deeper into a dead end. In this climate of hopelessness, Erdogan is now talking about an invasion of Rojava and is primarily targeting Kobanê.
I would like to ask all European countries, especially Germany: will you keep silent about Erdoğan’s third invasion of Rojava by equipping a jihadist army with tanks, grenades and rifles? Don’t you realize that Erdogan is pulling you into a threatening deal by putting the IS slaughter in France on the agenda at the same time as the Kobanê invasion plans? Will you accept Erdogan’s trade to stop IS killers from strangling people in central Europe and get a ticket to Kobanê in return?
The most important task of the democratic, libertarian and self-governing forces of Europe and Germany this year is to put pressure on their governments to take active action against Ankara’s attempts to invade Kobanê. Kobanê is threatened. If Kobanê falls into the hands of Erdogan, the city will fall into the hands of IS and the Al-Nusra Front. A look at Afrin shows what will then happen in Kobanê. The way to deal with IS terrorism is not to pat Erdogan’s back, but to recognize Rojava and end Islamist violence where it draws its power. Only the Rojava Revolution can ensure this.
I call on everyone to strengthen internationalist solidarity in the face of the threats of invasion against Kobanê and to prevent the governments of NATO and EU countries from giving the green light to Ankara’s plans to invade Kobanê and northern and eastern Syria in general. We can achieve this with international solidarity. We did it once, we can do it two, three or more times. Long live international solidarity. Long live internationalism.
The article is the slightly abridged version of a speech by Ertuğrul Kürkçü at a rally on World Kobanê Day, November 1, 2020, in Frankfurt aM.
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