Trump’s cruel decision to pull out American troops, thus leaving the Kurdish fighters exposed to the high-tech weaponry NATO forces can deploy, has been widely criticised as reckless, destabilising and a gift to Islamist forces. But many mainstream accounts leave out the crux of the matter – the attempt to crush Rojava, the self-governing area where Kurdish forces inspired by socialist ideology have established a democratic, bottom-up and above all feminist regime. Something that appals reactionary politicians in the Middle East and beyond.

At the time of writing the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have struck a deal to allow Syrian government troops to occupy some parts of Rojava up to the Turkish border (but not the city of Sere Kaniye where the heaviest fighting is) as the only way to block the Turkish army and the Islamist mercenaries that it is using as its shock troops. By Monday evening the towns of Manbij and Kobane had been occupied by Syrian troops. Kobane won back from a six-month ISIS siege by YPG and YPJ forces in 2015 with 1000 Kurdish casualties and they also liberated mainly Arab Manbij after a long ISIS occupation.

The deal is that Kurdish military forces will be integrated with the Syrian army, but for the moment Kurdish administration of the region will continue. It is hard to see how this situation can persist and in any case the Turkish attack has not yet been stopped, so far. Without doubt the deal between the SDF and the Syrian regime is highly dangerous for the Kurds, but one that was forced upon them. As SDF commander Mazlum Abdi put it: “If we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people.”

He went on to say: “We believe in democracy as a core concept, but in light of the invasion by Turkey and the existential threat its attack poses for our people, we may have to reconsider our alliances. The Russians and the Syrian regime have made proposals that could save the lives of millions of people who live under our protection. We do not trust their promises. To be honest, it is hard to know whom to trust.”[1]

This assessment is very realistic. It is not a question of putting faith in Bashir al-Assad or Vladimir Putin, it is a matter of the survival of five million people in the Rojava area.
The bloody Syrian regime of president Bashir al-Assad has always been determined to re-establish control of the whole of the country, including Rojava. These events mark a major turn in a cycle of struggle in which, for a decade, the most militant Kurdish forces in both south east Turkey and the adjacent areas of northern Syria (respectively known as North Kurdistan and West Kurdistan) attempted to take major steps towards building self-governing communities, outside the control of the Turkish and Syrian states. They have been met by ceaseless and bloody repression from the AKP (Justice and Development Party) Islamist government in Ankara, in which thousands have been killed and whole towns flattened.

How the Struggle against ISIS and Erdoğan Unfolded

Up 2012, following the rebellion against the Assad government in Syria, the population of the three mainly Kurdish cantons in the north of the country – Afrin, Cizire and Kobane – moved to assert local community control. This led to their formal unification as Rojava in 2014. This was accompanied by similar moves towards declaring self-governing Kurdish communities in south east Turkey.

In the May 2015 Turkish election Erdoğan’s AKP failed to get an overall majority thanks to the strong showing of the HDP – the People’s Democratic Party, an alliance based on supporters of Kurdish rights, leftist groups, women’s organisations and other oppressed groups in Turkey – that got 14% of the vote and 80 MPs.

Seeing his power under threat Erdoğan got NATO sanction for a military campaign against ‘terrorists in Syria and Turkey itself. This request gave the green light to a bombing campaign against ‘terrorists’ across the southern borders in Syria and Iraq. The ‘terrorists’ meant not only the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria but also the PKK in its Iraqi mountain redoubt of Qandil.

From September 2015 many thousands of troops were deployed to attack Kurdish towns and cities in south eastern Turkey, particularly Cizre, the Sur area of Diyarbakir, the de facto ‘capital’ of Turkish Kurdistan, Şirnex, Silopi, Gever and Nusaybin. The aim was to crush the attempt by municipalities to declare self-rule and to crush the militant youth defending self-rule. It was also a terrible massacre, killing probably hundreds of civilians. According to Erdoğan and his party these were all ‘terrorists’.

While the Turkish state could over a period of several weeks and with some difficulty crush civilian-led rebellion on occupied land within the state borders by massive artillery and air bombardment, and by taking heavy casualties, the situation in northern Syria was more difficult. The airspace over the Syrian border was controlled by Syria and Russia, and then the situation was changed dramatically by the Islamic State siege of Kobane, that started in September 2014. The YPG and YPJ took hundreds of casualties from a massive concentration of Islamist fighters, until the decision by then US President Obama to intervene with air strikes in support of the Kurds. By October 2014 350 Kurdish villages had been captured by ISIS and the US feared an Islamic State power base on the Turkish border. Without doubt the US air strikes turned the military tables against ISIS, and the de facto alliance between the Kurds and the United States against ISIS was sealed. From that point on it was Kurdish militias that confronted and defeated ISIS in Syria, (just as other Kurdish militias did in Iraq) but of course backed up by massive American firepower. It was this alliance that was a permanent focus of annoyance for Erdoğan, seeing his NATO allies allied with ‘terrorists’.

Turkey’s ambitions

The 2016 attempted military coup in Turkey was a gift to Erdoğan. Since then [than]he has used emergency powers to crush democratic rights even more, close down opposition media, and purge the civil service, education, the military and the courts of every trace of possible dissent. Most leaders of the HDP and many other opposition groups are in Turkey’s notorious and torture infested prisons.

But Erdoğan has much wider ambitions – which focus on winning back ‘Ottoman lands’ (areas occupied by the Ottoman empire and including oil-rich east Syria and north Iraq) but above all making himself the key political leader of Islam in the Middle East, and thus on a world scale[2]. While the Muslim Brotherhood was in power in Egypt under Mohammed Morsi, this ambition was frustrated. Now Erdoğan is in competition with Saudi leader Mohammad Bin Salman, currently hosting Russian leader Vladimir Putin on a state visit.

During the long years of the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than half a million people, the Islamist forces have received military and financial aid, as well as influxes of jihadi fighters, from a variety of sources, but especially Turkey, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. These states have been in a competition for influence, but Turkey has had the advantage of being a border state. Thousands of jihadis have been allowed by Turkey to cross the border into the zones it partially or fully occupies: Idlib, Afrin, the towns of the Euphrates Shield area – including fighters who had been driven out by the Kurds. It is not surprising then that these self-same jihadi fighters are leading the Turkish invasion, nor that they have started their trade mark war crimes, such as the execution of ten people including Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf, leader of the Syria Future Party – murders gleefully filmed by the jihadis and put on social media.

The Project of Rojava

Rojava is an attempt to put into practice the position developed by the Kurdistan Workers Party and its allies of ‘democratic confederalism’. In effect communities are self-governed by a complex set of community organisations, in which everyone is encouraged to participate. Most striking about the Rojava experiment has been the adoption of the leading role of women as a central factor in the revolution. At every level and in every organisation, women must be incorporated in the leadership, at least on an equal basis with men. This goes hand in hand with the role of the Women’s Defense Units, the YPJ, that take an equal role in the fighting and have their own commanders.

Detailed accounts of different aspects of the Rojava experience can be found here. As Gilbert Achcar, the foremost Marxist academic writing on Middle East affairs today, explains it:
“The Syrian Kurds and their allies have paid a heavy tribute to this fight [against ISIS], incurring more than ten thousand casualties. They were instrumental in the containment and rollback of IS in Syrian territory. They are also unquestionably the most progressive, if not the only progressive, of all armed forces active on Syrian territory, especially with regard to the status and role of women. And yet they have been consistently labelled by the Turkish government as “terrorists” due to their close relation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (aka PKK), the main force active in Turkish-dominated Kurdish territory.”[3]

Response of the West

The abrupt decision by Trump to dump the Kurds and to greenlight the Turkish invasion has doubtless alarmed many Western leaders, but their response has been pathetic, and as cynical in its own way as that of Russia.

At the United Nations Russia and the United States jointly vetoed a resolution that merely called for a ceasefire. At the NATO meeting in London they had trouble agreeing the word ‘condemn’ about the invasion, mainly because of British opposition. There is talk of arms embargos, and some countries are implementing them, but that is merely a gesture. Turkey has all the heavy weaponry it needs, including that provided by the more than £1bn worth of arms purchases from Britain in the last four years. And British, American, Italian and other firms are on the ground in Turkey, servicing its military equipment on a daily basis.

In short, Western governments are doing next to nothing to practically oppose the Turkish action. Especially since all the NATO powers regard the PKK as a ‘terrorist’ organisation, and are punctilious in continually stressing that Turkey ‘has legitimate security concerns’ against the Kurds. No one is going to stop doing business with Erdoğan and he knows it. Their sanctimonious expressions of ‘concern’ can be safely dismissed as a joke. And he has the continual threat that he will allow some of the three million Syrian refugee in Turkey to cross over into Europe if its political leaders do not play ball.

How will the pieces fall?

AKP leaders have continually stressed that they “will not allow a terrorist corridor” on their border, which means in effect a Kurdish enclave. Erdoğan has repeatedly stated that he wants to populate north Syria with Arab Muslim refugees from the Syrian war and elsewhere. The objective would be an attempt at demographic engineering to overturn the the Kurdish majority in the area’s three million people, and of course to destroy the gains of the social experiment that has been taking place there. That seems off the agenda for the moment, but the plans of the Syrian regime and their Russian backers are unclear. But everyone says the same thing: the big winners are Assad locally, and Vladimir Putin, his main patron, in regional terms. For them, the truth is that the fate of the Kurds is of little concern. But for the Kurds and their neighbours in North Syria for now the crisis continues, and so will their struggle for survival and dignity however hard the conditions,
So the people of Rojava and the whole of north Kurdistan today need international solidarity more than ever. Press your political representatives for much more vigorous action against Erdogan including inducing demanding Syria and Russia to close the airspace; go to protests and publicise them if you can; and give money to the Kurdish Red Moon (equivalent of the Red Cross) Heyva Sor, or ask your organisation to make donations. (Go to Heyva Sor UK on Facebook). It is now the only medical and material aid charity still working throughout the area since such international aid agencies as were present have pulled out their expatriate staff. The KDP of Iraq (Kurdistan Democratic Party) has just managed to get 30 lorry loads of aid in, but this though welcome will be a drop in the ocean with 160,000 people displaced already and with the water treatment plant at Hasakah, the big town away from the border where most refugees have headed, bombed by Turkey a few days ago.

Sarah Parker and Phil Hearse are the authors of the Left Unity pamphlet Dictatorship and resistance in Turkey and Kurdistan (2016).

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[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/13/kurds-assad-syria-russia-putin-turkey-genocide/. Foreign Policy magazine did not reveal the name of the commander.
[2] It was this ambition that led him to try to attempt attend Mohammed Ali’s funeral in 2016, with farcical results, as [at]the boxer’s family refused to let him speak and he eventually refused to attend the funeral and flew home.
[3] https://prruk.org/trumps-stab-in-the-back-to-the-kurdish-national-movement/

•

The Syrian Kurds and their allies have paid a heavy tribute to this fight, incurring more than ten thousand casualties. They were instrumental in the containment and rollback of IS in Syrian territory. They are also unquestionably the most progressive, if not the only progressive, of all armed forces active on Syrian territory, especially with regard to the status and role of women. And yet they have been consistently labelled by the Turkish government as “terrorists” due to their close relation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (aka PKK), the main force active in Turkish-dominated Kurdish territory.

The Turkish government, which is known to have turned a blind eye to the build-up of IS in Syria (it is even suspected of having facilitated this build-up), regards the Kurdish national movement as the main threat. It has invaded part of northern Syria (Afrin) in 2016 to bring down the YPG control of that area, and still occupies it. It has also been threatening since then to invade North-East Syria (Western Kurdistan, aka Rojava), only deterred from doing so by the presence of US troops along the SDF.

The 6 October phone call between the American and Turkish presidents is not the first one during which Erdogan pressed Trump to withdraw US troops and thus clear the way for Turkish troops to invade the rest of Syrian Kurdish territory, nor is Trump’s announcement that he has decided to oblige. The previous time was a year ago and led to the dramatic resignation of former defence secretary, Jim Mattis, reflecting the reluctance of the US military to execute what amounts very obviously to a “stab in the back” of allies (that’s how the SDF’s spokesperson aptly called it) and the Pentagon’s justified fear that a Turkish incursion would revitalise IS, and create a chaos of which Iran will seek to take advantage in order to complete its control of the vast territory that stretches from its territory through Iraq to coastal Syria and Lebanon.

Assailed even by fellow Republicans, Trump backtracked at the end of last year. This time however he carried on his promise to Erdogan, replying to his critics, who blame him for betraying precious allies in the fight against IS, by asserting that, in his self-attributed “great and unmatched wisdom”, he would “obliterate” Turkey’s economy if the Turkish forces overstepped some vague undefined limits in their invasion of North-East Syria.

There should be no mistake whatsoever about Donald Trump’s motivations. The US president is no pacifist opposed to military adventures waged by his country abroad. He is a staunch supporter of the murderous war waged in Yemen by the coalition led by the Saudi Crown Prince, his murderer friend. And he stated his great admiration for the US military base in Iraq, which he visited last December, explaining how important it is for the US.

From a man who declared during his previous presidential campaign that the US should take control of Iraqi oil fields and exploit them to its benefit, the rationale is clear enough: Trump believes that the US military should only be engaged in territories where there is an obvious economic interest for his country (and for his own interests, one might add, knowing that this presidency has gone the furthest in US history in mixing private business with public affairs). Iraq, the Saudi kingdom and other Gulf oil monarchies are perfectly fine places for US military deployment in Trump’s view, unlike poor countries such as Afghanistan and Syria.

From a truly anti-imperialist perspective predicated upon the peoples’ right to self-determination, all imperialist and predatory troops should be withdrawn from Syria, whether Israeli troops occupying the Syrian Golan since 1967, or the more recently deployed forces of Iran and its regional proxies, Russia, the U.S. and Turkey, to name only the main protagonists. A unilateral US withdrawal paired with an invitation to Turkey to step in, giving it thus a free hand to crush the Kurdish national movement, has nothing progressive or pacifist about it: it is all the contrary.

The two progressive front runners in next year’s US presidential election have rightly understood what is at stake and have reacted in similar terms on 7 October to Donald Trump’s announcement.

Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted: “I have long believed the U.S. must responsibly end our military interventions in the Middle East. But Trump’s abrupt announcement to withdraw from northern Syria and endorse Turkey’s incursion is extremely irresponsible. It is likely to result in more suffering and instability.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “I support bringing our troops home from Syria. But President Trump’s reckless and unplanned withdrawal undermines both our partners and our security. We need a strategy to end this conflict, not a president who can be swayed by one phone call.”

The murderous Turkish invasion of North-East Syria must be stopped. NATO allies of the Turkish government share the responsibility of this onslaught. They must stop their military support to Ankara, impose economic sanctions on the Turkish government until it withdraws its troops from Syria, and provide the Kurdish movement with the weapons it needs in fighting Turkey’s invasion of its territory.

This article was first published on the Kingston and Surbiton LP website.

APPENDIX

Appeal from the Women’s Council of North and East Syria / Meclisa Jin a Bakur u Rojhilate Suriye

Call to all women and freedom loving people in the world,

As women of diverse cultures and beliefs from the ancient soils of Mesopotamia we send you our warmest greetings. We call you to join the international day of action on 12 October with the commitment to stop Turkey‘s occupation war on North and East Syria and defeat fascism and patriarchy worldwide! We are writing to you in the middle of the war in North and East of Syria that has been forced on our homeland by the Turkish state. Since 3 days we have been living and resisting under the bombardments of Turkish war planes and grenade fire.

We have witnessed how mothers in our neighborhoods are targeted by Turkish shelling when they go out of their houses to get bread for their families; how a NATO- grenade explosion ripped the leg of 7-years old Sara into pieces and killed her 12-years old brother Mohammed. We are witnessing as Christian neighborhoods and churches are bombarded and our Christian sisters and brothers whose grandparents survived the genocide in 1915 are now murdered by the army of Erdogan’s new Ottoman empire. 2 years ago we witnessed how the Turkish state built a 620 km long border wall with UN and EU funding to cement the division of our country physically and to prevent more refugees coming to Europe.

Now we are witnessing the Turkish state remove parts of the wall to make their tanks, soldiers and jihadist killer groups invade our towns and villages. We are witnessing how the neighborhoods, villages, schools, hospitals and cultural heritage of the Kurdish, Ezidi, Arab, Syriac, Armenian, Chechen, Circassian, Turkmen and other cultures that are living here communally are targeted by airstrikes and artillery fire.

We are witnessing how thousands of families are forced to flee from their homes to seek refuge without having a safe place to go. At the same time we are witnessing new attacks of IS killer commandos on towns like Raqqa which was liberated 2 years ago from the IS terror regime with the joint struggle of our peoples. Once again we are witnessing the joint military attacks of the Turkish army and their jihadist mercenaries on our towns Serekani, Giresipi and Kobane. These are just some examples of occurrences that we have been confronted with since Erdogan declared the begin of the war on 9 October 2019.

While we are witnessing the first steps of the implementation of Turkey‘s genocidal ethnic cleansing operation, we are also witnessing the brave resistance of women, men and young people raising their voices and defending their land and dignity. For 3 days fighters of the Syria Democratic Forces SDF together with YPJ and YPG have been fighting successfully in the forefront to prevent Turkey‘s invasion and massacres. Women and people of all ages are a part of all fields of this resistance to defend humanity and the gains and values of the women’s revolution in Rojava. As women we are determined to fight until our victory for a life of peace, freedom and justice. For reaching our goal we are relying on the international solidarity and common struggle of all freedom loving women and people around the world. We know that the preparations of Turkey‘s occupation war have been carried out openly and in cooperation with the hegemonic powers of the world like the US and Russia. Also international institutions like the UN turned a blind eye on Turkey‘s war threats. They failed to act and therefore became accomplices. Now, we have to raise our voices everywhere and much louder than ever before to prevent further genocides, feminicides and crimes against humanity in the 21st century.

Therefore we urge all our sisters and friends in the Middle East and on all continents to spread our call and pressure all women and human rights organizations, unions, political parties and actors to call upon the UN and the UNSC for the implementation of urgent actions. Our demands are: • Stop Turkey‘s invasion and occupation in North and Eastern Syria immediately • Establish a No-Fly-Zone for the protection of the people’s lives in North and East Syria • Prevent further war crimes and ethnic cleansing by Turkish army forces, ISIS, El Nusra and other jihadist killer organisations • Ensure the conviction of all war criminals according to international law • Stop weapon trade with Turkey • Implement political and economical sanctions against Turkey

Take immediate steps for a political solution of the crisis in Syria with the representation and participation of all different national, cultural and religious communities in Syria Together we will break the cycle of silence and war, injustice and impunity! Let’s spread the call “Women defend Rojava” and unite our fights against fascism, colonialism and patriarchy everywhere!

Women’s Council of North and East Syria 11 October 2019 And its member organisations : Kongra Star, Syriac Women’s Union, Women’s Council in Raqqa, Women Council in Manbej, Women’s Council in the Tebqa, Women’s Council in Deir Ezzor, Women’s Council in Shahba, Women Council in Tal Abyad (Girê Sipî), Women ‘s Committee for Northern and Eastern Syria, The Legislative Council of Autonomous Administration, The Armenian Community, Chaldean Community, Chechen Community, The Circassian Community, The Turkmen Community, Union of Young Women Women’s organizations in political parties : Democratic Union Party, Kurdish Democratic Peace Party is Syrian, Future Syria Party, Kurdistan Green Party, Syrian Kurdish Democratic Accord Party, Free Patriotic Union Party, Kurdistan Workers Party, Syriac Union Party, Democratic Change Party, Arab National Commission, National Alliance, Kurdistan Future Movement, Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria, Kurdistan Brotherhood Party, Kurdistan Renewal Movement, Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria (Yekiti), Democratic Conservative Party, Free National Union, Liberal Union, Modernity and Democracy for Syria Party, Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party, Syrian Kurdish Left Party, Kurdish Left Party in Syria Civil society organizations : Women stand free, Women’s Bureau of the Democratic Society Movement TEVDEM, Jineolojî Academy, Union of Teachers, Mala Ezîdî, Sara Organization against Violence against Women, Union of Intellectuals, Women’s Democratic Network, Federation of Women Lawyers, Peace Leaders Network, Shawishka Association, Women’s Culture Movement the Golden Crescent, Platform for Women’s Status in Islam .

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