Kurdistan is currently divided between four countries: Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. In each of the parts of Kurdistan, Kurdish identities and cultures have been repressed for generations. This book, by Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson, gathers together first-hand accounts of the struggles for a new society taking place in Bakur and Rojava – the parts of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey and Syria.

The setting up of local assemblies and co-operatives, as well as radical women’s and ecological movements, are rapidly gathering momentum in Kurdistan. The book gives a simple introduction to democratic confederalism, the idea that has inspired many of those involved in these movements.

The book also compiles accounts from Kurdish people who are oppressed by the state of Turkey and profiles some of the companies that are complicit in their repression. The interviews give suggestions of how people outside of Kurdistan can act in solidarity.

Buy the book or click here to download this book for free.

The post Struggles for autonomy in Kurdistan appeared first on Corporate Watch.

By Tom Anderson and Eliza Egret

Yannis Vasilis Yaylalı was brought up as a proud, nationalist Turk. From a fascist background, he joined the army in the 1990s, at a time when Turkey was waging its most brutal attacks ever on its Kurdish population. Yannis was eager “to go east and fight the Kurds.” After just a few months in the military, he was captured by Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) guerillas and spent two years as a prisoner of war. Yannis was completely transformed by his experience. He now lives in Roboski in north Kurdistan (within south-eastern Turkey), where he lives as a Kurdish solidarity activist. He is also part of the Conscientious Objectors Association, which gives solidarity to those who refuse to do mandatory military service in Turkey. In January 2016 he was sentenced to seven months in prison for ‘alienating people from military service’. We met Yannis in Roboski in July 2015 and interviewed him about his life.

For a critical introduction to the PKK and Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan see here.

Can you tell us where you grew up?

“I was born in 1974 and my birth name was İbrahim Yaylalı. I grew up in the Black Sea region of Turkey in Bafra, in Samsun province. Bafra was divided into two parts. The west was fascist and racist and the east was socialist. I was born amongst fascist people. At that time the older fascists were fighting the police and they were heroes for us. The Nationalist Action Party (MHP), a nationalist and religious political party, was all around me.

In those days, western films were always played on the TV. In these films the native Americans were bad and the cowboys were good. When we played children’s games on the street, the baddies were always the socialists or native Americans. No-one wanted to be them. The weak people played them. I was following the wrong heroes in those days. I grew up with bad thoughts.”

What was your schooling like?

“In secondary school we had military lessons. My fascist friends loved military lessons but the socialist children didn’t want to be in the class. Officers would teach us about weapons, and we used to learn to walk like soldiers. In school, we were told to repeat every day: “I am Turkish. I am proud to be a Turk.” We sang the national anthem on Mondays and Fridays. We were told in school and in our school books, and on the radio and TV, that Armenians, Kurds and Greeks were bad people.

Every summer I went to the mosque to learn the Koran in the school holidays. I wish I had learned about my own real Greek origin. I learned everything about Turks and I was told that I was Turkish.”

In Turkey, every man must do mandatory military service. Can you explain about your time in the military?

“In April 1994 I went to compulsory military service in Isparta to a mountain commando school for training. Then I had the choice of going to Cyprus. I said: “Did we come all this way to escape to Cyprus? I want to go east to fight the Kurds, to fight the terrorists and protect our country.” So I went to Mardin. The PKK guerillas attacked our bus on the way there but didn’t hurt us. They wanted to scare us.

In the 1990s the government, which consisted of racist politicians, was playing the most dirty games. JITEM [Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism wing]  was a legal organisation but was doing illegal things, killing and kidnapping people, especially in Kurdistan. Even now people are scared when they hear someone say “JITEM”.

I was a sniper in the military. I had an MG3 sniper assassination gun. I even got a prize for shooting. I was lucky that in the end I didn’t have the chance to kill people. I trained for two months and then I went to Gabar mountain in Şırnak, Kurdistan.

We went to a military base on a mountain above three villages.”

What did you do there?

“We were putting pressure on the Kurdish villagers not to help the PKK guerillas. We didn’t let them harvest their fields. We limited their food because they might give extra to the guerillas. We also wanted the villagers to go hungry. Even though we were surrounding the villages, we still told accused them of helping the guerillas. We tortured and beat people.  Even when there were no guerillas, we still pressured the villagers to become rangers [a paramilitary organisation made up of Kurdish villagers, also known as ‘village guards’].”

Can you tell us about the role of the rangers?

“In different places rangers worked differently. In some regions they didn’t do much; in others they fought alongside the military against the PKK guerillas. There were two types of ranger: one type was pressured into doing it, and then there were others who volunteered. Some rangers used their power and used their guns to kill people. Lots of rangers occupied and took people’s land, like in Cizre. All of the rangers were given guns.

The rangers had no health insurance and no retirement money. In villages like the one where I live now, the rangers don’t use their guns, except in celebrations. When I see rangers here I know how they were forced into the role, and I can understand them.”

Were you involved in the burning of the villages? [Thousands of Kurdish villages were burnt down or wiped from the map by the military in the 1990s]

“Yes. The population of two villages fled, and these villages were burnt by the military. But the people of one village said, “whatever you do, we will not leave.” We beat people until they were forced to leave their houses. Another military team arrived after us and burnt down the village.   

A couple of days before we forced the population of one village to leave, we went there for food. An old Kurdish villager gave us honey, almonds and woolen socks and he didn’t want to take any money for them. We forced him to take the money.

When we went to burn the village I searched for the guy. I was worried about him. I couldn’t see him. When things were quieter I went to the house to look for him but I couldn’t find him. I was in shock. A high officer came and smacked me and sent me back to my team. We were not allowed communication with the villagers because they were good people and the government and military didn’t want us to know this.

I heard lots of stories about tortured civilians, about cutting off parts of their bodies, but I didn’t see it myself.

The military was making negative, racist comments about Kurdish people and guerillas, brainwashing us. They were not separating the guerillas and the civilians. They were saying that they were the same. They needed to brainwash us so that we wouldn’t question anything.”

And how did the military treat the PKK guerillas that they caught?
 
“In front of my eyes, the military dropped a PKK guerilla from a helicopter and he died. They cut whole ears off of other guerillas. I saw an MHP guy with a necklace made from guerillas’ ears. I grew up to be so racist but I was thinking: ‘What are we doing?’”

When you were in the military, you were captured by guerillas. Can you explain what happened?

“In September, five or six months after I came to the military, I was captured by PKK guerillas, close to here, 30-40 km away. Before that, thirty or forty of our soldiers were killed by the guerillas during an army operation against the PKK. We were sent to help. We went on a three day operation to a mountain called Kale Mehmet to push out the guerillas. 500 soldiers searched for them for two days. Rangers told us that there were guerillas in a certain area but we didn’t really believe them. A small group of us went – twenty-five or twenty-six. We went to the top of the hill to get ready for a small battle and prepared with sandbags. It was dark and raining.

Then at around 6 or 7pm we heard bullets above us. The guerillas were shooting. But not directly at us: they wanted us to go back. The guerillas didn’t want to kill soldiers because the military would be glorified and the funeral would be a big occasion in the city. Nationalism would be fueled.

I got shot just above my knee. I ran and fell down with my backpack on in the dark. I fainted by a riverbank. I laid there for hours and hours. I couldn’t stand up, and my other leg was also injured.

Early in the morning I crossed the river and crawled to try to reach a burnt village. I was losing blood and needed food. I used a T-shirt to wrap around my leg. I ate margarine that had been left in the burnt village. I thought I would die, and I knew that there were guerillas around. I had been told not to be captured alive. ‘They’ll skin you alive!’ I had been told, ‘don’t be captured alive.’ I kept one grenade for the guerillas and one grenade to kill myself. I rested in a house. I heard someone and reached for my hand grenade, but it was a kitten who was also searching for food.

I left the burnt village and climbed up to a small cave. Whilst I was sleeping in the cave on the second day, a female guerilla came. She was collecting fire wood. She tried to wake me up by shaking  me. This was the first time I’d seen a woman guerilla alive. I had often seen female dead guerillas. I wanted to throw the hand grenade but I couldn’t reach it. She called the other guerillas and they came. They told me to relax and they took my hand grenades away. They said: “We are Kurdish and we’re from the ARGK [now the HPG – the armed wing of the PKK]. You are a prisoner of war.” I waited to be killed and I imagined how they were going to kill me.

They lifted me up and helped me to walk. They took me to a small camp. The guerillas were preparing a meal by the water, using the river bank. They had a fire but nobody could see them. Şerif Goyi came and said to me: “You’re a prisoner of war and we follow the Geneva convention.” In 1994 the PKK were practising the Geneva Convention and a year later they signed up to it officially.

Şerif Goyi said: “When conditions are better we can help you to leave the country, and maybe you can go to Europe.” In Turkey, if a soldier is captured by the PKK, he would be seen as weak and he wouldn’t get help from the government.

The guerillas used radios and stated: “We have captured İbrahim,” so that the Turkish soldiers could hear. This was so that the military knew that I hadn’t run away.

A couple of days later I was taken to a camp on a mule. There was a dead guerilla, wrapped in a blanket, who was also being carried on another mule. When we came to the guerilla camp, close to the border – between Roboski and Uludere –  we found that the military were bombing. The guerillas were quite calm but I was panicked. We crossed the border to south Kurdistan [Iraqi Kurdistan] and reached a guerilla camp.

When we arrived, they put me in a cave the size of a room. I could walk a little outside, but not very far. They wanted to check whether I was a professional soldier or whether I was on compulsory service. Mustafa Karasu [Deputy Chairman of the PKK] came and told me: “You’re not a professional soldier.” He told me about the PKK, why they were defending themselves, and he explained that the state of Turkey was colonising Kurdish land and assimilating the Kurdish people.

During my first week in the camp, the Red Cross came and checked my leg. They wrote a report and I wrote a letter to my family. The letter was given to my family a few months later but they didn’t believe that it was from me. In the letter I told them to be calm, and they thought it wasn’t my character, as I come from an aggressive, fascist town. I rang my family months later and they didn’t believe that I was captured. We were sent to war but no-one thought that we could be captured. They thought I was still in an operation on the mountains.

In the military, I had always experienced violence towards people. I saw people from the army chop a guerilla’s body into pieces. I vomited and they said: “Aren’t you Turkish? Aren’t you a man?” Everything was based on violence.

When I was captured, I compared the different behaviours. We had always been told that the PKK were terrorists and very violent. I started to see that the guerillas were talking in a respectful way and they all listened to each other.  When I first became a soldier, the military were heroes to me. But when I came to the Turkish military base, I was treated like an animal. I thought it was a personal thing between the officers and myself. But on the other hand, when I was at the guerilla camp, they were respectful; they listened.

When I first joined the Turkish military, the more senior soldiers had asked me to wash their underwear. I always had arguments with them. The guerillas were the opposite.  The guerillas never told me to read this or do that. They even said that I could hang a Turkish flag if I wanted. I observed their social lives and this comparison between the army and the guerillas helped to transform me. For 20 years of my life I had been surrounded by violence.  

After two months, I was told that psychologically, it wasn’t good for me to be alone. They told me that I could join another camp with another captured soldier who had lost his eye. His name was Mustafa Özülker, and I joined that group. The guerillas and I had political discussions. For eight months I stayed with them in the second camp.  I always talked about Kemalism and Atatürk [Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk, was the founder of the Republic of Turkey], and the guerillas were patient and listened to me. I wanted to impose my fascist views on them, and wanted to change their minds. I defended Atatürk and the ideology of the state.

A Turkish newspaper article was read out in the camp where the writer blamed me, saying that I went to the guerillas voluntarily – that I wasn’t captured. They said that I’d had a connection with the PKK before I was captured.   

In December 1996, after two years and three months, I was released. I said that I didn’t want to go back to Turkey. In those days there was a ceasefire.  But the high officer of the PKK told me that if I went it could be helpful. If a soldier spoke out then this would create more visibility and raise awareness about the state’s violence towards Kurdish people. The Red Cross wrote a report about me.”

What happened when you were released?

“I was arrested when I was released. Seven other soldiers had also been captured but most of them didn’t change their racist views, although Mustafa, who I was captured with, did change his views. The others gave reports about me, about how I talked positively about the PKK. For three and a half months I was tortured in a military prison. They used pressurised water on me. They put me in big barrels full of water. If they put me in water, my skin wouldn’t be damaged so much when they beat me.  Military prisons are worse than other prisons in Turkey. The guards slept in the same room as me. Ten to fifteen people slept in the same room.   

My case was taken to the High Court three and a half months later. Because of the Red Cross report, they couldn’t do anything. They had hoped to try me for being part of a terrorist organisation. But the Red Cross report had said that I had been captured by guerillas. The guerillas had also announced that I was captured. My case was the first of it’s kind in Turkey, so they didn’t know what to do.

The court said I should be released but they kept me for three and a half weeks in a room attached to the prison, in part of the military complex.

I had been in the Turkish military for five or six months, and I had spent over two years with the guerillas, so I should have been released from my military service.   But they forced me to complete eighteen months in the Turkish military. It was like I was in prison.

I didn’t want to go to military again. They took me to Mardin, where my first base had been. I told them not to take me there. They took me to the basement, to a torture room, and I saw blood on the ground. They hung me by my hands on the pipes until morning. Later they handcuffed me and took me to Siirt military base. Then they sent me to the soldiers who had given reports against me. I refused to pick up a weapon. The high officer threatened that he could kill me. Other officers came and told me to go to training. I said no.”

Where did you go after the military released you?

“After, I went back to my hometown of Bafra, the police told the neighbours and the local fascists to be careful of me, to keep an eye on me, to spy on me, and that I was part of a terrorist organisation. The police came to my house many times, searching it. I had [PKK leader Abdullah] Öcalan’s books and the police took them. I remember, my father realised that Öcalan’s books weren’t illegal because the books were returned.

My parents told me that when I went missing, they had asked the military if they knew where I was. The military had said that they didn’t have anyone of my name.  A relative, an officer, told my father to go and ask at the military headquarters. My father went to the Ankara military headquarters. The military said: “You are Greek, and Greeks and Armenians help the PKK, so don’t look for your son.” This was the first time my father realised that he was a Pontus Greek. My grandfather’s name was Constantin.”

So you changed your name from İbrahim to Yannis?

“Journalists who had come to the guerilla camp told me that I was Greek because they were up to date with the news and it had been reported in the press. This was why I changed my name. Last year I changed my name in the city of Urfa, when we were on a trip to the border with Kobanê. I killed İbrahim when I was in Urfa.”

Being captured by the guerillas really transformed you?

“A friend in Bafra said: ‘You can’t change like this. We used to beat Kurdish people together. How can you change?’ They couldn’t believe the way that I had changed. They were saying that I had been brainwashed by the PKK.

If anyone sees the PKK and doesn’t change their mind, they are like a rock inside.”

Yannis is part of the conscientious objectors movement, which was formed in 2008. Before then, people were forced to go into the military. If they refused to follow orders to carry a gun, they were sent to military prison. In 2013 the Conscientious Objectors Association was formed. There are 200 people in this broad-based association, where volunteers give legal help to those who refuse to be in the military. In Turkish law, an individual can pay around $4000 not to join the army, but this money goes to the government and is spent on the military industry. Conscientious objectors refuse to pay to get out of military service. Onur, a journalist and member of the association told us: “We don’t give one second or one cent to the military.”

Yannis has been charged with two counts of ‘alienating people from military service’ under Article 318 of the Turkish penal code. In January 2016, he was sentenced to over seven months in prison for writing articles encouraging conscientious objection. The court offered not to impose a prison sentence if Yannis agreed not to be involved in political activity for five years, but Yannis refused. He is currently appealing the verdict and will not begin his sentence until his appeal is considered.

Since Summer 2015, people in many cities in Turkey’s Kurdish region have declared autonomy from the state (to read more about the declarations of autonomy click here). Yannis and his partner Meral made statements in an article and on social media  declaring their autonomy ‘within their own home’. They were taken to court again, this time charged with encouraging the break up of Turkey as a unitary state. Meral was found not guilty but Yannis was sentenced to a further five months in prison. He is also appealing this verdict to the high-court.

On 26 May Yannis will appear in court again, this time charged with organising workshops on conscientious objection in his village.

If the High Court rejects his appeal Yannis will be sent to prison. He told us that he would appeal to the European Court. According to Yannis, Turkey has been found to be in breach of the law by the European court several times over its treatment of conscientious objectors.

Meral told Corporate Watch: “We have been living in Roboski [in Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders] for more than three years and they didn’t do anything, but since the recent war by the Turkish state against the Kurdish movements they have been attacking us. Our rights are being taken from our hands; we are anti-militarists and peace activists. Anarchists, socialists and anti-militarists should pressure their states about what’s happening in Kurdistan.”

She went on to say that the state of Turkey is using their agreement with the EU over the return of migrants as a political tool to ensure that their massacres in the Kurdish region do not come under scrutiny:

“The Turkish state is using the refugees as a political tool, that is why the European states are silent about the deaths of people in cities like Amed and Cizre.”

An abridged version of this article will be published in the next edition of Red Pepper magazine.

Act in Solidarity

Here are some suggestions for how you can act in solidarity with Yannis, the conscientious objectors movement and the Kurdish struggle:

– Campaign against arms exports to Turkey. To read about the companies supplying arms to the Turkish police and military click here and here. Also see Campaign Against the Arm’s Trade’s list of companies supplying weapons to Turkey.

– Campaign for a boycott of tourism in Turkey until the violence against Kurdish people ends.

To find out more about campaigns in support of the Kurdish movement for autonomy, go to http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/

The post From Fascist to anti-militarist: An interview with a Turkish ex-soldier appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Photo caption: Workers at a honey cooperative near Wan (Van in Turkish). The Co-op was set up with the help of the Democratic Society Congress economic commission.

By Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson

Democratic autonomy is a movement which aims to establish a network of grassroots assemblies in Bakur (the Kurmanji Kurdish word for the area of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey). We carried out interviews with several of the organisations involved in the process of democratic autonomy in June and July 2015.

The democratic autonomy movement in North Kurdistan is part of the wider movements for ‘democratic confederalism’ in Kurdistan. In the writing of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), ‘democratic autonomy’ is achieved when people begin to organise themselves through grassroots assemblies or communes. Following on from this, the term ‘democratic confederalism’ is used to describe networks of these local assemblies joining together in a confederation.

For a critical introduction to the PKK and Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan see here. For an in depth look at the social movements in Bakur see our new book, ‘Struggles for autonomy in Kurdistan’.

The most well known example of the application of the ideas of democratic confederalism is in Rojava, the autonomous largely Kurdish region in the North of Syria. However, people across the border in Bakur have been putting the ideas of democratic confederalism into practice since long before the Arab Spring. In around 2005 the PKK had created the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella organisation aimed at uniting Kurdish people living within all four parts of Kurdistan and the diaspora and achieving democratic confederalism throughout Kurdistan.

The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), set up in Bakur in 2007, acts as an umbrella organisation, and aims to establish democratic confederalism in Bakur. It meets every three months and is made up of representatives of different ethnic groups and political parties as well as representatives of local assemblies. It operates as a parliament, and attempts to create a new society under the weight of repression from the existing one. Since the establishment of the DTK, local assemblies have been set up all over Bakur. The DTK has also set up regional commissions to deal with issues such as ecology, economy, education, language, religion, culture, science, diplomacy, women and young people.

We interviewed Hilmi Aydoğdu and Hasan Hüseyin, both directors of the DTK in July 2015.

Corporate Watch: Can you tell us about the structure of the DTK?

“The DTK is an umbrella organisation which includes political parties and different organizations in North Kurdistan. Its aim is to build a new society in Kurdistan, a way of organising ourselves and also to practice how democratic autonomy will be in the future.

The DTK includes unions, workers’ organisations, political parties, people with different beliefs, and those who are Armenian, Assyrian and Arabic, for example.

We have 501 delegates. 301 delegates are from the public, from the people living in the region, and 200 are reserved places for people from the parties, social organisations, municipalities and non-Kurdish delegates. To elect the 301 delegates we made elections in the cities. The number of delegates is proportional to the number of people living in each city.

We are trying to make a balance. For example, there is a quota for Armenian delegates [in the DTK]. Only the Armenians vote for their Armenian delegates. Its the same for Assyrian people and others. They choose their own delegates. They are also able to vote for the other [regional] delegates.

In the DTK the delegates have to be 50% women. This is an obligation. And there has to be a female representative in every part of the DTK. We have two representatives for each role, a man and a woman.

There are two co-presidents of the DTK and 11 others who are also heads of the DTK. They are chosen in the congress, which is now every two years. The 501 delegates choose who will be the heads of the DTK by voting. All of the delegates have one vote each.

There are 14 different commissions of the DTK: ecology, economy, education, language, public affairs, religion, culture, science, diplomacy, women and youth commissions. We are trying to be an answer to the problems in our society and to the problems that we see in the region.

There is a minimum of 15 people in the commissions, and a maximum of 21. Every commission has two co-presidents. First the delegate says which commission they want to work in, for example ecological, and if someone has a proficiency in for example, economy, the director says that you will be better in this commission. The exact decision will be in the general meeting with all delegates. After people are chosen they write something about what they will do in the future. Then every month they have to give a paper to the DTK about what they have done and what they will do next. The delegates have to stick to what they said they would do.

The DTK has their congress every two years, and every three months they have a general meeting with 501 delegates. In this general meeting, all of the commissions have to give their reports and say if there are new decisions about their commissions.

The DTK began in 2007. But before the last congress the DTK was made up of just 101 people and the meetings were once every six months. In the last congress, nine months ago, we decided to increase the number of delegates to 501 to make it more democratic.

The DTK is a legislative part of the Kurdish movement. Because of that, all of the political parties and municipalities have to listen to the DTK’s decisions. The parties and municipalities have delegates within the DTK and they are in this process also. Most of the time the DTK gives just a general perspective about problems in society, the general point of view, it doesn’t tell people what they should do in their local places.”

CW: Is the DTK repressed by the Turkish government?

“The Turkish government is trying to stop all of the Kurdish movements. They put pressure on us. but it’s not just about the DTK. They close our political parties too, arrest our co-presidents – it happens to all of our movements.

We must understand that if we are doing something for the Kurdish freedom movement, then all of the parts of our organisations have to fight against the system. In our organisations everyone makes their own decisions. We are trying to rebuild democratic autonomy. But we are in a Turkish system where we have to struggle to do this. Their laws, borders and army are forced on us. We are trying to overcome the borders of their system. It’s a way to change the system and struggle against this system.”

CW: Can you talk about the movement for democratic autonomy?

“Democratic Autonomy is something that can enable all of the people who are living in Kurdistan to make their own decisions. There is a really strict centralised system in Turkey which doesn’t work for us. In that system people living in Turkey can’t decide for themselves. For example, there are people from many different ethnicities and religions who can’t decide on their own regions’ problems. They have no way to be involved in decisions. Democratic autonomy could be a way to decide for ourselves.

The main issue for the Kurdish freedom movement is rebuild a democratic society. It’s not just about this region. We believe that if we succeed, all of the other parts of Turkey will see what we are doing and want the same thing. First we will rebuild this new life for ourselves and after that it will be for all of Turkey.

Democratic autonomy is a model for all of Turkey. It is the most equal system.”

CW: How can democratic autonomy work when you still have a a central government?

“If you develop democratic autonomy then at the same time the central government will lose its power. The locals will decide what they need. If they decide that they need police, they will make that decision. It won’t be like now. The central government won’t have this power, they will just continue to manage a little and coordinate between the different autonomous regions. All of the power will be at the local level.

Democratic autonomy is not a structure from top to bottom. The most important thing is that the people are organised. The local people in the streets and countryside make their own councils and decide about themselves in these councils. It is horizontal. With these communes people make their own decisions. They learn not to get their needs from the central government. They are working for their own needs. In 2004, these councils began to be set up. Not just in villages but in many districts and cities. People working for the party* in local areas came together and made a space for people to organise.”

CW: Where did the idea of democratic autonomy come from?

“The Kurdish movement wants to make a democratic society. Democratic autonomy is the first step toward a democratic society. It is a model for this society. In the 1990s we said we wanted to this. The street councils were the first step towards this.”

CW: Is the system of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava the same as what you are doing here?

“Of course one is similar to the other and they are from the same perspective. But there is one difference. We are trying to build this system but in Rojava they have already built it.”

CW: Is there representation for LGBT people within the DTK?

“The DTK includes the HDP [The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party] and LGBT people have a quota in the HDP. In the DTK there isn’t representation for LGBT people now, but we don’t discriminate. They are welcome to join us.”

CW: How would you prevent countries such as the US from interfering with the societies that you are trying to create?

“The Kurdish struggle is not a new struggle. It started 40 years ago. It’s not just in this region, it’s not just Rojava and Bakur. It’s in all four parts of Kurdistan. Until now we have some tactical considerations, but we mustn’t forget that the main power is the self-power of Kurdish people. Our leader, Öcalan, said that there are two systems: one system is capitalist modernity and one is democratic modernity**.

From the 70s the leadership of the PKK struggled against the imperialist Turkish government and the other imperialist governments. Other countries support the Turkish government in political and diplomatic ways. They have tried to stop our struggle but we have created the revolution in Rojava. We need the revolutionaries, the democratic people living in Europe, to support us because all people who believe in democracy have to work together.

In Rojava, the US supported us, but only after a long time. Yes, they sent their planes but after maybe 45 days. It was the self-power of the YPG and YPJ [People’s Protection Units] that was successful.”

CW: What can we do outside of Kurdistan in solidarity?

“The PKK is in the list of terrorist organisations in Europe and the US. We want people to campaign to remove the PKK from this list. We think this is the first priority.

We believe that ISIS is a great danger, not just for the Kurdish people and Rojava but for all the world. In the Middle East the Kurdish people can stop ISIS. If you help us to change the PKK’s situation in Europe, maybe it can be a support not just for Kurdish people but also for life in the future. ISIS will not stop. They will try to do more and more. Solidarity is not just for Kurdish people but for all of the world.”

To read a recent statement by the DTK click here.

Notes:

*People in Bakur often refer to ‘the party’ without stating clearly which party they are referring to. This may be because there is a constellation of closely aligned political parties, civil society groups and social movements working toward shared goals. The movement for democratic autonomy is supported by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), who have 59 seats in the Turkish parliament and are in control of many municipalities in Bakur. Another local party, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and the PKK.

** In Abdullah Öcalan’s writing, the term ‘capitalist modernity’ is used to describe the Western capitalist system, which he says was imposed on the Middle-East in the 19th century. ‘Democratic modernity’ is the term used to describe the alternative model of society he is proposing.

The post Democratic autonomy in North Kurdistan: An interview with the Democratic Society Congress appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Lead photo caption: A commune meeting in Amude in Rojava’s Cizîrê canton, November 2015

By Tom Anderson and Eliza Egret

The Kurdish region is currently undergoing a transformation. People are organising themselves in grassroots people’s assemblies and co-operatives, declaring their autonomy from the state and their wish for real democracy. Feminist and anti-capitalist ideas are flourishing. These changes are inspired by a new idea: democratic confederalism. These movements have the capacity to transform the reality of millions of people in Kurdistan, and potentially spread to the wider Middle East. Last year we visited Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders, and Rojava, the Kurdish majority autonomous region in Syria. This article examines the theory and practice of democratic confederalism in Bakur and Rojava, and goes on to discuss how we can engage in solidarity, while maintaining an honest and critical perspective.

We have tried to understand the theory and practice of democratic confedralism as best we could, and have taken advice from many Kurdish friends, as well as activists who have visited the region. We hope that we have given an accurate description. However, any mistakes or innacuracies are entirely our own.

Some History

Historically, the region known as Kurdistan lay within the East of the Ottoman Empire. After the Second World War, the British, French and their allies divided up the empire. Many Kurds lobbied the imperialist powers for a state of their own, but were unsuccessful. In 1923, the Turkish republic was founded, espousing a Turkish nationalist ideology. Any reference to non-Turkish/Sunni Muslim ethnic identities within Turkey was criminalised. The speaking of Kurdish was banned. A series of Kurdish uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s were repressed by Mustafa Kemal’s autocratic government, with tens of thousands killed.

Kurdish populations in the Middle East are now divided between four states: Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. In the Kurmanji Kurdish language, the four parts of Kurdistan are known respectively as North (Bakur), South (Bashur), West (Rojava) and East (Rojhilat).

In 1978, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) was founded, based on Marxist-Leninist ideas of national liberation. The PKK began an armed struggle, with the aim of achieving an independent Kurdistan.

During the 1980s and 1990s the PKK rose up against the Turkish state, calling for independence. Armed struggle was met by torture, assassination and ethnic cleansing aimed at the entire Kurdish population by the Turkish government’s security forces. Over 3000 Kurdish villages were systematically burned during the 1990s.

From Marxist-Leninism to Democratic Confederalism

After the capture of its leader Abdullah Öcalan in 1999, the messages and statements put out by the PKK began to change. Influenced by the communalist ideas of US social-ecologist Murray Bookchin, as well as Emma Goldman and the Zapatistas, Öcalan and others in the PKK began to criticise nation-states, and the PKK’s stated goal changed from the establishment of an independent Kurdistan to democratic confederalism. We will summarise here what Öcalan and others say about democratic confederalism, before looking at how the ideas have been put into practice in Rojava and Bakur.

On the nation state Öcalan says:

“The right of self determination of a people includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation states have become serious obstacles for any social development.” [1]

And on democratic confederalism:

“Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organisational blueprint of a democratic nation.”

“Democratic confederalism is based on grassroots participation. Its decision making processes lie with the communities. Higher levels only serve the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies.”[2]

Looking more closely at these ideas, democratic confederalism is based on the idea that society can be run truly democratically through networks of grassroots assemblies or communes, which form confederations with each other across regions. Local assemblies elect representatives at the village or street level and these representatives represent their assembly at the level of the city or region. Again, the city or region elects representatives to represent them at higher levels.

The idea is that the real power remains with the population, and not with state bureaucracies. According to Öcalan, a form of government would still be necessary, but only to implement the decisions made by the assemblies, whose representatives would be elected at a street or neighbourhood level.

These ideas owe a lot to the work of the US social ecologist, Murray Bookchin. In 1990 Bookchin wrote:

“What then is confederalism? It is above all a network of administrative councils whose members or delegates are elected from popular face-to-face democratic assemblies… The members of these confederal councils are strictly mandated, recallable and responsible to the assemblies that choose them… Their function is thus a purely administrative and practical one, not a policy making one…”[3]

In his pamphlet, ‘Democratic Confederalism’, Öcalan argues for a society that respects ethnic, religious and cultural differences. He states that:

“It is a natural right to express one’s cultural, ethnic, or national identity with the help of political associations. However, this right needs an ethical and political society. Whether nation-state, republic, or democracy – democratic confederalism is open for compromises concerning state or governmental traditions. It allows for equal coexistence.”[4]

Öcalan sees democratic confederalism as a model for the whole Middle-East:

“Finally, let me state again that the fundamental problems of the Middle East are deeply rooted in the class civilisation. They have tightened with the global crisis of the capitalist modernity. This modernity and its claim to dominance cannot offer any solutions, not to mention a long-term perspective for the Middle-East region. The future is democratic confederalism.”[5]

Democratic confederalism emphasises the formation of a social economy, based on co-operatives organised at the grassroots level. In Rojava, co-operatives are linked with the communes themselves. According to Saleh Muslim, co-chair of the PYD, the PKK’s affiliated party in Rojava:

“Co-operative associations are the best embodiment of co-operative economy, the association will be based on communes which mean society is the primary representative of the economy.”

Feminism is emphasised in the theory of democratic confederalism. According to Öcalan: “Liberating life is impossible without a radical women’s revolution.”[6] In Bakur and in Rojava, local assemblies, communes, political parties and municipalities have established a system of co-representation, or co-chairs, where each position must be filled by one man and one woman. Many movements and organisations have a quota for female participation. For example, we spoke to an ecology assembly in Bakur in July 2015 who told us they would not accept any more men until a certain amount of women had joined.

People have been attempting to implement these ideas in Kurdistan for over ten years. In 2005, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) was established with the aim of implementing the ideas of democratic confederalism in all four parts of Kurdistan.[7]

Democratic confederalism in practice in Bakur

In Bakur, the region of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders, people have been trying to put these ideas into practice for over a decade. The Democratic Society Congress (DTK), set up in in 2007, acts as an umbrella organisation, and aims to establish democratic confederalism in Bakur. It meets every three months and is made up of representatives of different ethnic groups and political parties as well as representatives of local assemblies. It operates as a parliament, and attempts to create a new society under the weight of repression from the existing one. Since the establishment of the DTK, local assemblies have been set up all over Bakur. The DTK has also set up regional commissions to deal with issues such as ecology, economy, education, language, religion, culture, science, diplomacy, women and young people.

People involved in these movements often refer to wanting to achieve democratic autonomy through people organising themselves through grassroots assemblies or communes. Following on from this, the term ‘democratic confederalism’ is used to describe networks of these local assemblies joining together in a confederation.

The movement for democratic autonomy is supported by the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), who have 59 seats in the Turkish parliament and are in control of many municipalities in Bakur. Another party, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), stands in some municipal elections, but primarily works toward the establishment of democratic autonomy. The PKK also supports it.

Since the start of the movement for democratic confederalism in Bakur, activists have been met by intense state repression. The PKK is listed as a banned terrorist group in Turkey. Because the PKK is part of the KCK, the umbrella organisation which aims to establish democratic confederalism in all four regions of Kurdistan, the KCK has been proscribed too. Thousands of people have been arrested for connections with the KCK, including many politicians from the HDP and DBP.

This has not stopped the movement from growing. When we visited Bakur in July 2015, local assemblies and commissions were organising co-operatives. For example, we visited several farming co-operatives in the Wan (Van in Turkish) region which had been established on land donated by landlords to the Democratic Regions Party. Profits from the co-operatives are shared among the workers. We also visited a co-operative shop which had been set up by the DTK’s economic commission in Wan.

Women’s assemblies and ecology assemblies are also part of the DTK. For example, environmental activists have formed an ecology assembly in the city of Batman, which they told us was represented in the DTK. Women also have a parallel umbrella organisation, the Free Women Union.

Increasingly, people are turning toward the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and the assemblies to solve disputes, rather than going to the police and courts. In the Wan region we personally observed local people asking the DBP to arbitrate in disputes.

Since the HDP’s electoral successes in June and November 2015, the police and army have intensified attacks against Kurdish people, particularly activists involved in the movement for Democratic Autonomy. In many areas people have erected barricades against the police and read out declarations of autonomy. In these cities, the Turkish police and military have launched an all out war, using tanks, mortars and helicopter gunships to attack residential streets. Armed self-defence units, including female only units, have been set up at the local level in many places in response.

The DTK has announced that the whole of Turkey, not just the Kurdish region, could be run through self-governing autonomous regions. According  to a December 2015 DTK statement:

“Democratic Autonomy as the solution to the Kurdish problem cannot be separated from the democratisation of Turkey as a whole. The declarations of Democratic Autonomy are thus steps toward democratising Turkey. We consider them legal and necessary and proper for all the peoples of Turkey. Undoubtedly local democracies would take different forms according to the conditions and needs of their area, region, and community. Under the local autonomy of diverse identities, each area can adapt democratisation into its own circumstances.”

Like Öcalan, the DTK hope that the the assembly system will take over many of the functions of the state:

“Some functions—economy, judiciary, defence—would remain at the centre, but the rest– like education, agriculture, tourism– are to be devolved to the autonomous regions.”

The statement goes on to say that:

“The governing model that should be dominant in the world today is indisputably democracy. No government that centrally administers every street, neighbourhood, city and town can be legitimate; democracy requires the autonomy of local units.”

Democratic confederalism in Rojava

In 2003, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), aligned to the PKK and the movement for democratic confederalism, began to organise in Rojava. From 2005, people began to try to put the ideas of democratic confederalism into practice. In August 2011 an umbrella organistion called the Movement for Democratic Change (TEV-DEM) was formed. In December 2014, Janet Biehl interviewed Aldar Xelîl, reportedly one of the co-founders of TEV-DEM, about the origins of the organisation:

“The story of TEV-DEM is very long. In 2003 we mobilized under the name of PYD. Up to 2005 we operated like a party. Then after 2005 we decided we couldn’t achieve social and political organization in society as a party. We needed a different kind of roof for this. So we were on a quest, a search. After 2005 we left the political stuff to the PYD and organized society in an autonomous way, independent of the PYD.”[8]

As the Syrian uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad gathered momentum in 2011, the PYD and TEV-DEM took the opportunity of the ensuing power vacuum to organise assemblies on a large scale, in the model of democratic confederalism.

In 2012, as the Assad regime weakened, this movement was able to take control of most of Rojava from the regime, and take over government buildings, schools and hospitals. Rojava was organised into three autonomous cantons: Cizîrê, Kobanî and Afrin. For a critical analysis on why the regime withdrew from Rojava see Joseph Daher’s interview with Syrian activist and journalist Shiar Nayo here.

To broaden participation in the movement, the People’s Council of West Kurdistan (MGRK) was formed, made up of diverse groups and political parties. Meanwhile, some parties, many of whom are loyal to Massoud Barzani’s ruling KDP in neighbouring Bashur, chose to remain outside this system in opposition.

Here’s a diagram showing the system that’s developed since then, based on the description by Ercan Ayboğa in ‘Revolution in Rojava’. ‘Revolution in Rojava’ is currently only available in German, and the English translation will be published this summer. The council system is shown on the left, you may want to zoom in, in order to read the diagram more easily.

The Commune

The commune is the base level of Rojava’s council system. In general, communes are made up of 30-400 households in a city, or a whole village in the countryside. The entire population of the commune meets every two weeks, and it elects a board. The board meets every week, and all members of the commune are able to attend board meetings if they wish. All posts must be filled by a male and female co-chair. All representatives are recallable by the membership of the commune.

We visited a Mala Gel, or people’s house, run by Şehit Hozan commune in Amude in Rojava’s Cizîrê canton, where we spoke to the commune’s male co-chair. Şehit Hozan commune represents 400 families in their neighbourhood who vote for the board of the commune. We were told that the commune has commissions dealing with services, economy, Kurdish language teaching, organising lectures, self-defence, reconciliation and justice.

The commune’s reconciliation and justice commission tries to resolve problems that arise between members of the commune. For example, we were told that the commission had recently been asked to mediate when someone was injured in a road traffic accident and when there had been a dispute about land ownership. We were told that often the commission is able to resolve these disputes.

The commune’s self defence commission organises armed self-defence of the commune. Commune self-defence units operate autonomously from the People’s Protection Units of the YPG and YPJ and the Asayîş security forces.

The commune also organises public meetings. We were invited to one of these, organised by Şehit Hozan commune. It was attended by over fifty local women and men and was on the themes of anti-capitalism and feminism. The talk was given in Kurmanji (the Kurdish language spoken in Rojava) and translated into Arabic.

The Neighbourhood/Village Community Council and the District level

The board of each commune in Rojava sends representatives to the Neighburhood/Village Council, a body made up of 7-30 communes. In turn, the Neighbourhood/Village Council, elects a board, who represent them at the third level, the District level.

The district level is made up of representatives of the board from the second level, plus places are reserved for five representatives from the political parties and civil society organisations within TEV-DEM.

We met the Democratic Youth Union in Kobanî, previously called the Revolutionary Youth, who are one of the civil society organisations who have places reserved for them within this system. They told us:

“The target of our organisation is to build equality between men and women and to protect the environment. Our organisation is not just for Kurdish youths. We also have Arabic, Armenian and Turkmen members.”

People’s Council of West Kurdistan (MGRK)

The fourth level of the council system is the People’s Council of West Kurdistan (MGRK), made up of representatives from all district councils and representatives of the groups within TEV-DEM. The MGRK is supposed to provide the coordination between Rojava’s three cantons, but the current war situation prevents the MGRK from meeting together in one location.

Every level of the council system, from the commune upward, has a women’s council. These women’s councils are formed by the Yekîtiya Star women’s union (now called Kongira Star). We met with Yekitiya Star in Kobanî. We were told that women from Yekîtiya Star were going to all of the communes in the area and organising trainings on women’s empowerment.

The social contract

In January 2014 a social contract was agreed for the three cantons by 50 political parties and organisations. The agreement of the social contract was an attempt to bring wider participation to politics in Rojava. It emphasises gender equality and equal rights for all ethnicities, the right to be educated in one’s own language and guarantees that those seeking political asylum will not be deported. The social contract invites other regions of Syria to adopt the canton model and form self-governing regions that can work together in a confederation.

The social contract sets out a structure for the formation of governments, known as Democratic Autonomous Administrations (sometimes called the Democratic Self Administration), in each of the three cantons. According to the contract, a legislative council is elected by the whole population, which in turn elects an executive council. At the time of writing elections have not yet taken place and the legislative council is made up of the parties and organisations that agreed to the charter, together with representatives of different ethnic groups.

We have heard plans for the MGRK in each canton to be allocated 40% of the seats in the legislative assembly, integrating the council system with the Democratic Autonomous Administration.

Municipal councils were taken over when Assad’s officials left in 2011. Under the new social charter these municipal councils will be managed by the relevant Executive Council. The first elections for these municipal administrations were held in 2015.

The declaration of federation

In March 2016 representatives from Rojava’s three cantons met in Derike, in Cizîrê canton, and agreed a formal statement of federation. This means that Rojava’s three cantons are now part of the “Democratic Federation of Rojava – Northern Syria” (DFRNS). The statement proclaims that the DFRNS aims “to achieve a democratic and federal Syria, rather than a centralized administration, by taking into account the historical, geographic, cultural, demographic and economic characteristics when establishing democratic federations.”. “Self-administrative regions” within the DFRNS would organise themselves “based on councils, academies, communes and cooperatives.”

For a critical Syrian view on the declaration of federalism see here.

Although the movement for democratic confederalism in Rojava has its roots in the Kurdish struggle for autonomy, it is multi-ethnic. We met Arab and Aramean (Syriac) people, who were involved in both the communes and the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA) in Rojava. Places in the DAA are reserved for representatives of different ethnic groups.

A call for critical solidarity

When we talk about Kurdistan, and particularly about Rojava, the debate is often sidelined into whether the revolution is perfect. We often debate whether society in Rojava is utopian, even while our own social movements are far from perfect.

The argument is often polarised into complete support for all aspects of the movement in Rojava or a position which says that the imperfections within the Rojava experiment mean that we should have nothing to do with it.

We would like to strongly argue for a stance of critical solidarity, to maintain a critical, undogmatic perspective which sees the social movements in Bakur and Rojava for what they are. To criticise the problematic aspects but also to be in solidarity with the positive, liberatory movements taking place, such as the resistance against Daesh, the struggles for autonomy, the fight against Turkish state repression, the movements towards feminism, towards building co-operatives and toward anti-capitalism. These movements have the potential to transform society both in Kurdistan and in the Middle East.

But there are aspects of the situation in Rojava where we think it is important to maintain a critical perspective. For example, at the moment political parties, and their associated military and security organisations, hold a lot of power in both Rojava and Bakur. In both Bakur’s DTK and the council system in Rojava, places are allocated for representatives of political parties. This ensures that political parties always have a voice within the structures of democratic confederalism, whether or not they represent the views of the people in the grassroots assemblies. The most powerful of
these parties is the PYD, which, according to Shiar Nayo, has acted to suppress independent activists and those critical of their policies. Many people within the movement say that these political parties are only there because the movement is in its infancy, and that in the future there will be no need for them, but they are obviously one place where power could consolidate itself. Kurdish writer Ercan Ayboğa told us that he is hopeful that power will gravitate towards the grassroots:

“political parties are instruments of political and ideological approaches which have a certain role. Their role has become in the last years slowly less significant in political life. Increasingly the different self-organised structures, women, youth and so on, have become more important. It’s a slow process because over the decades Kurdish people thought only in the category of political parties and it takes time to make changes.”

Other bodies worth critically examining are Rojava’s executive and legislative councils. In the theory of democratic confederalism, these bodies should only carry out the will of the council system. But it remains to be seen whether power will remain with the grassroots, or gravitate toward the government level. As Kurdish Anarchist Zaher Baher puts it:

“I got the impression that as long as the power of the DSA [Democratic Autonomous Administration] increases, the power of TEV-DEM decreases and the opposite could be right too”.[9]

Also, the existence of a centralised security force, Asayîş, which is largely independent of the council system, seems to run counter to the idea of power being with the grassroots communes. But in the context of the Syrian civil war and attacks by Daesh, good security is clearly necessary and we were happy about the frequent Asayîş checkpoints, which helped to keep us safe during our visit in 2015. Many in the movement, including members of Asayîş, maintain that the organisation will dissolve itself when it is no longer necessary. Practical steps are being taken toward this end, with the setting up of armed defence forces by the communes. Bedran Gia Kurd of TEV-DEM told us that TEV-DEM was engaged in providing support and training to the communes to set up their own defence forces. Because of this process, Asayîş does not have a monopoly on the use of force in Rojava.

Perhaps the most powerful forces in Rojava are the People’s Protection Forces of the YPG and YPJ. These forces have been key to the survival of democratic confederalism in Rojava. However, there is evidence that they have acted oppressively in the past, firing on demonstrators in Amudê in 2013. Also, how many people in Rojava actually have a say about the alliances formed by these military organisations? One such example is the changing nature of the alliance with the US, which may be necessary for the success of the fight against Daesh, but which we would say, has the potential to threaten the grassroots social revolution in Rojava.

In 2014, when Kobanî was under attack by Daesh, the US, reluctantly and belatedly, began bombing in coordination with the YPG and YPJ. US air support was an important factor in the liberation of Kobanî. Since then military co-operation with the US against Daesh has increased.

Many people in Rojava have a critical perspective on the alliance. When we spoke to Bedran Gia Kurd of TEV-DEM, he said:

“There is daily coordination with the US military as our enemy is the same, but there is no long-term agreement. There is no guarantee for this coordination. It is temporary. Maybe in the future there won’t be this coordination. Coordination in the future will be on the basis of how to protect our principles. So if this coordination compromises our project, we will not agree to it.”

But, as Zaher Baher points out, Saleh Muslim, PYD co-chairperson, in an interview with the Washington Kurdish Institute, has put forward a different point of view:

“America is a superpower that fosters democracy globally, and tries to develop and disseminate it throughout the world.”[10]

Other PYD figures have called for international business investment in Rojava, seemingly without recognising that it would threaten the moves toward an anti-capitalist, cooperative economy in Rojava.[11]

Of course, these statements by politicians may be intended as pragmatic steps toward gaining international support for their struggle for autonomy and fight against Daesh. But, at best, these politicians are playing an extremely dangerous game. At worst, they are completely at odds with the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist elements of the movement.

Another issue is that of the reverence for the figure of Abdullah Öcalan. In almost every interview we carried out about democratic confederalism people would say that their ideas come from their leader. This habit of deferring to Öcalan runs counter to the ideas that the grassroots have the power to shape society themselves. As Zaher Baher puts it:

“For some time, Abdullah Öcalan, in recent books and text messages, has denounced and rejected the state and authority. But until now I have not heard that he has rejected his own authority and denounce those people calling him a great leader and who work hard to give him a sacred position. Öcalan’s attitude cannot be correct unless he also rejects his own authority and leadership.”[12]

We have heard that some of Öcalan’s work, which is thus far only available in German, does discuss critically his role as leader. We have not seen a translation of these writings. But the issue isn’t only about whether Öcalan rejects a leadership role. It is that he is treated as a leader by many within the movements for democratic confederalism. This is particularly striking in the women’s movements where, on the one hand women say that they are for women’s self organisation, and on the other say that their ideas come from Öcalan.

We believe that the most useful solidarity with the developing movements toward democratic confederalism is not to either reject all of the positive steps being taken because of the movement’s imperfections, or to only talk positively about them. Rather, we should remain a supportive and honest friend to the movement, a friend who does not shy away from taking action in solidarity with those fighting for a better society, but who is also not afraid to speak honestly, openly and critically.

Grassroots movements with the capacity to change society  

The movements for democratic confederalism in Rojava and Bakur are a place where anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-authoritarian and anti-state ideas are flourishing. They have the capability to transform the reality of society for millions of people. These changes are being made by people at a grassroots level, who are inspired by the ideas of the revolution, not by politicians or government institutions.

The establishment of communes and assemblies in Bakur and Rojava has empowered people to make decisions over many areas of their lives which were previously controlled by the state. For example, since the establishment of communes in Rojava there have been creative attempts to construct new methods of dealing with problem behaviour. As described above, each commune has a truth and reconciliation commission to deal with problems that arise in the community. For more serious incidents, such as murder, there is a ‘people’s court’ at the district level, with judges elected by the commune, that hears the case. These judges still have the power to send people to prison, but, Ercan Ayboğa, a Kurdish activist from Bakur who has visited Rojava, told us in 2016:

“There are still prisons in Rojava but the number of prisoners is very low. For example, in [the town of] Serekaniye the number of prisoners is 20 compared to 200 in Assad’s time. The courts try to avoid sending people to prison. They try to use other measures like sending people to work in another area, asking people to leave an area for a certain period of time, or arranging education or training for the accused person.”

However, according to Ercan, this system has been criticised by people within Rojava and people have been experimenting with an alternative, the ‘justice platform’. In this new system the justice and reconciliation commissions can ask for support with serious problems by forming a justice platform. The justice platform is made up of 200-300 people from “women, youth, other political movements and other organisations from the neighbourhood. They discuss the case and try to reach consensus.”

The fact that no one force has a monopoly on the use of violence and that, in Rojava, the communes are developing armed defence forces may be a key factor in keeping power at the grassroots level. The fact that the grassroots are armed makes it more difficult for power to consolidate itself with, for example, the Democratic Autonomous Administration or the military.

Women’s movements in Bakur and Rojava are perhaps the most inspiring element of the current situation in Kurdistan. When we were in Bakur and Rojava we met women who were determined to struggle against patriarchy, and it felt like there truly was an opportunity for changes to occur. We met with a women’s academy in Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish) who were involved in organising against male violence. They told us that they worked with women affected by violence from their husbands and organised collective action against it. They also organised trainings on women’s empowerment within their communities. Women in both Rojava and Bakur told us that men did not simply accept these ideas, but that making change was an ongoing struggle.

The movements for democratic confederalism have also opened space for anti-capitalist ideas. The talks organised by the communes in Rojava, for example, are a powerful way to spread anti-capitalist ideas. The setting up of co-operatives is an important way that people can be involved in creating grassroots alternatives. According to German economist Michel Knapp:

“While in North Kurdistan the established communes and co-operatives operate under mass repression, in the liberated territory of Rojava there are efforts to create a new form of economy independent of both capitalist and feudal relations of exploitation. This is being undertaken against the background of the drama of the Syrian war: thousands have been murdered and half of the population is homeless.”[13]

Knapp goes on to quote Dr Dara Kurdaxi, an economist and  member of the committee for economic revival and development in Afrîn canon, Rojava:

“We need new models for organisations and institutions. Those which are called collective, communal economic models, sometimes referred to as social economies. This is the method we are using as a foundation, so that the economy in Rojava can pick up and develop.”

The fact that there is a broad consensus that the economy should be organised along co-operative lines means that there is space and momentum for the setting up of co-operatives by the grassroots in Rojava. This is being done in a bottom up way by a diverse range of communes and related organisations. For example, the Foundation of Free Women in Rojava is currently setting up a number of women’s co-operatives in Cizîrê canton.

We have a lot to learn from these movements, and the first step towards solidarity is to educate ourselves. Many of the groups we visited in Rojava asked for people from outside to come and learn about their movements. By making stronger connections with activists working at the base level of democratic confederalism; for example the communes, co-operatives and women’s organisations, we can broaden our understanding and begin to forge genuine solidarity and also generate ideas and inspiration for our own movements.

Over the coming weeks we will be publishing a series of interviews with people involved in the movement for democratic confederalism.

To read more about Democratic Confederalism in Rojava, read Anja Flach, Michel Knapp and Ercan Ayboga’s forthcoming book Revolution in Rojava, which will be published in English in July 2016.

Corporate Watch will be releasing a book, ‘Kurdish Struggles for Autonomy’, in May 2016

The post Democratic confederalism in Kurdistan appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Lead photo caption: Children attending a demonstation in the cemetery in Roboski to commemorate those killed in the 2011 Roboski massacre, July 2015

Turkey’s latest attacks on its Kurdish population follow on from decades of repression and ethnic cleansing by the state of Turkey, its military and its police. In the 1990s, more than 3,000 villages in the Kurdish countryside were destroyed and effectively wiped from existence. The Kurdish population were uprooted from their land, and many were forced to migrate to the cities. Roughly three million people had to flee their homes. Thousands of people were also killed and many disappeared. The aim of burning down the villages was to assimilate the Kurdish population, in an attempt to erase their culture, their language, and their identities.

Today, Various Kurdish cities have declared themselves autonomous of the state, and many of those involved in these movements for autonomy are the same people who were forced from their villages in the 1990s, or their daughters and sons. The police and military are currently waging a bloody war against this movement.

Last year, Corporate Watch visited the village of Roboski and its surrounding areas. We interviewed Botan Şanstêrk*, who talked to us about the trauma of being a Kurdish child in the 1990s. Botan spoke quietly and emotionally to us. A lifetime of grief was evident on his face and in his voice.

Botan is calling for a boycott of tourism in Turkey and for demonstrations against Turkish Airlines. For more info on the tourism boycott see here.

He also spoke to us about the Roboski massacre, which took place on 28 December 2011. when 34 Kurdish cross border traders were killed by a Turkish F-16 strike. To read more about the Roboski massacre see here.

CW: Where were you born?
“I was born in Eski [Old] Hilal in 1985. There were about 6000 people living in Eski Hilal at that time, and 800 houses. The nature was really green and there was lots of fresh water. The town had a revolutionary soul; it had been burnt down seven times during the Ottoman era because the town was against Ottoman rule. In the old days, Armenians and Assyrians also lived in this area.”

Photo caption: A deserted village close to Roboski, which was forcibly depopulated by the Turkish military in the 1990s

CW: Can you describe your experiences of being a child in the 1980s and 1990s?
“We were against the system and the government saw us as an enemy. Each house had martyrs [family members who had been killed]. They were either killed by the government or they went to become guerillas [for the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK)] and had been killed by the Turkish military.

When I was a child, the military took people away all the time, even at night. They often took people to the military base. Villagers were put into prison for three or four years for wearing the puşi [Kurdish headscarf].

When I was 1 or 2 years old the military took women and men to an open area of land and they tortured the men to force them to become rangers [a paramilitary organisation made up of Kurdish villagers, which worked alongside the Turkish military, also known as ‘village guards’].

Most of the bad treatment happened in my village between 1992 and 1994. The mayor of the town went missing. They killed him in a car and then set the car on fire. The state did it but no-one was prosecuted. Later on, a military officer wrote a book and gave the names of the killers. The state killed three of my relatives during this time.

When I was about 8 years old, in 1993, the military told us that they were going to demolish our homes. I saw the army taking our furniture from our house and burning it. My mother saw the soldiers with my school bag and told them not to burn it. They burnt it anyway, with my school books in. When the military were leaving, they killed our animals and demolished some of our houses. We needed to find safe places to stay, so we stayed at camps near the village.

After the military left, the government banned food from coming to us. For eleven months they put an embargo on our village and the school and health centre closed down. We had to walk 5km to a school in another village – 10km per day, which was tough for someone so small. When I was at school, I was beaten and punished by the Turkish state teachers because I couldn’t pronounce Turkish correctly.  

The military came back in the Spring. They put everyone in one big area. They told us that we had to leave the village by September. They said that if we didn’t leave, they would burn down the village. They said, “If you are Kurdish, we will take you to the border of Iraq and you have to leave. If you say that you are Turkish you can settle down all around Turkey.” They also said that we had to speak Turkish, and not Kurdish, at home.

In 1994, a few thousand villagers left for South [Iraqi] Kurdistan. They went to eight different camps. My mother’s brothers went and my brother followed later.  

I moved to Yeni [New] Hilal with my parents, on the main road. We built this new village ourselves. The government assisted us because we declared that we were Turkish. But then they cut the financial help, so we had to sell our animals. The army moved us to Yeni Hilal because they wanted to divide us and make us less strong. They wanted to control us and they could do this better from the new location.  
 
In 1995, when I was ten years old, the military took my father to an army base. They hung him by his arms for fifteen days. He was the head of an extended family. They were trying to force him to give people’s names so that the military could force people to become rangers. My father said that he wouldn’t give anyone’s name, and that he would never become a ranger. They threatened to kill him. Some people voluntarily came from the family and gave their names so that he would be released.

When I was 11 or 12 years old, my older brother refused to do military service. The military put a landmine in our garden and my brother died. My other brother was taken to the military by force.  He had to go to Isparta for 18 months.

During this period, it was worst for the children because they stole our childhood. After school time, military officers would come and teach us about how great it was to be a Turk. They tried to brainwash us at school too.

We had to have guns in our houses to protect ourselves. My sister was doing cleaning and she accidentally shot herself. She died at 17 years old.

Between 1998 and 2004, I left Yeni Hilal and went to boarding school. I paid money not to go in the army – about 18,000 lira [£4,400]. My parents were quite old at that time and they suffered a lot economically because of this.

The Hilal people were always against assimilation. We saw how people were treated by the government and so some of the village became [PKK] guerillas. My schoolmate joined the guerillas after his brother was killed. Roughly 800 people from our village have become guerillas in the 30 years that the PKK has existed.”  

CW: What is daily life like now?
“When the state kills people in the villages they say it was the PKK. They then give one relative from the dead person’s family a government job. They want to assimilate us economically. There’s not many jobs here so the only solution is to become a ranger.

We see the military bases every day. This is a form of violence against us and they make me uncomfortable. The army doesn’t drive along our road much. They use the other side of the river, but I hear helicopters often. I woke up to the sound of them a couple of days ago and I thought that something was happening again. It reminds me of those days in the 90s and of the childhood I didn’t have.”
Photo Caption: The mlitary base overlooing the Kurdish village of Roboski

CW: Can you tell us about the Roboski massacre on 28th December 2011?
“When the Roboski massacre occurred, I rushed to the spot straight away. We collected the body parts. The bodies were taken to Uludere and I stood there whilst people washed the bodies. I knew some of the people who were killed.

When the military carried out the massacre, they thought that no-one would speak out about it. But three villages have come together and they’re doing regular demonstrations.  

It has become the culture of the state to massacre nature, humans and animals. If there was a forest fire in central and western Turkey, the government would try everything to put the fire out. Here in Kurdistan, the military try everything to destroy the people, the nature, the animals.

Twenty years ago we had forests and animals. But they burnt the forests and killed the animals. Our historical places are the same. They’re destroying them as well, along with the old Armenian and Assyrian churches.

The state has a big hatred for Kurdish people and Kurdish places. They want to flood Hasankeyf and the surrounding villages [The state-approved Ilısu Dam will displace up to 78,000 people of mostly Kurdish ethnicity when it is completed, and flood the ancient town of Hasankeyf]. Rojava [the autonomous mostly-Kurdish region in northern Syria] is another example of the state’s hatred. If Kurdish people outside of Turkey want something for themselves, if they want their freedom, the Turkish state is not happy about it.”

CW: You have suffered throughout your life due to the weapons used by the Turkish military. What do you think of the companies making the weapons?
“I don’t want weapons produced if they are to be used in Kurdistan. I would prefer them to produce pens. I’d prefer that the blue of the pen flows rather than the red of the blood. If someone helps to make these weapons, they are responsible for what happens.”

CW: Do you think people should take action against the sale and export of weapons to Turkey?
“It would be great if people tried to take action to stop this.”

CW: What else do you think people outside of Kurdistan can do in solidarity?
“If I were a tourist I wouldn’t come to this country. People can protest against Turkish Airlines, for example. This is a state airline. People can boycott and protest against state products and companies, not the civilian ones. I think this can have an effect. Journalists and activists can also write about the situation here.”

What you can do

Campaign for a boycott of tourism in Turkey until the violence against Kurdish people ends.

Campaign against arms exports to Turkey. To read about the companies supplying arms to the Turkish police and military click here and here. Also see Campaign Against the Arm’s Trade’s list of companies supplying weapons to Turkey.

– Join the demonstration against French arms company Thales’ factory in Crawley on 8 April. Thales are an exporter of arms to Turkey.

– There will also be a demonstration organised by Palestine solidarity activists against Elbit in Shenstone in the West Midlands on 8 April. Elbit also supply weapons to Turkey.

– Stop the Arms Fair are planning to pose some tricky questions to the annual general meeting of UK arms company, BAE Systems. Contact research(at)caat.org.uk to request a proxy share if you would like to attend. BAE have repeatedly applied for export licenses for the sale of weapons to Turkey.

To find out more about campaigns in support of the Kurdish movement for autonomy, go to http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/

*We have used a pseudonym, at the interviewees request.

The post ‘They stole my childhood’: The trauma of being a Kurdish child in the 1990s in Turkey appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Lead Photo: Servet Encü in the village where he was born, burnt down by the Turkish military in the 1990s

Today, Turkey continues its brutality in its war against its Kurdish population. The state is imposing new curfews daily in the south-east of the country. Hundreds of citizens have been killed so far, whilst the western mainstream media and politicians remain largely silent about the massacres.

Anti-militarist activists in the UK, however, are taking action against atrocities carried out by states such as Turkey. Last week, activists occupied the roof and blockaded the DPRTE arms fair in Wales, where several companies that sell weapons to Turkey were exhibiting.  More activists are due to stand on trial in April after blockading the gates of the DSEI arms fair in London to try to disrupt the set-up of the fair. In September 2015, DSEI welcomed Turkish officials and military companies, whilst the Turkish government’s Defence and Aerospace Industry Exporter’s Association was its ‘International Partner’. Earlier this month, a protest was held outside the Home Office against the ‘Security and Policing’ arms fair, which was being held at an air base in Farnborough. The UK government’s arms export body had invited a delegation from Turkey to attend.

Photo above: Protesters blockading the gates of the DSEI arms fair in 2015

Photo caption: Protesters against the DPTRE arms fair in Cardiff on March 16th hold a Kurdish Solidarity Banner

There are numerous weapons companies which supply Turkey’s police with armoured vehicles, guns, teargas and water cannons, which are used on a daily basis against Kurdish citizens. Read the list of companies here. A list of some of the companies supplying weapons to the Turkish army can be found here.

As Turkey bombards its Kurdish cities with bullets and mortars and terrorises citizens with its tanks, helicopters and surveillance drones, arms companies are literally making a killing. On March 9, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu announced that Turkey has approved $5.9 billion in new ‘defence’ projects.

Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) unveiled its new Anka Block A unpiloted drone in February. Turkish Deputy Defense Minister Suay Alpay stated: “We are now engaged in a critical anti-terror fight … These assets built by the local industry will augment our fight.”

International arms companies are also making millions from Turkey’s desire to arm itself to the teeth. Ten T-129 attack helicopters were delivered to the Turkish military last year. They were produced by British-Italian arms company AgustaWestland (which fully merged with Italian arms giant Finmeccanica this year) and TAI. Seventeen more of these helicopters are due to be delivered this year.

Meanwhile, this month the Pentagon authorised the selling of smart bombs to Turkey, in a deal worth millions of dollars. “The deal came timely as we are deeply engaged in asymmetrical warfare and need smart bombs,” a Turkish military official said. US companies ENF and General Dynamics have been awarded the contracts to provide the BLU-109 bombs.

US giant Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms company, who brag on their website that they have a “long history of partnership with the Republic of Turkey,” is another of the many international arms companies that has a history of profiting from Turkey’s aggression against Kurdish populations within Turkey and in neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava (the autonomous, majority Kurdish region in northern Syria). Lockheed provides Turkey with F16 fighter jets, as well as Hellfire missiles, and is producing new F-35 fighter jets for the Turkish military. Lockheed states that their $399 billion F-35 project is the “world’s most expensive weapons programme.” Turkish arms companies, who are manufacturing components for the F-35, are also making billions from the contract.

In September 2015, Lockheed announced that it was producing and supplying Turkey with a“next-generation, air-to-surface standoff cruise missile for the F-35 fighter jet,” partnering with Turkish arms company Roketsan. The companies stated that they would provide “live flight testing on Turkish F-16s.”

Meanwhile, Turkish warplanes are continuing their ongoing attacks on Kurdish villages in the Qandil region of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) has its main bases. Arms industry website Janes stated that on March 14 “nine Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons and two McDonald Douglas F-4 2020 Phantom aircraft were involved in the strikes against the PKK’s main headquarters area in the Qandil Mountains.” In reality, the fighter jets, accompanied by drones, destroyed Kurdish villagers’ houses during the bombardments.

Turkey also continues its provocations and attacks across its border into the majority-Kurdish, autonomous region of Rojava, in northern Syria. Turkey has repeatedly shelled and bombed YPG positions in Rojava. The Turkish goverment has made several threats to launch a ground invasion of Rojava.

Lockheed Martin and the Turkish government’s cozy relationship continues, and on the March 15, the two were in talks, discussing the possibility of the arms company providing Turkey with an “urgent” Medium Extended Air Defence System (MEADS).

This month in London, activist Zelda Jeffers was found guilty of criminal damage for demonstrating at Lockheed Martin’s offices. Zelda drew attention to the words of Lockheed Martin’s Executive Vice President, Bruce Tanner, who had boasted about Lockheed’s “indirect benefits” from the violence in Syria.

You can listen to Tanner on Soundcloud here.

The Roboski Massacre: A case study of the use of Lockheed Martin’s F16s  to massacre Kurds in Turkey

On one of our recent visits to Bakur (the Kurdish region that lies within Turkey’s borders), we visited Roboski and its surrounding villages. On 28 December 2011, thirty-four people, many of whom were teenagers, were massacred in this region by Turkey’s military. The villagers were crossing the mountains on mules to collect sugar and diesel from their relatives in South [Iraqi] Kurdistan. They were killed when two F16 fighter planes bombed them. For Kurds, the Roboski massacre will go down in history as one of the most atrocious crimes by the state against its Kurdish population.

When we visited the Roboski area in 2015, we were shocked by the number of Turkish military bases on the mountains, keeping an ever-present surveillance on the Kurdish civilians. On the roads surrounding the villages, we encountered military checkpoint after checkpoint and were questioned as to why we were there and where we were going.

Photos above: Military bases on the mountaintops overlooking the village of Roboski and the surrounding countryside

We interviewed Servet Encü, a Kurdish man who was born in 1979 and lives in the village of  Şantiye. Servet was one of the few survivors of the Roboski massacre. In 1993, when he was thirteen years old, Turkey’s military burnt down his village and its residents were tortured (in the 1990s, Turkey burnt down or forcibly evacuated thousands of Kurdish villages).

Interview with Servet Encü

Corporate Watch: What was life like here before the massacre?

In the 1960s and 1970s we didn’t have a border. It was easy to go to the Iraqi side and exchange sugar, tea and walnuts. In the 1990s, we couldn’t make a living any more because we were forced to leave our village and there were no trees or crops, so we started to do cross-border trade.

The military put landmines on the border in the 1990s to try to stop the trade. Between 2006 and 2009, one military officer allowed us to do border trade because we had no money. He retired and after that the highest officer stopped us.

CW: What happened on the day of the Roboski massacre?

It was cold and there was snow that day. The boys played football before they went. We wanted to bring diesel, a few cigarettes and some sugar over the border from South Kurdistan. We wanted to keep the sugar for ourselves and sell the diesel.

People left from Gülyazı, Şantiye and Roboski villages. We left our village at 3pm. The military were dropping bombs from the Gülyazı Koyü military base to scare us off. But bombing happened all the time at that time – it was normal. Thirty-eight of us continued towards the border and thirty-five others turned back.

150 people could have died that day [as 150 people had planned to go]. Some people had heard the sound of drones that afternoon and decided not to go, and I think some people were warned not to go by some responsible people in their villages, but we didn’t hear anything. Others didn’t go because they hadn’t sold their diesel from last time and didn’t have enough containers.

At around 6pm we went to the Haftanin guerilla camp in South Kurdistan, close to Zahko. We have relatives from South Kurdistan who bring sugar and diesel to the guerilla camp. At 8pm we started to return. We were in two groups. The other group was 500m away from mines, on the South Kurdistan side. At the number 15 border stone, we waited for a phone call because we wanted to know if there were soldiers around. We found out that the military had blocked the roads.

At 8.40pm an F16 came. With F16s you don’t hear them until they’re close. At the time, I was checking on my mule. I was 15 metres away from the rest of the group. Suddenly the military dropped a big bomb. There was a light from the bomb. I was thrown 50 metres away and I fell down. There were human and animal pieces raining from the sky. I screamed. I acted like I had died and still the bombing continued for forty-five minutes. I rolled down the mountain towards the Turkish side and fell into a big hole in the snow. I thought that the bombs were going to kill me or I was going to freeze there.

Forty-five minutes later they attacked and killed the other group. They hadn’t moved from their position after we were bombed because they’d waited there to see if they could help us.

Photos above: Servet’s photos of some of the people killed in the massacre

At the same time, the villagers were ringing the military base, asking about the bombing. The military said:“We are just trying to scare them off.” I had a radio and asked if anyone could hear me. One villager from Roboski heard me. I said:“They have killed my friends and I’m the only one alive.” The villager didn’t believe me because they had spoken to the military. The villager rang the military back and said: “You killed them”. After that the military retreated.

Two or three hours later, people were able to come to help. I heard voices coming but I was in the hole. I screamed to the people to help me. I didn’t have any injuries. They got me out of the hole.  The villagers removed me from the scene of the massacre and brought me down the mountain.

The military didn’t let an ambulance through.  If an ambulance had come then five or six other people could have survived.

A boy who survived the massacre had pieces of a bomb in his face. He was trying to call his relatives but his mouth was full of snow. He was in intensive care for one month and in hospital for one year. Some of the young boys lost their heads, legs and arms. Six or seven people were still alive and they died from freezing. The soldiers didn’t help us.

People put the bodies and body parts into bags. They were hurrying because they didn’t want to be accused of helping terrorists. I was worried that the government would put guns by the bodies and say that the people killed had been terrorists. We were worried about what the government might do or say.

Tractors and mules came for the bodies and brought them down to the sports area, where the boys had played football the day before, in the morning.

The military said: “We are going to take the bodies to Malatya.” There’s an airforce base there. The villagers didn’t accept this. The military said that they were PKK guerillas and that this is what they do with guerillas’ bodies. In the end, ambulances took the bodies to Uludere. A medical doctor came for an autopsy.

CW: Can you tell us about the funeral?

The body parts of the humans were mixed with the mules. We washed the bodies. We put them in thirty-four coffins on the December 29. The next day we had a funeral. One day later most of the people in Turkey were celebrating new year.

No government people came to the funeral. The AKP [the ruling party] said that they were coming but the villagers didn’t want them to. We put yellow, green and red [Kurdish] flags on the coffins. Later, the judge called people to court to ask why they had used these flags. We said: “The Kurdish party supported us so we used these colours.”

CW: Did Turkish TV report the massacre?

Someone called a Kurdish TV channel, ROJ TV, and they announced the massacre on the news because on Turkish TV channels you didn’t hear anything. For 28 hours the Turkish channels didn’t report anything.

CW: How many people died in your family?

My wife, Sevim, lost two brothers. They were 15 and 21 years old. She lost a total of nine people in her family, and I lost eleven.

CW: You spoke out about the massacre. Were you the only survivor to do this?

The others didn’t talk about the massacre. One was in hospital and they paid the youngest survivor money to so that he wouldn’t talk. The judges called one man and gave him money to become a ranger [or village guard, a paramilitary organisation that works with the Turkish military]. The judges called me and offered me money to become a ranger, too. I said no.

An Inspector came from Ankara and asked me if I wanted money. I said, “I want justice for thirty-four people who died”. The governor of Şırnak invited me to his town. I went with two others – one was a father who had lost his son. The governor asked me if I wanted money. He told me that I had lost my mind and that I needed to be cured in hospital because I said that I wanted justice. I said that I would go to the hospital, but I escaped to South Kurdistan with my family three months after the attack. We stayed there for nine months. Then we moved home using the same border trade route, because I don’t have ID to cross legally.

I could go to prison or I could be the thirty-fifth person who dies. Whatever they do, I will talk about it. Because I survived the Roboski massacre, I want to help bring justice.

CW: Have you suffered from more state repression since then?

At the beginning of 2014, lots of military trucks came here. They started shooting and one boy was shot and injured. People damaged their trucks and broke their guns. I wasn’t there. The military didn’t want people to do any more border trade. They wanted to make a road between the military bases, crossing the massacre point. A couple of days later, the military came and raided houses and they made the excuse that they were searching for missing guns.

They broke my door down and destroyed my picture of the thirty-four people killed in the massacre. I was arrested at 4am. Six family members of those who were massacred were also arrested and we were released at 9pm. I was arrested because I spoke out about the massacre.

On the March 8 2014 somebody came and attacked our house with a Kalashnikov. It was a professional person. We couldn’t find any bullet cases. They had collected them. Luckily, no one was hurt. No one came to help us that night. The military came the next day. They were outside the house with guns.

CW: Have you done any cross-border trade since the massacre?

When we were living in the old village [in the 1990s] we were growing everything. We had our own wheat and fruit. Now I still trade over the border as I have no other income. My grandfather did it, my father did it. We have never killed anyone. Whenever I go past the massacre place now, I remember what happened.

CW: What do you think of the companies who make the weapons that carried out the massacre?

I don’t want them to be sold to the Turkish military. These weapons are killing us. They are killing Kurdish people.

CW: The British government provides licences to sell weapons components to Turkey. Do you think they should do this?

They shouldn’t give permission. If there were no weapons we could have peace. We don’t want war, we want peace. We want support so that we can have peace and so that we can speak our own language. My mother tongue is Kurdish. If I were to tell you not to speak your mother tongue of English, would that be right? The worst that could happen to me has happened. Now I live only for them.

CW: Thanks a lot for talking to us, Servet.

The culpability of the US

The attack was carried out with F16 aircraft, supplied to Turkey by Lockheed Martin. The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the convoy was spotted by a US Predator drone. The US passed the information on to the Turkish military, who carried out the attack. Although the US Department of Defence have said that it was not their decision to carry out the attack, the US military is clearly partly responsible for the massacre as it enabled the Turkish military to carry out the attack through providing the location of the convoy. The Predator drone is manufactured by US arms company, General Atomics.

Relatives of those killed in the massacre and their supporters hold a demonstration at the cemetery where those killed in the attack are buried every Thursday. They are calling for justice over the killing of their loved ones. You can read about their campaign on http://barisicinaktivite.com (mainly in Turkish).

Photo above: Relatives of those killed and their supporters demonstrating for justice at the cemetery in Roboski

Take action

– Join the demonstration against French arms company Thales’ factory in Crawley on 8 April. Thales are an exporter of arms to Turkey.

– There will also be a demonstration organised by Palestine solidarity activists against Elbit in Shenstone in the West Midlands on 8 April. Elbit also supply weapons to Turkey.

– Stop the Arms Fair are planning to pose some tricky questions to the annual general meeting of UK arms company, BAE Systems. Contact research(at)caat.org.uk to request a proxy share if you would like to attend. BAE have repeatedly applied for export licenses for the sale of weapons to Turkey.

To read more about the Roboski massacre see this report on statecrime.org

The post International arms companies make a killing in Turkey: a case study of the Roboski Massacre appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Photo caption: Kurşunlu mosque in Amed. Damage is from bombardment by the Turkish military (Photo provided by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality)

“The police and military are using every kind of violence against the Kurds. They are using tanks and heavy armoured vehicles. They have flattened houses, historical places, mosques. They use helicopters and technological weapons, night vision binoculars and drones. They don’t let families get to the bodies of youths who were killed. Corpses remain on the streets for weeks.”

Baran describes to Corporate Watch the massacres that are taking place right now in Kurdish cities within Turkey’s borders. Baran is from Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish). Once a political activist in Kurdistan, he now lives in exile in the UK. Right now, Amed is being besieged by military and police as Turkey carries out the greatest massacres and mass displacement of its Kurdish population since the 1990s. Meanwhile, the city of Cizîr (Cizre) has been left in ruins after two months of operations by state forces.

Baran’s hometown is just one of a number of Kurdish-majority cities within Turkey’s borders that, after an intensification of violence directed at Kurds, declared autonomy from the state last year. Residents erected barricades to protect themselves from the police and military. We asked him whose decision it was to declare autonomy and who built the barricades. He replied:

“The neighbourhood assembly made the decision and that assembly was elected by the people who live there. Most of the local people agreed to the declaration of autonomy. The Patriotic Democratic Youth Movement (YDG-H) built the barricades. The main reason for the barricades is to prevent activists and youths from police attacks. Police always carry out raids against them.”

The youths stand armed with kalashnikovs behind the barricades in cities across Bakur (the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders), ready to defend themselves. Turkey has responded to the declarations of autonomy with immense violence, terrorising the Kurdish population as the state declares a war on its own population.

Since August 2015, the state has declared 58 open-ended, round-the-clock curfews on various cities in the south-east of its borders. The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey stated in its February report that “at least 1,337,000 residents have been affected by these curfews and the fundamental rights of these people such as the right to life and the right to health are explicitly violated”. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Human Rights Association reported that:

“The curfew itself is a violation of the right to life and prevents the truth about civilian killings from being revealed. In fact, the curfews contribute to the legitimatisation by the government of civilian killings, which are not considered violations of the right to life.”

Residents, including children, are being killed daily by state forces. As the wounded lie dying in the streets, those who try to help them are shot. In Amed, the mother of Turgay Girçek is currently holding a daily vigil to try to reclaim the body of her nineteen year old son, who has been lying dead on the streets for three weeks.

“The police and army want to break the will of the people who have declared autonomy,” Baran tells us. “They want to show the other Kurdish neighbourhoods that the state is very strong. They want to spread fear into people’s hearts. They want to break people’s political wills and choices.”

Anti-Kurdish Graffiti on a house in Amed’s Sur district. It reads “God is enough for everything. Esadullah Unit” and “You will see the force of the Turk”. (Photo provided by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality)

Amed is coming up to its 80^th day of non-stop curfew. “The police and army attack daily with all available weapons, except bombers and chemicals, against some hundred local defenders of the YPS (Civil Defense Forces),” Ercan Ayboğa, an Amed resident, told us last week. “The less the state is successful in conquesting Sur, the more brutal it becomes.”

He continued:

“The human tragedy is deepening step by step without any serious critics from Turkish society and the western allies, which makes the Kurds – always seeking for a real peace – more disappointed. However, after some uncertainty, nowadays the majority of Kurds stand behind the resistance in more than ten cities against Turkish military, occupation and systematic massacres.”

In the city of Cizîr, 139 wounded citizens were trapped in three different basements, without food and water, for weeks. Security forces blocked ambulances that tried to reach the injured, and shot at those who tried to leave the basements. Late last week, the death toll of the trapped citizens had risen to 110 and there was no news from 28 wounded people. Many were caught under debris as one of the buildings collapsed under artillery fire, while others were burnt to death after state forces used petrol to set the building alight. Police also fired teargas into one of the basements, making it impossible for the survivors to breathe.

Yasemin Çıkmaz, who was burnt to death in one of the basements of Cizîr (JINHA News Agency)

JINHA news agency has also reported that unknown chemicals were pumped into the sewer system in Cizîr:

“The chemical agent, which has a smell similar to tear gas, has entered residents’ homes through water drains in kitchens and baths. Meanwhile, state forces have shut down the last remaining markets, bakeries and pharmacies in the town until further notice.”

Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) has issued a statement, listing a huge number of human rights violations by the state of Turkey. IHD has documented a number of citizens who have died in Cizîr and Silopi. Amongst those who have lost their lives is a 70 year old elderly man, Selahattin Bozkurt, who was shot dead by security forces as he walked into his garden. A three month old infant, Miray İnce, died after she was seriously injured in the face by gunfire from security forces. Her grandfather, 73 year old Ramazan İnce, was shot dead by security forces as he was trying to carry his granddaughter to an ambulance, while at the same time waving a white flag.
The streets of Cizîr

JINHA has also reported that in the city of Silopi, thousands of people were evicted from their houses and marched to a gymnasium. Sabriye Gizer told JINHA that her family were assaulted as they were forced out of their home. She continued:

“We were walked by force of arms. One woman and one man walked ahead of us. One shouted: ‘Shoot them, shoot them’. They opened fire on them. We don’t know if they are alive. It was cold. We froze. They chose some young people. They took them somewhere. They searched us thoroughly, even our underwear.”

Meanwhile, state violence intensified in Nisêbîn (Nusaybin in Turkish) at the weekend and twelve year old Muğdat Ay was shot dead by state forces as he played marbles in the street. Today (Tuesday) Turkey has also declared a curfew on the citizens of the city of Hezex (Idil in Turkish).

Mass Displacement

The recent attacks on the Kurdish cities have resulted in mass displacement of people who have had to flee their homes. Ercan Ayboğa told us that in Amed, around 50,000 people have evacuated their houses. “Together with the other cities in North Kurdistan, up to half a million people have had to leave their homes,” he stated.

Baran tells us about the people who are the most affected in Amed:

“Sur is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Amed. And it’s highly political, of course. In the 1990s the people were forced to leave their villages and came to the city. [Turkey’s security forces burnt down Kurdish villages in the 90s. Over 3000 villages were wiped from the map, while thousands of people were either killed or disappeared]. And now the same people have again been displaced. One of the reasons for destroying Sur now could be that they want to rebuild it again. It will become a business and district centre.”

Indeed, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu recently stated that Sur district of Amed is to be rebuilt similar to Toledo in Spain. Kurdish HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş responded that it was no coincidence that Davutoğlu compared Sur to Toledo, the Spanish city famous for its struggle against fascism. “After Toledo surrendered to the dictatorial regime, Franco took full control of Spain. Prime Minister [Davutoğlu] now wants to declare his dictatorship by toppling Sur,” he announced last week.

The run-up to declarations of autonomy

To understand the present situation in the Kurdish cities, it is important to give a brief explanation of the succession of attacks on the Kurds that preceded it, and to talk in more detail about why the Kurds have stated that they are autonomous and what autonomy means for them.

Autonomy was declared by locals in the Kurdish cities after months of escalating violence by the state of Turkey. In the run-up to the June 2015 election, the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) was heavily targeted. Its offices were bombed and attacked in various cities, while two bombs killed four people at an HDP rally in Amed (Diyarbakır), attended by hundreds of thousands of people. This attack was blamed on Daesh but many believe that the state was responsible.

The HDP gained 80 seats in parliament in the June election, preventing the governing AKP party from winning a majority and therefore stopping president Erdoğan from changing the constitution and granting himself greater powers. The state responded by punishing its Kurdish population, arresting and imprisoning thousands of people. Journalists were also arrested and media sites were hacked by the state, or blocked by the courts. Kurdistan Workers‘ Party (PKK) guerilla bases in the mountains were attacked.

State violence continued and in late June 2015 Daesh crossed from Turkey into the Kurdish city of Kobanê in Rojava, killing 164 people. In July a bomb blast in Pirsûs (Suruç in Turkish) killed 33 young people who were preparing to cross the border to help with the reconstruction of Kobanê.

In response, in July 2015, the PKK abandoned their ceasefire and, around the same time, people in cities across Bakur erected barricades in the streets to defend themselves against the violence of the police and army.

For example, on 28 July 17 year old Hasan Nerse was shot dead by police in Cizîr. His family believe that he was killed because he was wearing Kurdish traditional clothing. In response, residents erected barricades and dug trenches in the Cudi district of Cizîr to prevent state forces from entering. Armed young people stood guard on the barricades.

In August, residents of several cities declared autonomy from the state. “Farqîn (Silvan), Cizîr (Cizre), Silopi, Varto, Ergis (Van), Sêrt (Siirt) and Nisêbîn (Nusaybin) first declared autonomy,” Narin, a resident of Farqîn told us when we visited the city in November 2015. We asked her to explain why they wanted to become autonomous. She explained:

“There was a big uprising in solidarity with Kobanê and the state made a new security law giving new powers to the police. Another reason was because of the Suruç and Amed bombings. This is why we started to declare autonomy. Everything is related. But the main reason was the Suruç bombing.”

In Farqîn, citizens erected barricades in three neighbourhoods of their city and on 15 August, Barış Güleryüz of the DBP (Democratic Regions Party) read out a statement on behalf of the people of Farqîn, declaring themselves autonomous from the state. Since then, Barış has been forced into hiding and the HDP (People’s Democratic Party) co-mayor, who was present at the declaration of autonomy, has been imprisoned.

The state of Turkey responded by using intense violence and imposing a series of curfews, culminating in a 12 day siege of the neighbourhoods of Farqîn in November. An official from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) threatened: “the security forces will erase the three Silvan neighbourhoods from the map”.

Children explore the devastation in Farqîn after the Curfew was lifted in November 2015

The barricades in Farqîn have since been destroyed but the residents of the city still believe that they are autonomous.

Zuhal Tekiner, the co-Mayor of Farqîn (Silvan) told us in November 2015:

“We believe we will achieve autonomy… We believe that we can change things. When we struggle here we believe that all of Kurdistan is with us…They said they wanted to erase us from the map. Now we will draw the map again”.

We asked Baran, from Amed, to explain why the people of Amed’s Sur district declared autonomy. He told us:

“There were already different neighbourhood assemblies in Sur. After the June election and especially after the Suruç bombing they decided to announce an autonomous neighbourhood.”

The people of Bakur (the region of Kurdistan within Turkey) have been organising themselves in a communalist, democratic way since 2007. Despite repression and arrests from the state, neighbourhood assemblies and workers’ co-ops have been flourishing, and the model of democratic autonomy has since been firmly established within Kurdish society. This model of organising society – without the need of the state – is as huge threat to Turkey; as is the autonomous majority-Kurdish region of Rojava in the north of Syria, which organises itself in a similar model of democratic confederalism.

The state and the right wing in Turkey are maintaining a deafening media silence about the police and military massacres in the south east by intimidating anyone who dares report it. One example is Turkey’s Beyaz Show television programme. The live talk show aired a call in January from Ayşe Çelik, a teacher from Amed. She said:

“Are you aware of what is going on in the east, in the south-east of Turkey? Here, unborn children, mothers and people are being killed… What is being experienced here is conveyed very differently [by the media]. Do not keep silent… Children should not die, mothers should not die.”

According to Laura Pitel in The Independent, the talkshow presenter was widely criticised by state media for allowing PKK propaganda to be aired. A prosecution was opened against both Ayşe Çelik and Beyazit Öztürk, the talkshow presenter. Öztürk later issued an on-air apology for taking the call.

Due to this intimidation, coupled with racism and bias, Turkey’s mainstream media has distorted the killings in Kurdish cities, with media outlets branding those killed as terrorists and blaming the violence on the PKK and not the state. On 7 February, the newspaper Today’s Zaman reported the impossible figure of 733 “PKK members” killed in “Cizre and Sur”, while not mentioning any killings of civilians. A columnist in Daily Sabah claimed the PKK had opened fire on ambulances that the “Turkish state” had deployed “against all odds”, while not mentioning the police and army’s prevention of medical care reaching wounded civilians.

The international press has remained overwhelmingly silent over Turkey’s massacres in Bakur. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the Turkish state has imprisoned and deported foreign correspondents reporting from Bakur over the last year, and the mainstream media is unwilling to trust Kurdish media sources, buying into the state’s attempts to discredit them. Secondly, Turkey is an important ally of NATO and the US, and it is not in the interest of US-aligned governments to criticise it. In London, there have been demonstrations at the BBC, with UK-based Kurds and their comrades protesting the corporation’s silence on Turkey’s massacre of its Kurdish population.A national demonstration is planned at the BBC on 6 March 6.

We asked Baran whether he thought that self-defence behind the barricades is a good tactic for the Kurds to achieve self-determination. He replies:

“There is a reality in Kurdistan that if you don’t have a weapon or gun then you can’t live, as you are surrounded by brutal forces who don’t let you live in normal conditions. So the Kurds think that armed struggle is very crucial for them. This armed struggle guarantees their lives. If these people didn’t have any weapons then worse things could happen. Kurds know that the armed struggle is very important for their existence.”

What you can do in solidarity

– Join the national demonstration on 6 March outside the BBC.

– Campaign for a boycott of tourism in Turkey until the violence against Kurdish people ends.

– Get in touch with your local Kurdish solidarity group. If there isn’t one in your area, make links with the local Kurdish community and start a new one.

– Campaign against arms exports to Turkey. To read about the companies supplying arms to the Turkish police and military click here and here. Also see Campaign Against the Arm’s Trade’s list of companies supplying weapons to Turkey.

– To find out more about campaigns in support of the Kurdish movement for autonomy, go to http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/

– Don’t trust the mainstream media to get your news. We recommend going to JINHA Womens’ News Agency and DIHA News Agency. Other Kurdish sources include Firat, Kurdish Info and The Kurdish Question.

This article was originally published, in shortened form, in Red Pepper

The post Turkey’s bloodiest massacre and displacement of the Kurds since the 1990s is happening now appeared first on Corporate Watch.

In 2015, Corporate Watch visited Bakur (meaning ‘North’ in Kurmanji), the Kurdish region within Turkey’s borders. We interviewed two journalists from JİNHA (Jin Haber Ajansı), an all-women news agency made up of mostly Kurdish women, based in Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish).

Our meeting with JİNHA took place just after the Turkish election in June 2015. Since our interviews, the Turkish state has begun a new war on its Kurdish population. Cities have been attacked by the police and military with mortars, tanks and helicopters and every day Kurdish citizens are being murdered. People in cities across Bakur have erected barricades in their neighbourhoods to defend themselves against the violence and are trying to organise autonomously from the state.

For four years, JİNHA journalists have been reporting the crimes of the Turkish state and have suffered a great deal of repression. Their website has been hacked five times in these four years and has been blocked by a state court order. Their journalists have been threatened by the police, including death threats, and have been targeted with live ammunition while carrying out their work as reporters. Women from the news agency have also been arrested. On 19th December 2015, Beritan Canözer was charged with “aiding a terrorist organisation”, while Vildan Atmaca was charged with  “defaming the President through social media and propagandising for a terrorist organisation”. Atmaca’s next hearing in court will be held today, on 21st January, 2016. Another JİNHA journalist, Rojda Oğuz, was arrested on the 8th January 2016 and charged with “being a member of a terrorist organisation”. Her phone calls were tapped by the police, and she and Beritan, are in prison pending their trials.

Meanwhile, the co-Mayor (Kurdish municipalities have two mayors, one man and one woman) of the municipality of the town of Suruç has been arrested on various charges; one of which is that the municipality subscribed to JİNHA. According to the news agency, the payment for the subscription “was considered as ‘transferring money to a terror organisation’”.

We were lucky enough to interview journalists Asya Tekin and Sarya Gözüoğlu, just two of the courageous women who write for JİNHA. The interviews took place before the latest assaults by the Turkish military on Kurdish cities.

Interview with Asya Tekin (pictured above)

Corporate Watch: Can you describe JİNHA?

Asya Tekin: JİNHA was founded four years ago on 8 March 2012, which was International Women’s Day. Its goal is to cover women’s issues from women’s perspectives with only female reporters. It was founded in Amed. Since then, a network of reporters has developed all over Kurdistan – we now have 40 staff. Legally we’re a company but we work as a women’s collective.

It’s an agency of mainly Kurdish women, but as it’s grown it has tried to engage more with women’s problems around the world on a global level.

We have a website and a visual service that sends coverage from around the region to different channels, and we also send news to a lot of newspapers in the region.

CW: Does JİNHA experience prejudice because it’s a women’s new agency?

AT: When it comes to our news being picked up, there’s a lot of difficulties. Our subscribers are made up of the leftist media and alternative media. Big news channels generally don’t subscribe. Media usually presents women in a sensationalist and tabloidised way, but we present a woman’s perspective on women’s struggles. This isn’t something that readers and viewers here are used to seeing. So we have lots of difficulties with subscriptions.

Our reporters also experience difficulties when they’re out reporting. People say that women can’t do war reporting and there is the assumption that the people holding the camera should be men. There is discrimination from colleagues and every day people.

CW: Can you tell us about day to day life and the violence that you experience from the Turkish police and the military in Kurdistan?

AT: Daily life here makes me feel unsafe, especially as a woman reporter. As a female reporter, every day it’s possible to be under attack. During the [2015 Turkish general] election campaign we went to the Black Sea region. We were harassed by police and we were followed by an unmarked car all the way to Malatya. We complained to the police, saying that we knew that it was them, and the police seemed to accept this but wouldn’t do anything about the complaint. I don’t feel safe here.

This is a country where there’s a serious struggle for women’s liberation. Women like Deniz Firat [a Kurdish female correspondent working for Firat News Agency, killed by Daesh in 2014] and others like her who were murdered doing this job give inspiration and strength to me.

Deniz Firat, Killed by Daesh in 2014

I see myself as a journalist working in a state of war and I see what I do as being on the frontlines of that struggle. The attacks may have a psychological affect but not enough to make me give up.

When you see this much injustice around you, you have to report on it. The news that you choose to make can put you on the right side. Of course, the news needs to be as objective as possible but when you see a state that is committing so much injustice you have to report it from the right side. In fact, as a journalist it’s your responsibility to be on the side of what’s right. In an ethical and moral sense, as a person I feel a responsibility to do what’s right. Of course we’re journalists, but I am also a Kurdish woman, so I feel a responsibility for what’s going on.

We don’t just make news about the women who resist; we make news about women who can’t resist, who live under conditions of near slavery. This is our duty as women journalists. It’s the approach of our agency that we are on the side of women and women’s freedom in every situation.

To the same extent that we make news about women who are resisting, we make news about women who are being abused, held down, exposed to discrimination. And we see it as showing the struggles of all women, and what women’s struggles are really like.

For example, a woman who is raped by Daesh, left in a state where she can’t do anything, can barely live. We try to report her story and give her a voice because we share her pain.

And when I see this patriarchal system that can do these kinds of things to women, that’s what makes me a journalist. And that’s what reminds me of the importance of being a woman reporter.

CW: Your work must have big psychological effects on all of you. Do you do anything to support each other?

AT: Most recently in the Diyarbakır bombing [of the People’s Democratic Party rally on 5th June 2015], we were talking to women who had their legs blown off. We were running past human flesh on the street.

As Kurdish people we are adjusted to trauma. What we are doing is not primarily as a commitment to journalism but to women’s activism. This is what keeps us going.

There have been threats by [Kurdish] Hizbollah and Daesh but this doesn’t make us want to stop what we’re doing. It makes us more committed to what we’re doing.

CW: Can you explain what happened in September 2014 when you went to the Kobanê border during the Daesh attacks on the city?

On 17th September the attack on Kobanê began. When we first received the news that Daesh were attacking Kobanê, we got into the car and headed to the border.

There were thousands of people trying to cross the border [into Turkey] who were afraid of Daesh, and afraid of savage things happening to them. They were mostly women, children, elderly people. People were crossing with giant bags of stuff, with their cars and sheep. There was no water and food. The [Turkish] police opened fire with teargas. People on this side of the border know about teargas, but people from Rojava had never experienced it before and they thought it was a chemical weapon attack against them. That was what they were most familiar with, so they hid under blankets. A reporter from IMC ran to help them and told them that they needed to run away from the teargas. A lot of women were screaming because they couldn’t find their children.

There were hundreds of journalists there and they were also attacked. A lot of journalists stopped their journalism role, abandoned our jobs, because we needed to help the people urgently.

That was the first day. After that there was an attack every day. Turkish police and soldiers were there in their thousands and launched attacks with teargas, batons, and with live ammunition. There were tanks, soldiers on foot, and bullets being fired.

There was no where to hide. You couldn’t know where attacks were going to happen. Sometimes we would run from an attack and run into teargas or a tank.

CW: What was the motive for these attacks?

AT: The attacks were entirely aimed at lowering morale in Kobanê and stopping people from supporting Kobanê. Being at the border was the only way for people to help those in Kobanê.

Turkish soldiers ultimately support Daesh and they didn’t want to see people in Kobanê get support because they wanted to see Daesh win. They didn’t want to see solidarity with the YPG and YPJ [People’s Protection Units of Rojava].

One woman had a child fighting against Daesh in Kobanê, so she came to join the resistance and go and fight alongside her child. Everyday she was waiting on the roof nearby the border to wait for the border to open.

CW: Were you attacked for being a journalist?

AT: Of course. Also, we didn’t have [state issued] yellow press cards, so the army wanted to try to push us out of the area. They were trying to stop us reporting by any way that was possible.

CW: What happened here on 6/7 October 2014 when Turkish President Erdoğan announced that Kobanê would fall?

AT: On the 6th and 7th October, people came out onto the streets. So we got in a taxi to Şilbe district and the scene that we saw was like a war zone.

There were tanks and police armoured vehicles called Akreps (Scorpions). There were two of us from JİNHA and two from DİHA news agency. We got out of the taxi and went to take a short video. As we got back into the taxi the police fired a teargas capsule from one of the Akreps directly into the taxi. The windows broke and I felt the teargas capsule go past my head. The four of us and the taxi driver were inside with the cloud of teargas. I couldn’t breathe. With teargas that always happens. If you’re someone with heart or breathing problems you’re likely to die. We all rushed out of the car. The teargas was so thick that if we hadn’t got out then we could have died. The canister nearly hit my head. I would have been killed if it had hit me. The car was completely ruined.

They were attacking everyone on the streets.

When we got our senses back we said that we weren’t going to take any footage. We were under the threat of death if we continued shooting footage.

A green coloured Scorpion vehicle was used by the police to fire teargas from a little hole in the vehicle. They open an opening, shoot the teargas and close the opening.

We found teargas canisters that showed that the police were using them past their expiration date in Amed and in Suruç, on the border with Kobanê. There was a warning on the cannisters: “If not used within six months it can cause fatality”.

The police used tanks, Scorpions, normal police vehicles and TOMA [water cannons] that day.

CW: What’s your opinion of the companies who manufacture weapons for the Turkish military?

AT: I see it as wrong to hold the companies as primarily responsible. The nation state consolidates their power by using these weapons. States need them to hold onto their repressive power. Until this goes away, these companies won’t go away. But I see these companies also as the killers of children. Their directors are absolutely party to a murder.

CW: Do you think that governments should give licenses for the export of weapons to Turkey?

AT: Why is it that these weapons always get sent to the Middle East? Why is it that the whole world fights its wars in the Middle East? Why is it that everywhere you go, on every street corner here you see a policeman holding a weapon and he knows how to kill someone, and when you go to Europe you don’t see a weapon anywhere? Why do we have to live in a land where there are weapons everywhere?

If these weapons hadn’t flooded the Middle East then groups like Daesh couldn’t exist. And now it’s at the point where people living here need a weapon for self defence. A woman in the YPJ [Women’s People’s Protection Unit in Rojava] needs to pick up a weapon. If you’re somebody who is living there and you’re facing the most savage force in the world, you have to pick up the weapon that they pick up to defend yourself.

Of course, the Kurdish people have a strong will to resist but if only we lived in a world where we could do it with civil disobedience or having debates. Unfortunately we’re living in the Middle East and that’s not possible.

We want to live in a world where we don’t have to pick up a weapon. I hope that one day people won’t go to war any more. I hope that the resistance of the YPJ will bring a day where people can live in peace and have a life without war.

Ultimately Kurdish women have become a source of hope for women around the world. They have been raped and killed. They have had their existence completely denied and they are the ones resisting. Now they are the hope. And it makes us happy to make news about the people doing this resistance.

CW: What can people outside of Kurdistan do in solidarity?

AT: One thing that I want is for all the people who are oppressed in the Middle East and who are forced to live a life of war to one day stand together and come back to their real roots. I want to see this outside of Kurdistan, too.

Ultimately the terrorism and violence didn’t come from this place, it came from the west. People in the west need to ask themselves what to do about that.

Photograph by Zehra Doğan

Interview wıth Sarya Gözüoğlu

CW: Can you tell us what it’s like to grow up with Turkish militarism?

SG: Since the day we were born this is how we have been living. We’re adjusted to this and every day you could lose somebody. Sometimes even to the extent that we think that normal Turkish people’s life must be boring. We‘re so adjusted to this that every day is like an action movie. It doesn’t seem strange to us any more. When we were little we didn’t feel like this – we weren’t conscious of it – but when we left home we realised that this was the way of life here. I have always lived in Amed. Of course it’s always been scary to see people’s houses being raided by the police, taking their stuff, putting people under arrest. The fear brought with it the commitment to act against it.

CW: What made you become a journalist at JİNHA?

SG: It has been my dream since I was a little girl. But without JİNHA I might never have had the courage as it is so difficult for female journalists. There was a journalist who was killed who was a close friend of my uncle and this inspired me because my uncle was really affected by it. I didn’t study journalism; I studied agricultural engineering so I don’t have that background, but it’s always been my dream. JİNHA gave me that opportunity. It gave me confidence because everyone’s a woman here. Some people here didn’t finish school at all, others were teachers. Seeing this diversity made me realise that I could do it too. Most people weren’t trained in journalism but got trained here.

CW: Is it difficult for women here to be journalists?

SG: Of course I experience prejudice being a woman journalist. When you’re out there as a journalist you are in an army of men. 90% of journalists are men and they have the perception that they need to be the best and that women can’t take good footage. When we go to a hard-to-get event the men say, “its too bad you don’t have a man with you to get the piece”. If journalists can’t look at their own colleagues without discrimination, how can they do objective work?

CW: Can you tell us about your experiences?

The worst one was the explosion [at the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) pre-election rally in Amed in June 2015] recently, and then the curfew on the 6th and 7th October 2014. It was like people’s lives didn’t have any value. When the rally was bombed there was a mother and both of her legs were blown off in the explosion. Two young people tried to pick her up and she said, “no, I will walk”, she didn’t know she had lost her legs. Seeing things like that is really difficult.

In 2013, there was a protest in Lice against the high security military post that was being built there. There were 10 [Turkish] tanks opening fire on the crowd with live ammunition. The area is a mountainous area and there was a bridge over a canyon across the two cliffs. The youths had dug trenches on both sides of the bridge so soldiers weren’t able to approach and to stop the movement of the tanks.

There were clashes all the time for twenty four hours. Every 5 or 10 minutes they would fire teargas and the youths would fight back with molotovs. The actual live ammunition was shot from rifles from far away. They announced “members of press take cover” while they opened fire on the crowd. Every couple of hours they would open fire with live ammunition but the teargas was constant.

There were four people who were killed. Two by the police fire, two in an explosion. The number of the wounded was really high.

The soldiers were on the other side of the bridge, so the youth would run onto the bridge and throw stones and then run back. The two people who were shot were doing that. Ramazan Baran was first shot through his leg. He was on the ground defenceless but they continued to shoot him through the chest and the bullet left through his back. He was 25 years old.

Ramazan was one of the people I had interviewed earlier in the day, although he had been wearing a mask. He made a joke with us and made us laugh.

The other person was shot in his lower back and the bullet left his body through his throat.

CW: What do you think of the companies who manufacture the weapons for the Turkish army?

SG: Of course these weapons shouldn’t be sold to the Turkish government but the Turkish state will always be able to find something to use as a weapon no matter what happens.

CW: Do you think that governments should provide licenses for weapons?

SG: They shouldn’t be allowed to sell these weapons. The fewer weapons there are, the more peace there will be.

CW: What’s the most useful form of action ordinary people living outside of Kurdistan can do in solidarity with people here?

The most important thing is for people to expose the kind of violence that’s happening because the Turkish mainstream press doesn’t report this.

Cw: Has the revolution in Rojava given you any hope for here?

Rojava should not just give hope for Kurdistan but for the rest of the world, too. This revolution took place in a region that no-one knows about. For this resistance to make its name around the world shows that anything is possible and shows that people can decide on the future they want with their own willpower. This can give people hope all around the world.

CW: Does taking action against the supply of weapons to Turkey support the revolutionary movements in Rojava?

Yes absolutely. Any action against the supply of weapons to Turkey supports the struggle in Rojava because Turkey is the country supplying money and weapons to Daesh.

Support JİNHA by reading their news at
http://jinha.com.tr/en
https://www.facebook.com/jinhaber
https://twitter.com/jinhaberajans

JİNHA have subscription plans both for media or political/activist groups and individuals. You can contact jinhaber@gmail.com about subscribing to JİNHA.

To read about the companies supplying arms to the Turkish click here and here
Also see Campaign Against the Arm’s Trade’s list of companies supplying weapons to Turkey

The post Women on the frontlines of Kurdish struggles: An interview with JİNHA women’s news agency appeared first on Corporate Watch.

The Kurdish city of Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish), is currently under attack by Turkish state forces. Amed is situated within the borders of Turkey and its residents are locked in a decades long struggle for self determination. In November, people erected barricades in the neighbourhood of Sur, part of Amed’s historic old town, to protect their autonomy and prevent the Turkish police and army from entering. Since then six consecutive curfews have been imposed in the city and police and military have attacked densely populated residential neighbourhoods with heavy weaponry. The current curfew is on its 17th day.

Destruction caused by the Turkish military in Sur, Picture taken from KurdPress

On Monday 14 December, Şiyar Salman and Şerdıl Cengiz were killed by the police in Sur. Earlier that day a strike had been called in Amed in solidarity with the people of Sur and a mass march aimed at reaching the besieged neighbourhood had been attacked with water cannons and tear gas by the police. A journalist from the JINHA women’s news agency was detained during the demonstration. In retaliation, the armed wing of the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, which previously advocated an independent Kurdish state and now supports democratic autonomy in Kurdistan) attacked a military convoy in Amed district, killing six Special Operations officers and destroying armoured vehicles. On 16 December state forces shelled houses in Sur, wounding seven people.

Kurdish Media has reported that Turkish police have used Ford vehicles to blockade the neighbourhoods where the killings took place (for more info on Ford’s dealings with the Turkish police click here).

The streets of Diyarbakır in a more peaceful time, Picture taken by a member of the Kurdish Solidarity Network

The Turkish police’s aggression in Amed is part of a full-frontal assault on the Kurdish populations within Turkey’s borders, aimed at stamping out the latest uprising which has seen people in many Kurdish cities declare their autonomy from the state and arm themselves to defend their neighbourhoods against the police and army. New curfews have been announced in the cities of Cizîr (Cizre in Turkish), Nusaybin and Silopi this week and civilians have been killed in all three of these cities in the past few days. Ferhat Encü, a deputy from the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which supports Kurdish autonomy, made this statement about the attack on Silopi:

“An ethnic cleansing is being committed against our people. What is being done here is quite a massacre. The Turkish state is attacking civilians with heavy arms as if it confronted the military force of another state.”

“It will be our people to triumph. State forces could make no advances into the areas of self-rule so far. They couldn’t fill one single trench even. They will not be able to advance either. Turkish state gangs will be expelled from Silopi, Cizre and all Kurdistan territory in the same way ISIS has been pushed out of Kobanê… Our people living in Turkish cities and Europe must stand by Kurdistan and obviate these mass killings”

Living with Turkish militarism in Diyarbakır

Last July we spoke to four young people in Amed about what it’s like to grow up and live in a society where Turkish police and military repression is ever present. All of the people we interviewed had come to Amed recently, from other parts of Turkey and North Kurdistan (the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders, known as Bakur). The names of our interviewees have been changed at our own discretion.

Our interviewees began by describing what it is like to be a student in North Kurdistan. Hasan tells us: “Sometimes we make little demonstrations at the university, and because of that the police take photographs of us. I have friends who are socialists or communists and sometimes the police call them on their mobile phones and threaten them. They also pressurise them by calling their families.”

The police affect our lives everywhere. For example, when I came from my home in Gever [Yüksekova in Turkish, a town to the east of Amed] to university they stopped us and searched our clothes and bags a total of seven times on one journey from Amed to Gever. In the city centre in Amed there are military bases to pressure and control people.”

Elif tells us that all men with Turkish ID cards have to do military service in the Turkish army, unless they can afford to pay the 15,000 Turkish Lira fee to buy their way out of it. Many poor people in Kurdistan cannot afford to do this. According to Elif: “in our country you have to go to the army as a man. If you don’t go you won’t get a job, you won’t marry. So it pressurises men.”

We ask whether it is common to see military vehicles on the street. Barış tells us that they are on the streets all the time: “It causes psychological problems. Everywhere you see armed people. It frightens us”. Hasan says: “When we were babies, our mothers said “the police are coming. if you cry, the police will come!” In other countries mothers might say that a monster is coming. Here there is a lullaby that says, “the army and police will take your father”.

We are told that it is normal to see Akrep (Scorpion) vehicles, on the street alongside TOMA water cannons. Akreps, manufactured by Turkish company Otokar, are used by both the police and the military. The TOMA is manufactured by two Turkish companies: Nurol Makina and Katmerciler. The engine is manufactured by Perkins, a subsidiary of the US based Caterpillar corporation.

It is common to hear the sound of F16 planes overhead and the army uses helicopters too. Serdar tells us that these flights are used to put the population under psychological pressure. “Sometimes Kurdish people use fireworks so that the helicopters can’t see and have to go another way.” However, these planes are not only used for psychological effect. Hasan points out that F16s are also used to attack civilians. On 28 December 2011 34 cross-border traders from the village of Roboski were killed after Turkish F16s attacked them. According to Serdar: “Roboski is an example where they have used the planes to bomb people. They said that the people they attacked were terrorists but they were not terrorists. They were only selling oil in order to buy food.”

The F16s used by Turkey are manufactured by US arms giant, Lockheed Martin, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) co-produced them and provide parts and modifications for the planes.

Serdar tells us that the use of drones is common too over the city of Gever. Corporate Watch has also witnessed drones being used in residential areas in Farqîn (Silvan in Turkish) in November 2015. Turkey uses Heron drones manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries. A homegrown drone called the Anka, manufactured by Turkish Aerospace Industries, is also being trialled by the Turkish Air Force. The US has stationed Predator drones, manufactured by the US firm General Atomics, at Turkey’s Incirlik airbase and shares intelligence from their flights with the Turkish military.

Solidarity with Kobanê

We ask about the Serhildan (uprising) of 6 and 7 October 2014. At that time the city of Kobanê in Rojava (The part of Kurdistan within Syria’s borders) was under siege by Daesh. The Turkish state was attacking Kurdish fighters trying to cross to Kobanê to fight Daesh and preventing supplies from entering Kobanê. At the same time, Turkey did not prevent Daesh fighters from entering Syria from Turkey. The serhildan began after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Kobanê was about to fall. People came out onto the streets in cities all over North Kurdistan in solidarity with the people fighting in Rojava.

Serdar tells us: “I was in Gever at the time. Syrian and Turkish Kurds are like family. [When the Daesh attack on Kobanê began] the Turkish military closed the border and didn’t let us help people in Rojava. They think they can stop the revolution which had begun there. They wanted to put people in Rojava under siege. They stopped medicines, clothes, food too. They closed all of the border and we couldn’t send anything to Rojava. [President] Erdoğan said that Kobanê will fall.”

Barış continued: “People thought that the Turkish government was supporting Daesh and other terrorist groups. So people wanted to say that the Turkish government should help us, not help Daesh.”

According to Elif: “We just wanted the Turkish government to open the borders so we could help people in Rojava. A lot of people passed into Rojava illegally; they couldn’t stop us. A close friend of mine died in Rojava at Mistenûr Hill. He had been studying his masters degree, and he could speak four languages. He was Turkish and Sunni, not Kurdish or Alevi. His name was Paramaz Kızılbaş. He went to help the Rojava revolution because he was an internationalist. Another fighter, Ivana Hoffmann was an open lesbian who was killed by Daesh in the Rojava revolution.” Ivana Hoffman was a German communist who was killed in Rojava in 2014 while fighting for the people’s protection units.

We ask Elif what happened when demonstrations broke out in Amed at that time. She tells us that “on the 6, 7 and 8 October 2014 the police announced a curfew and didn’t allow us to go on the streets. Because of this we couldn’t buy bread. During this period they didn’t use plastic bullets. They used real bullets. A man was shot in front of my house by the police.”

“On the 2nd day of the curfew I was here in Ofis [a neighbourhood of Amed]. In the morning we needed bread. My friend went to buy bread and the police arrested him in front of the building even though he was wearing just shorts and a t-shirt and he had nothing in his hands. We screamed from the balcony but if we had gone downstairs they would have arrested us too and nothing would have changed. He said many times to the police, “I just want to go to the bakery.”

“Ofis was really dangerous in these days. There were many street fights between the police and the people. Police used tear gas and people threw stones back at them. There were continuous fires on the street. The TOMA water cannons would put them out and then people would light them again.”

“During the curfew, I saw an unmarked car with no number plate drive up and police got out. They tried to arrest a man wearing a black t-shirt. Some elderly women saw this and they ran up to the police and tried to take the young man from them. One of the police shot into the sky. One man ran over and kicked one of the policemen. The policeman shot the man who had kicked him as he was running away. I don’t know if he was badly injured but he had blood coming from his shoulder. It was an unmarked car without a number plate.”

Serdar tells us that: “on October 6 2014 in Gever the uprising started, like in other cities, and lasted five days. The police wouldn’t allow people to march so there was fighting. You could see the cloud of teargas in the sky. The protesters were using stones and some young people were using Molotov cocktails. Normally the army controls the city centre in Gever. You can see lots of police and army on the streets all the time. In other parts of the city military bases are being built. The army controls all of the entrance and exits to the city.”

“In general, during protests some people rock the TOMAS and Akreps until they fall. In all of Turkey there are lots of CCTV cameras and during the Kobanê demonstrations in 2014 lots of people broke the cameras. People bring sugar with them to help with the effects of tear gas.”

We ask how the response to demonstrations in North Kurdistan differs from the policing of the Gezi protests in Istanbul. Elif responds: “the force here is not just police. It is also army and [Kurdish] Hezbollah. It is more violent here. For 21 days I stayed in Gezi but I saw nothing like here. You can look at the numbers killed: 52 people [killed in North Kurdistan] in just three days.” In comparison, 11 people were killed over almost two months during the Gezi uprising.

Kurdish Hezbollah (KH), whose name means ‘party of god’, are a Kurdish Sunni Islamist group that is carrying out increasing numbers of attacks on the pro-Kurdish autonomy People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the PKK and the communities that support them. The group is unconnected to the Lebanese Hezbollah. In the 1990’s KH was in direct conflict with the PKK, killing hundreds of its members.

During the uprising in solidarity with Kobanê in 2014, KH carried out attacks in many Kurdish cities. (See here for an account of the attacks in Cizîr). Elif tells us:

“When the government loses power here they give Hezbollah weapons and tell them to go on the streets. It was the same in the 1990s. I saw them coming to a house close to mine with guns and banging on the door shouting Allahu Akhbar. They took people from the building and we didn’t see them again.”

We ask Elif whether she thinks that governments like the UK should grant export licenses for the sale of arms to Turkey. She responds: “of course not. Their licenses kill our people. Militarism supports the system. It’s part of the system. We have to defend ourselves but we are not militarists.”

LGBT struggles in Amed

In Turkey’s general elections in June and November 2015, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) gained seats in the Turkish parliament. This is the first time ever that a party that supports Kurdish autonomy has passed the 10% threshold required to gain any seats. The HDP has been speaking out in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The party has a 10 per cent quota for LGBT people when fielding candidates. We ask if the situation for LGBT people in Bakur has changed because of this. Serdar replies “It’s difficult. LGBT communities in Turkey and Kurdistan have to be secret. They would only tell close friends about their sexuality. In cities it’s a little less bad but we are still really oppressed by our families. Roşın Çıçek, a gay man, was murdered by his family in Amed in 2012. Things are changing but really slowly because the religious people here are really closed minded about LGBT people. The Kurdish movement has to do a lot of work about these things. Members of the HDP need to educate themselves and then teach other people. It’s really brave that LGBT people are in the HDP. Their words are brave but they need to be more than words.”

“There has been an LGBT group in Amed for the last three years and we are working in the Amed Ecological Council and in the conscientious objectors movement, as many LGBT people are conscientious objectors. We also monitor cases where LGBT people are killed or violence has been committed against them. We are starting to be more visible. We have started to go with our LGBT flag to both the 1st May and Newroz celebrations.”

According to Barış, who is from Antakya: “we saw that there was an LGBT movement in Amed, so Arabic Alevis formed one in Antakya too. We support each other.”

Democratic confederalism

Elif and Serdar tell us how the establishment of an autonomous region in Rojava (within the borders of Syria) based on democratic confederalism gives them hope that one day the system established in Rojava can be put in place in Bakur too. Democratic confederalism is a system of direct democracy based on organising confederations of grassroots neighbourhood and village assemblies, which co-ordinate together across wider geographical areas. In Rojava, since 2012 when the majority of Syrian regime forces withdrew,a revolution has seen thousands of communes established, based on the ideas of democratic confederalism.

Serdar explains that “capitalism has more power here in Amed than in other places in Kurdistan. But in the Gever area it’s different. We have nearly the same system as Rojava in the small towns. In my village, my system is like the Rojava system. I am also in the council for ecology in Amed and we are trying to get away from capitalism.”

We ask what people can do from outside Kurdistan in solidarity with the struggle for autonomy in Bakur. They ask us to raise awareness of what’s going on in Kurdistan among people in Europe. To force European governments not to support Turkish military policies and campaign against the sale of arms to Turkey. Finally, they want to work together with other anti-capitalists. Barış says hopefully, “It’s a big dream but maybe we can make a big anti-capitalist union.”

Click here to read more about the struggles for autonomy in the cities of Silvan and Cizre

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