WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI #178 II. 16 - The anarchist communists, the Jewish and Palestinian questions - section II.: The transfer of libertarian experiences to the people of Rojava (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

But the Middle Eastern region is not only one of the theaters of the
piecemeal world war that is shaking the world: it is also the place of
social experimentation and hope, where other peoples are looking for a
solution that allows coexistence between components different from
society, in terms of religious, cultural, political, economic, gender,
giving life to a new type of collaborative social relations. We are
referring to what is happening at the hands of a significant and
consistent part of a dispersed, persecuted people distributed in a
region that crosses the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, who
were denied the right to identity, subjugated by national powers of
other ethnic groups who divided its territory among themselves.

After the genocide of the Armenian populations of Anatolia was completed
during the First World War in order to implement the pan-Turkish project
of greater Turkey, it was Kemal Pasha who demanded and obtained at the
Lausanne Conference the cancellation of any Kurdish political entity and
the distribution of Kurdistan among the four neighboring states. The
total annihilation of the autonomy and self-determination of every
population or ethnic group that was not Turkish was thus achieved, so
that there was a total ethnic homogeneity of the populations to ensure
full control of the territory from the Mediterranean coasts to Central
Asia, until where the presence of Turkish and Turkmen populations
extends, in order to "refound" the empire.

Kurdistan indicates a geographical area that extends for 392,000 km², of
which 190,000 km² in Turkey, 125,000 km² in Iran, 65,000 km² in Iraq,
and 12,000 km² in Syria; is divided into four geo-political regions
between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. It is inhabited mainly by 40
million Kurds, of which 25 million in Turkey (estimated around 40-50
million in the world, due to the many refugees and political persecuted
people who had to flee to avoid being killed), Arabs, Assyrians,
Armenians, Azeris, Jews, Ossetians, Persians, Turks and Turkmen also
currently live in Kurdistan. The languages spoken by the Kurds are
generally those imposed by the states that govern them, while the use of
Kurdish is hindered in every way.

Yet, the Kurdish culture is inclusive: Kurdish is written in various
alphabets (Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic). In Kurdistan, various other
languages of Turkish, Semitic and Indo-European origin are spoken, even
by small minorities. Religious affiliation is also composite and members
of many different cults coexist. Geographically, Kurdistan is a vast
plateau located in the northern and north-eastern part of Mesopotamia.
Its economic value is strategic and absolute, since, by including the
upper Euphrates and Tigris basins, Lake Van and Lake Urmia, whoever
controls Kurdistan effectively controls the region's water resources,
its fertile soils and suitable for cereals and livestock. Not only that,
but rich oil deposits, among the largest in the world, are located in
the territory of Kurdistan, which generates strong economic interests
around it not only on the part of the States that control part of the
territory, but also on the part of the Government of United States
which, as is known, has invaded Iraq and intends to maintain control
over the oil produced in the region.

To understand the Kurdish question as a whole, it is necessary to
analyze the situation country by country, because each state manages the
problem in a different way, even if the common denominator is the
repression of every aspiration for freedom and independence. The Kurds
settled in Iran (in Kurdish the region is called Rojhelat) are estimated
at 8 to 10 million. The area has Mahabad as its main city and includes
five provinces, located between the Ararat Mountains to the north and
the Zagros Mountains to the south. Some of the Iranian Kurds are Shia
Muslims (the Kurds. the Feyli), the others are Sunni Muslims,
Christians, Jews and followers of older religions such as Yarsanism and
Yazidism. All these cults are obviously discriminated against in Iran,
dominated by Shiites. A large community of Kurds lives in Tehran and
other communities are scattered across the country, where the Kurds were
deported in the 17th century, as Sunnis, during the war with the Ottoman
Empire, by the Persian Shiite Safawid dynasty. The regime's strong
repression has caused and continues to cause strong emigration abroad
and towards Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iranian Kurds are at the forefront of
the struggles of the Iranian people and women to free themselves from
the Komeinist dictatorship and many of the young women who have fallen
victim to the repression of the regime's moral police are ethnic Kurds.

Iraqi Kurdistan constitutes an autonomous entity within Iraq, formally
recognized in the 2005 Constitution. Consisting of 4 governorates with
the capital Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan claims Kirkuk as its capital. Harshly
repressed even with the use of toxic gases under the government of
Saddam Hussein, starting from 2014 the Iraqi Kurds rejected the Daesh
jihadists together with the Syrian Kurds, acquiring control of the city
of Kirkuk and the Sinjar plain, and giving asylum to over 200,000
refugees belonging to Iraqi Christian minorities. On 7 June 2017, the
referendum for the independence of Kurdistan, called unilaterally,
sanctioned independence (93% of voters voted in favor).

Iraq, Turkey, Iran and the United States declared themselves against the
referendum result, because they saw in it the first nucleus of a unitary
state of Kurdistan and in order to maintain control over oil extraction
it is in their interest to prevent the unity and independence of the
Kurdish people. Therefore the Iraqi federal government militarily
occupied the disputed territories and completely isolated the region,
but Turkey did more and occupied the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan,
installing numerous military bases: the declared intent was the fight
against the PKK, the occupation of mountainous region of Kandi as a
strategic stronghold from which to bomb the Kurdish refugee camps.

Turkey has banned the use of the Kurdish language and Kurdish surnames;
already following the birth of the Turkish Republic and the very word
"Kurd" was banned. Despite this, today the Kurds in Turkey number 20
million, equal to a fifth of the country's population and constitute
approximately half of all Kurds in the Middle East.

Although it had already been active in the struggles since 1971, the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was formed in 1978. who undertook the
armed struggle for independence. At the parliamentary level, the Kurds
were represented by left-wing political parties that did not explicitly
refer to ethnicity in their name, such as the Democratic Society Party
(DTP) which, in the 2007 legislative elections, obtained around twenty
deputies for the first time , against the 45 of the majority Justice and
Development Party (AKP), Erdogan's Party. Kurdish mayors and deputies
were harshly opposed by the party-state in power, by Turkish extremists,
by the press and by the army and on 11 December 2009 the Turkish
Constitutional Court outlawed the pro-Kurdish party for alleged links
with the PKK, demonstrating thus the impossibility of representing the
rights and interests of the Kurds in the country's political system. The
Kurdish component of Turkey formed the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP)
in 2008 with similar objectives to the DTP: solution to the Kurdish
question, women's rights, ecology and democracy, but it also suffered
harsh opposition from the regime, even after it transformed into the
Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), after a long phase in
which it engaged in armed struggle, officially abandoned it in 2001,
transforming itself into a political party and establishing the
"Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan", and two years later
he declared to abandon Marxism-Leninism, adhering to democratic
confederalism following the indications of the PKK leader Öcalan, won
over by the ideas of the libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin.

But it was the civil war in Syria that marked the turning point, giving
new impetus to the Kurds' struggle. The cities of Kobanê (on the border
with Turkey), Afrin and Hasaka, inhabited by Kurds, are defended from
the jihadist attack by Kurdish militias who, just when Daesh seemed
invincible, stop the Islamic State and conquer a strip of territory in
the north of Syria, the "Syrian Kurdistan", and constitute an autonomous
administration, which manages "political, military, economic and
security issues in the region and in Syria". This region, called Rojava,
has since been governed by the "People's Protection Units" (YPG), the
armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian counterpart
of the PKK.

The Kurdish militiamen of the YPG already mobilized in 2015 around
50,000 peshmerga (literally: fighters to the death) of which 40% were
women (which is an absolute novelty), supported by volunteers from all
over the world, among whom we remember comrade Lorenzo Orsetti, who died
in combat on March 18, 2019, and is supported in the fight by other
libertarians.

In March 2016, at the Rmeilan conference the Syrian Kurds proclaimed the
federation of the three cantons of which they had taken control,
fighting against Daesh, Jazira, Kobanê and Afrin, despite the opposition
of Syria, the USA and Turkey. With the conquest by the Kurds of the city
of Manbij in the Euphrates basin, Turkey, to prevent the Kurds from
establishing territorial continuity between the two cantons east of the
Euphrates with the third canton of Afrin, launched Operation Euphrates
Shield , entering militarily on Syrian soil and occupying the al-Bab
district, blocking the Kurds. In January 2018, with Operation Olive
Branch, the Turkish army occupied the Kurdish canton of Afrin, despite
it being in Syrian territory.

In January 2019, shelling and bombing villages and civilian communities
and claiming victims in a camp of 12 thousand refugees under siege, the
Turks regained the initiative with air raids across Rojava, hitting
around twenty communities. Meanwhile, in Washington, the US President
and Generals take credit for fighting the remnants of Daesh that their
Turkish allies protect in an enclave created in Syrian territory, making
them survive in dilapidated camps in sub-human conditions, but raising
them as assassins, ready to strike as soon as the Turkish instigator
opens the doors of the kennel and pushes them to strike the Kurdish
populations. The toll is heavy and there are many deaths, including many
non-combatant women and children, in addition to the 121 victims of the
Daesh assault on the Sina'a prison, in Hasakah where the Kurds are
holding the Islamist fighters captured in the fighting that nobody wants.

Turks and Americans continue to fuel the genocide of the Kurds. The
Turks because they absolutely must prevent the unity and independence of
Kurdistan; they want to exploit the Kurdish economic resources (oil
extraction and water control) and above all because they want to cancel
the Kurdish institutional experiment which constitutes the denial of the
Islamist traditions and values of the Muslim Brotherhood of Erdogan's
party, since the Kurds practice the secular nature of society, equality
between men and women, equal dignity between genders, so much so that
each position is held by a man and a woman who share the role. The Kurds
are proof that another society, another world is possible and therefore
they must be destroyed: the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood, supporters of
Hamas, themselves Islamic fundamentalists, are in charge of the task.

The Kurdish experiment, which revisits that of the kibbutzim, correcting
its distortions and above all its confessional approach, must be hidden
and opposed because it disturbs the strategic interests of many
countries, their economic interests and above all it demonstrates that
an alternative, if desired, is possible.

November 2023.

Union of Anarchist Communists of Italy

https://www.ucadi.org/2023/11/05/i-comunisti-anarchici-la-questione-ebraica-e-quella-palestinese/
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