WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilie Libertaria #454 - Open war against the Kurds (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The war against the Kurdish people does not stop; while trying to write

an update on what has happened in the last month the situation seems to
change again and not for the better. Just yesterday the jihadist forces
of western Syria, who control Idlib and part of the Afrin area, began a
new operation with the declared objective of occupying Aleppo, a city
under the control of Assad's forces since 2016, but with some
neighborhoods in the eastern part under the control of the Kurdish
people's protection forces. ---- To better understand what is happening
in western Syria, where the operation of the jihadist forces began on
November 27, we report the statement of the KNK, Kurdistan National
Congress.

Islamists loyal to Turkey attack Kurdish areas

Following the outbreak of the heaviest fighting in Syria in years,
Kurdish areas are now under acute threat of attacks by jihadist groups
cooperating with Turkey. While the Islamist group Haiat Tahrir Al-Sham
(HTS), the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda formerly known as al-Nusra Front,
has been advancing on Aleppo since Wednesday and fighting with the
forces of the Assad regime, Turkish-loyal mercenaries of the so-called
Syrian National Army (SNA) are preparing a major attack on the Kurdish
region of Tal Rifaat in northwestern Syria. The Turkish army is already
bombing the region from the air and the ground. Attacks on the Kurdish
town of Ain Issa have also been reported. According to local sources,
Turkey has also opened its border with northwestern Syria, allowing more
jihadist fighters to enter Syria.

Tal Rifaat is home to several hundred thousand Kurdish refugees, who
were forced to flee in 2018 following Turkey's war of aggression in
Afrin in violation of international law. Since then, the SNA, an
alliance of various Islamist organizations and former ISIS fighters, and
the Turkish military have controlled the region. Human rights
organizations fear that SNA attacks could again drive refugees out of
Afrin. Ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish population took place in Afrin
during the Turkish occupation. Since then, Turkey has expelled most of
the region's Kurds and settled people of Arab origin, leaving the
Kurdish population as a minority in the region. Systematic human rights
violations, such as kidnappings, expulsions, torture and sexual violence
under the rule of Islamist militias, have been reported from the region.
Now the people of Tal Rifaat are facing a similar fate. The Kurdish
population of Aleppo, who live mainly in the neighborhoods of Shasmeqsud
and Esrefiyê, are also threatened by the advance of Haiat Tahrir
Al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda. This group has repeatedly attacked
Kurdish self-governing areas in the past during the Syrian civil war.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a jihadist alliance that has controlled
Idlib province in northwestern Syria since 2017, formed by the merger of
several Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra, which
renamed itself Fateh al-Sham in 2016. Listed as a "terrorist"
organization by the United Nations Security Council, HTS has expanded
its influence into SNA-controlled northern Syria, often with the tacit
approval of Turkey. HTS seeks to project an image of respectability and
trustworthiness of governance, despite reports of an increasingly
totalitarian regime and Islamist theocracy in Idlib. The international
community should be wary of HTS expansion into Turkish-occupied
territory, as it has been linked to anti-Semitic propaganda and has ties
to al-Qaeda, despite efforts to distance itself from its jihadist roots.
Notably, a perpetrator involved in a foiled terrorist attack in Munich
expressed sympathy for HTS, highlighting the group's continued relevance
in the broader extremist threat landscape.

Kurdistan National Congress (KNK)

November 29, 2024

This situation exploded on November 28, it is not the only conflict of
which the Kurds, but not only them, are victims, also in northern Iraq
Turkey with the support of Barzani's KDP, continues to bomb the areas
under the control of the PKK guerrillas in which it has already
penetrated many kilometers and controls some mountain peaks. In Turkey
instead Erdogan from the beginning of November has begun a new
repressive phase by dismissing the mayors elected even with 90% of the
votes, of the largest Kurdish cities in the country.

The removal of the mayors and the umpteenth military operation against
the Kurds is part of a much larger military and genocidal project than
what is being shown where Turkey, taking advantage of the fact that
world attention is focused on Ukraine, Lebanon and Palestine, tries to
support the various jihadist groups and not, to eliminate the Kurds and
push them away from the Turkish border; instead in Iraqi Kurdistan it
economically and militarily supports the Kurdish forces of Barzani to
try to provoke a civil war within the whole of Iraqi Kurdistan from
which only it would emerge victorious and the Barzani Clan much stronger.

But let's start in order: at the beginning of November Erdogan removed
the mayors of Mardin Batman and Alfety, cities governed by the DEM, a
party for democracy and equality that governs most of the Kurdish cities
and that for the umpteenth time has been sidelined with an
anti-terrorism operation and has been replaced by mayors and trusted
commissioners of Erdogan's party. But the sultan's repression does not
only hit the DEM but also the Kemalist party, the CHP, in fact even the
mayor of the municipality of Esenyurt in Istanbul has been removed and
replaced by people trusted and close to Erdogan.

After the umpteenth coup in various cities in the south-east, hundreds
of thousands of people took to the streets and demonstrated against the
umpteenth repressive operation, because all of this is to be considered
a real coup against the freedom of expression and politics of the
opposition parties; we remember that thousands of HDP people are still
in prison sentenced to hundreds of years in prison, including the
co-president and co-president arrested in 2016.

As if this were not already so serious, between November 25 and 26 a
large police operation in more than 30 provinces throughout Turkey was
carried out by the anti-terrorism forces against the DEM and the various
political and civil organizations that revolve around it, 231 people
were arrested, the headquarters of various civil associations and the
party of equality and democracy of the people were assaulted by the
anti-terrorism forces, dozens of newspapers and websites were closed,
231 people were put in prison with the usual excuse of aiding and
abetting a terrorist organization; in Turkey it is enough to go to the
funeral of a guerrilla or even just show solidarity with the Kurdish
people or closeness to the families of the fighters to be put in prison
for aiding and abetting.

This is the situation: a large-scale war against the Kurdish people has
been going on for a long time, so it is important to let people know
what is happening in those areas, because even if we don't talk much
about Rojava or northern Syria anymore, the war continues much more
violent than before.

Paolo Andolina

http://sicilialibertaria.it
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