Dis­in­for­ma­tion has already begun con­cern­ing the attack on the dis­trict of Afrin in north­ern Syr­ia. Sacro­sanct jour­nal­is­tic objec­tiv­i­ty would have it that infor­ma­tion does not take sides. In that case, what do you call using Erdoğan’s lan­guage and sources?

Turkey is going after the Kur­dish self-defence mili­tias of the PKK on its Syr­i­an bor­der… We remind that the PKK fig­ures on the Euro­pean list of ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions… bla bla bla” or again “ Turkey defends its fron­tier against the Kur­dish threat…”.This region locat­ed on the fron­tier between Turkey and Syr­ia is dom­i­nat­ed by the Kur­dish mili­tia of the Par­ty for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union, con­sid­ered ‘ter­ror­ist’ by Ankara”, writes a col­league from Le Monde today, Sun­day. I must pause on this for a moment.

I don’t know why this arti­cle in Le Monde radi­ates the sort of fra­grance that reminds me of the dis­mis­sive con­de­scen­sion Kemal­ist White Turks long con­veyed to their low­ly staff out of deep­est Ana­to­lia. Have Kurds, now that they have even been dis­missed in a major­i­ty from dri­ving the yel­low cabs and rel­e­gat­ed to act­ing as porters on the mar­kets, have they become such pari­ahs that a French jour­nal­ist must affix to them the label of “con­sid­ered as ter­ror­ists” in every arti­cle?   Putting the terms in brack­ets does not change their mean­ing. Espe­cial­ly when, in this same arti­cle, she can­not keep her­self from rel­a­tivis­ing the impro­vised demon­stra­tion of sup­port in Kadıköy, on the Asian side of the Bospho­rus, she adds imme­di­ate­ly, no doubt to show she knows the area well. Yet, quot­ing as her source Yeni Şafak, the nation­al rag, or Anadolu, the offi­cial agency (his Mas­ter’s voice), does not show remark­able objec­tiv­i­ty since it is the voice of the agres­sor. In short, refus­ing to search out sources in the Kur­dish move­ment leads to serv­ing Erdoğan in his dis­in­for­ma­tion pol­i­cy or to purring meek­ly to what the Macron­ian lead­er­ship of her paper wants to hear…Ah, Marie, if only you knew… But it is also true that the Kemal­ist CHP pro­claimed last night “we are behind the oper­a­tion in Afrin”… On this last and in clos­ing, I will also pla­gia­rize Erdoğan “Ô World, what are you say­ing about our Turkey?” 

In Turkey, the allied media ral­ly round the notion that the oper­a­tion is “to defend the Nation”, and the fight against ter­ror­ism on the Nation’s fron­tiers wins the day, thus jus­ti­fy­ing the out­stand­ing 2018 war bud­get, val­i­dat­ed by a docile Parliament.

For this Turk­ish offen­sive called “Olive Branch” is an exten­sion to the pre­vi­ous irrup­tion of tanks in Jer­ablus, in the backs of the fight­ers of the Syr­i­an Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces and the YPG among them who were car­ry­ing out a full offen­sive against ISIS and pro­gress­ing toward a now lib­er­at­ed Raqqa. Using, as usu­al, all means at his dis­pos­al, Erdoğan pulled the notion of a “buffer zone” in Syr­ia out of a hat, in order to main­tain an open cor­ri­dor and pre­vent at all cost the link­ing of the can­tons in the fed­er­al part of North­ern Syr­ia. Some­times by offer­ing to the coali­tion the pos­si­bil­i­ty of set­tling refugees there, some­times by arm­ing mili­tias he had for­mer­ly thrown against Assad – and which he now wants to turn against the demo­c­ra­t­ic fed­er­a­tion, now much enlarged from the ini­tial Rojava.

Every­one knows that, in the midst of this geo-polit­i­cal entan­gle­ment where region­al and impe­ri­al­is­tic inter­ests inter­min­gle, the sup­port of inter­na­tion­al preda­tors does not flow to those defend­ing a project that would strength­en an autonomous gov­er­nance rest­ing on a real col­lab­o­ra­tion between all the var­i­ous com­po­nents of the Mesopotami­an mosa­ic, and beyond.

In the eyes of pow­ers with hege­mon­ic views, in order to main­tain mas­tery over the rich­es of fos­sil ener­gy and the mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal beach heads they require, bet­ter today a Bachar or an Erdoğan – or, if need be, their auto­crat­ic and author­i­tar­i­an suc­ces­sors – than a peace project based on the polit­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion of the peo­ples in the region.

Iran, Ara­bia, Turkey, all speak in turn with their allies and Occi­den­tal providers. With ISIS now main­ly van­quished on the mil­i­tary front, thanks to  “Kur­dish can­non fod­der”, the time has come to move on to the great shar­ing of spoils at the table, and this calls once again for the need to get rid of the polit­i­cal project born in Roja­va so as to put down, yet again, the entire Kur­dish auton­o­my movement.

The unfor­tu­nate 2017 ref­er­en­dum launched by Barzani in Irak, the con­se­quence of which was a return to the 2003 bor­ders for the Kur­dish enti­ty in Irak, had already leagued all the inter­na­tion­al forces against the Kur­dish move­ment. The sec­ond phase, care­ful­ly pre­pared by Erdoğan in full view and with the full knowl­edge of all, is now under­way with Afrin.

In prin­ci­ple, the Russ­ian forces con­trol the air in this region, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with anti-ISIS coali­tions. Yet the bomb­ings by the Turk­ish air force seem to be car­ried out, and to con­tin­ue, with no appar­ent pro­hi­bi­tions. Trump has lost his phone…

And then, the Occi­den­tal pow­ers appear. As a uni­fied choir, they call on “act­ing with restraint”.

Nice and easy does it… Please… “Kur­dish forces fired sev­er­al rock­ets against Rey­nali, the Turk­ish town in the region of Hatay on the oth­er side of the bor­der. One per­son was killed and 32 wound­ed were admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal in Rey­han­li, accord­ing to the town’s may­or,  Hüseyin Şan­ver­di…” (source Le Monde). Giv­ing fig­ures for the Afrin side would be pro­pa­gan­da, so I will abstain from doing so.

French news sta­tions are on min­i­mal ser­vice for the time being, relay­ing the infor­ma­tion as sub-head­ings after the sports pages.

We can expect dis­in­for­ma­tion in which the notion of the Good Kurd opposed to the Nasty PKK will be the rule. Dur­ing the mas­sacres of the past two years in Turk­ish Kur­dis­tan, the deaths of civil­ians were relayed as caused by “self-defence mili­tias” in the “lost bat­tle of the PKK” accord­ing to this same World source…

At one time, Kobanê was the sym­bol of the first vic­to­ry against ISIS and pro­vid­ed strength to the project in North­ern Syr­ia. Erdoğan wants Afrin to put an end to this promise for the future. Kurds, Assyr­i­ans, Arabs… refugees… the defend­ers of the free­doms in North­ern Syr­ia, those who van­quised ISIS need urgent sup­port, beyond the vague nego­ti­a­tions of the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. They deserve self-defense, with­out being taxed of terrorism…

When faced with such emer­gen­cies, I do not say hail to you, Marie…

READ ALSO
YPG’s message to the Turkish state on Afrin: 
“You are dreaming” (on ANF English)

Français :  Afrin • Un peu de retenue, que dia­ble ! Cliquez pour lire

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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