On Octo­ber 8 2019, the Turk­ish regime launched its offen­sive against North­ern Syr­ia, in Erdoğan’s expla­na­tion, to re-estab­lish peace by expelling the ter­ror­ist groups.


Français | English

One week lat­er, we see he has sent to the front lines of his attack a good part of the avail­able “gangs” he was hold­ing close or pro­tect­ing and arm­ing around Idleb and in Afrin for the past year. The ter­ror­ists are there, indeed. These com­pos­ite groups sprang up from Jihadist anti-Bachar wings – at one time grouped under the “Free Syr­i­an Army” umbrel­la, and armed by the coali­tion for a while in the Syr­i­an chaos that pre­vailed over these past years.

Suc­ces­sive agree­ments from the so-called Astana process (Turkey-Iran-Rus­sia) had led in 2017 to a cease-fire in the civ­il war and the estab­lish­ment of 4 zones known as ‘secu­ri­ty zones’ in Syr­ia. How­ev­er the Syr­i­an regime had not rat­i­fied this agree­ment and re-occu­pied pock­ets, towns in cor­re­spond­ing zones, with Russ­ian sup­port and cooperation.

From one agree­ment to anoth­er, armed groups in these zones were trans­ferred, along with the pop­u­la­tions who agreed to move on to Idleb which also shares a region­al bor­der with Turkey, on the Anti­och side. Turkey was then asked by Rus­sia to tidy things up among the “gangs” radi­at­ing out from Idleb, the con­trol for which had been assigned to Turkey.

The pup­pet gov­ern­ment of the “Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion”, root­ed in Gaziantep in South­ern Turkey, is sup­posed to super­vise… some­thing, and man­age the pock­et of Idleb, still tar­get­ed by the regime. It is a known fact that gangs thrive there. When Erdo­gan now describes as non-Jihadists the armed back)up troops for the Turk­ish inva­sion known in his par­lance as the “Syr­i­an Nation­al Army”, he is pulling a fast one on the Astana agree­ments by recy­cling killers and adding to them Turk­men mem­bers with accounts to set­tle with the Kur­dish move­ment. All are fight­ing for mon­ey, revenge and a patri­ar­chal islamist ide­ol­o­gy. And they are charged with the dirty work of ter­ror­iz­ing the pop­u­la­tions, and com­mit­ting tar­get­ed actions that amount to as many crimes of war. The mem­bers of these gangs are thus the ones who assas­si­nat­ed civil­ians at the onset of the offen­sive, among them a spe­cial­ly tar­get­ed Kur­dish woman, mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coun­cil, Havrin Kha­laf. As these groups often film their exac­tions or move­ments, some can be identified.

Legal author­i­ties at the UN have declared that Turkey could be held respon­si­ble for these war crimes. To these should be added an attack against civil­ians in Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn on the maps), now com­plete­ly doc­u­ment­ed by videos from all sources, an attack that caused 75 dead and wound­ed, jour­nal­ists among them.

In this phase then, invad­ing Turk­ish forces have most­ly made use of the pos­si­bil­i­ty offered by an open air space, although this space is depen­dent on Rus­sia and the coali­tion, as a fron­tier artillery post for indis­crim­i­nate bomb­ing. The Serê Kaniyê sec­tor, an impor­tant pen­e­tra­tion node, has been sub­ject­ed to inces­sant pound­ing, while ground forces have attempt­ed to infil­trate it. It is cur­rent­ly the the­ater of very strong resis­tance and fight­ing, the FDS hav­ing chose it as a fix­a­tion point, no mat­ter what the agree­ment may be with the regime con­cern­ing the deploy­ment of Bachar’s troops.

As I indi­cat­ed in the first arti­cle, each of the inter­na­tion­al or region­al pow­ers is now show­ing its hand.

Since then, the Unit­ed States have with­drawn their con­tin­gents from the war zones, bring­ing along in their lug­gage the few remain­ing French troops, head­ing for Irak and what comes next. Man­bij was occu­pied by what is known as the legal Syr­i­an army, and small Russ­ian patrols insure that Bachar and Erdoğan’s troops do not come into con­tact, as they say in the mil­i­tary. So far, there have been only a few “blun­ders”. Of note on Octo­ber 16th, a front guard of regime troops entered Kobanê, the town sym­bol­ic for its resis­tance against ISIS, giv­ing a fresh impe­tus to Rojava’s demo­c­ra­t­ic and com­mu­nal­ist polit­i­cal project.

How­ev­er, it appears that both the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia, — after both seem­ing to take a laiss­er faire approach, are now chang­ing their posi­tions and, in the case of Rus­sia, assum­ing a rather con­quer­ing atti­tude. Soon­er than expect­ed, the lat­ter facil­i­tat­ed occu­pa­tion of the zones by the regime’s army, and is cur­rent­ly con­demn­ing Erdoğan. A Putin-Erdo­gan meet­ing should occur short­ly, while Trump sends his emis­saries, puts a freeze on Turk­ish assets, announces eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, all on the back­ground of rounds of Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ings at the UN, out of which noth­ing emerges.

In order to under­stand what is hap­pen­ing inside Turkey, it is impor­tant to rid one’s self of the vision of a bina­ry oppo­si­tion — “sec­u­lar pro­gres­sists vs obscu­ran­tism” — so dear to ori­en­tal­ists. Con­stant­ly repeat­ing this stu­pid­i­ty on tele­vi­sion may give the appear­ance that one is a spe­cial­ist and it so hap­pens to flat­ter anti-Mus­lim pub­lic opin­ion, while doing noth­ing but adding to the confusion.

Turkey’s polit­i­cal axis, the one that struc­tures its pub­lic opin­ion, its polit­i­cal strug­gle and even­tu­al views for the future is that of nation­al­ism, either ultra, islamist or repub­li­can, and the ide­ol­o­gy of tur­kic­i­ty that serves as the nar­ra­tive for the nation­al sto­ry, against anti-nation­al­ism and the demo­c­ra­t­ic real­i­ty that would take into account the mosa­ic of peo­ples that make up the coun­try. In short, the dif­fer­ent Euro­pean left­ist cur­rents must con­sid­er a heart­break­ing revi­sion and a nec­es­sary dis­tanc­ing from the Turk­ish Kemal­ist his­tor­i­cal novel.

It then becomes easy to under­stand why the major­i­ty oppo­si­tion, ultra-nation­al­ists and Erdoğan are joined up togeth­er under the invader’s uni­form. In even clear­er terms, Istan­bul’s dash­ing new may­or, Erdoğan’s con­queror, the one sup­pos­ed­ly rep­re­sent­ing the future, has aligned him­self and his par­ty behind the killers I men­tioned above. How pro­gres­sive, no? All those under the blood red cres­cent ban­ner, from nation­al­ist grey wolves to big­ots, praise the offen­sive, even in school­yards, with a stream of sup­port­ive prayers.

Only the HDP par­ti­sans – which are far from all being Kur­dish — might oppose this war, along with a few aca­d­e­mics, artists and human rights activists. Hard­ly had they begun to express them­selves, whether in Istan­bul or in Diyarbakir these past few days, that the repres­sion and arrests began.

The Turk­ish regime is mak­ing total use inter­nal­ly of this fight against the so-called exter­nal ter­ror­ism. This is a com­mon car­ac­ter­is­tic to all iden­ti­tar­i­an pop­ulisms. There­fore, the regime con­tin­ues its purges against Kur­dish may­ors, for exam­ple, places oppo­nents in cus­tody through a pro­hi­bi­tion on crit­i­cism of the ongo­ing war; such crit­i­cism being con­sid­ered as sup­port for the des­ig­nat­ed ter­ror­ists, which is to say the demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal project of the Kur­dish move­ment in Roja­va, and by rebound, the HDP in Turkey. Here again, all the oth­er polit­i­cal com­po­nents agree, of course, includ­ing a cer­tain may­or in Istan­bul, elect­ed thanks to the Kur­dish voic­es that made the difference.

Relax­ing vig­i­lance and sup­port for the true oppo­nents in Turkey would mean a lack of under­stand­ing of what is tru­ly being played out and, inverse­ly, in speak­ing for Roja­va, only men­tion­ing ongo­ing com­bats along with the hor­rors or exac­tions, with­out men­tion­ing the ongo­ing polit­i­cal set­back, would also be mak­ing the same mistake.

What is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place dur­ing this his­tor­i­cal moment, was sum­ma­rized for me in a recent com­ment on Kedis­tan, in the expres­sion 1936 Span­ish war – 2019 Roja­va. For the his­to­ry of eman­ci­pa­tion strug­gles, this is a blood­cur­dling short­cut, one that fore­shad­ows somber days.

May Serê Kaniyê not become anoth­er Guernica!

To be continued…


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
iknowiknowiknowblog.wordpress.com
Vous pouvez utiliser, partager les articles et les traductions de Kedistan en précisant la source et en ajoutant un lien afin de respecter le travail des auteur(e)s et traductrices/teurs. Merci.
Kedistan’ın tüm yayınlarını, yazar ve çevirmenlerin emeğine saygı göstererek, kaynak ve link vererek paylaşabilirisiniz. Teşekkürler.
Ji kerema xwere dema hun nivîsên Kedistanê parve dikin, ji bo rêzgirtina maf û keda nivîskar û wergêr, lînk û navê malperê wek çavkanî diyar bikin. Spas.
You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
Por respeto hacia la labor de las autoras y traductoras, puedes utilizar y compartir los artículos y las traducciones de Kedistan citando la fuente y añadiendo el enlace. Gracias.
Daniel Fleury on FacebookDaniel Fleury on Twitter
Daniel Fleury
REDACTION | Auteur
Let­tres mod­ernes à l’Université de Tours. Gros mots poli­tiques… Coups d’oeil politiques…