With the people of Rojava, against the authoritarianism of all states
Since the 9th of October, the Turkish state has started its invasion of Rojava, endeavouring a new war against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, with indiscriminate bombardments and with the use of ground troops.
For the Turkish government, it is necessary to annihilate a dangerous example of resistance and experimentation of freedom in the region, one which is based on communities that decided to embrace a confederal, feminist and radically ecologist revolution.
This is the true reason for this attack. Even admitting that the ‘Operation Peace Spring’ will be limited to ‘securitise’ a 30-kilometre fringe along the entire border, as initially declared by the Turkish authorities, this war will be devastating. In this fringe, there are many towns and villages that play an important role in the social experiments ongoing in the region. In the same area is likewise located Kobanê, which was freed from the siege of the Islamic State and of the Turkish Army thanks to the people’s resistance, to the YPG and YPJ militias and to international solidarity, in January 2015.
A new expansionistic war serves to Erdoğan, the Turkish president, to keep a consensus which is showing its first flashy creeps. Like during the Afrin invasion of two years ago, today all the parliamentary parties in Turkey, excluding the HDP, side again with the army in support of this new military campaign. This allows Erdoğan and the AKP’s power block to gain also the support of the main opposition party, the CHP. Enrolling the political oppositions in a war is very useful at a time when the party in power continues to lose consensus, and when the severe economic crisis that the country experiences could amplify popular discontent and turn it into social opposition.
The Turkish state triggers war with all means, from bombings on civilians that have already provoked hundreds of casualties, thousands of refugees as well as destruction and sufferings, to the reactivation of the Islamic State. In the next few days, new massacres by the Turkish ground troops, supported by 14,000 mercenaries appointed among former Islamic State militias, are very likely to start. This will mean ethnic cleansing and deportations in the territories that the Rojava militias had freed from the Califate.
The population is in danger and the forms of social self-organisation that have been experimented in these years are about to be cancelled.
The same massacres, rapes, ethnic cleansing, population’s substitutions and mass exoduses which have tragically characterised the Turkish invasion of Afrin could occur again in the rest of Rojava. Five years ago, when the Turkish state threatened Rojava with an invasion, this had been stopped by local resistance and by the great international mobilisation in solidarity. Now, before this actual aggression, it is necessary to act again to stop the war.
Only a strong movement of international solidarity can support resistance, stopping the offensive of the Turkish state and putting an end to the war through popular mobilisations from bottom-up. These should relaunch an anti-militarist and anti-authoritarian critique of the serious responsibilities carried by the regional and global powers which have used Syria as a battlefield for their imperial interests, from Trump’s USA to Putin’s Russia, from the authoritarian regime of Assad to the hypocrisy of the European Union. It is especially worth demasking the role of the Italian state, which is overtly supporting Ankara’s military operations, despite the government’s last statements going in the opposite sense. Italy and Turkey are both NATO members: only in 2018, Italy has sold weapons to Turkey for an overall value of 326.3 million euros. In addition, Italy is keeping a military mission supporting the Turkish army, exactly at the border between Syria and Turkey, with around 130 soldiers and an anti-missiles battery.
For these reasons, we are demonstrating in these days and we invite all to stand in support of those who fight to resist the attacks of the Turkish army and of the Islamic State militias, with their bombings, fires and tortures. We stand in solidarity with the resistance of Rojava and with those who have fought and fight religious fanaticism and all forms of authoritarianism.
Always with the fighters for freedom and equality, always against all states!
International Relations Commission of the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI-IFA)
federazioneanarchica.org // umanitanova.org
