YJA Star: The PKK is the movement of hope for all peoples

Celebrating the foundation anniversary of the PKK, YJA Star Central said, "PKK is the movement of hope for all peoples. PKK is the name of insisting on remaining human. Being a PKK member is the definition of remaining honourable in the 21st century."

ANF
BEHDINAN
Sunday, 26 Nov 2023

The Central Headquarters Command of YJA Star (Free Women’s Troops) made a statement marking the 45th founding anniversary of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

The statement released by YJA Star Central Headquarters Command on Sunday includes the following:

"We welcome this 27th of November, the 46th anniversary of our party, which is also the 51st year of struggle of our Leader, with the great enthusiasm of the belief in victory in our positions where we have peaked our resistance. We greet with love, respect and great longing our Leader, who has carried us to this day, and we celebrate this day for our Leader, all our comrades resisting in prisons, the families of our martyrs, our patriotic people who are devoted to the PKK cause and the world humanity. We commemorate with respect and gratitude all our comrades from Haki Karer to Axîn Muş, Jîndar Rûmet Meyaser, Andok and Egîd Kobani, who have been eternalised in the Apoist sacrifice line, and we express our promise and determination to crown our resistance with victory as a requirement of loyalty to their memories.

'Our Party is the embodiment of the resurrection of a people'

Our Party, as the embodiment of the resurrection of a people, has been waging a great struggle for existence for nearly half a century. Today, the most intensified version of this is being waged in Zap, Hill Amediyê, Hill Cûdî, Şehit Pîrdoğan and in the four parts of Kurdistan. The pioneer of this unique resistance waged by the most valuable sons and daughters of our people is Leader Apo (Abdullah Öcalan). Since the first day he started his freedom march, Leader Apo has never for a moment compromised on the morality of freedom. This principled stance of Leader Apo has become a character in our people and today the PKK has reached a leadership that inspires the whole world.

Especially the participation of Kurdish women in the PKK movement from the very beginning, in the person of Sara and her likes, has turned the PKK into a women's party. In this sense, the women who united under the slogan 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadî' (Woman, Life, Freedom) have set the most concrete example in the expression of this female essence of the PKK. As the party of the exploited, oppressed and ignored peoples, women and youth, the PKK has demonstrated that it is the most effective means of freedom by developing self-defence consciousness in all segments of society. And it is women who have embraced this the most. The women's self-defence forces organised as YPJ (Women’s Defense Units) and YJŞ (Shengal Women’s Units) from Rojava to Shengal are the visible expression of this. The YJA Star, which has been fighting in the mountains for more than 30 years as the most effective means of freedom, is the monument of honour of the woman who came to life in the PKK. Women who deeply felt the fact that those who could not realise their self-defence would be condemned to slavery, that is, extinction, united in the PKK, became PAJK and YJA Star, and succeeded in transforming the historical defeat of women into victory. In this context, the PKK is the party of women's victory. The PKK is the main living space where women's greatest gains have been realised. The woman who realised her rebirth in the PKK is the birth of a new society, and thus of a new life. The woman who gains willpower in the PKK is the society that gains willpower and fights for its freedom. The PKK is the party of our people, women and all humanity. The PKK is the only alternative of the reality of free life in which the new life is embodied.

The international conspiracy against our Leader, who created all these developments, was realised to prevent these developments. The main purpose of the insistence on the absolute isolation of our leader is to completely sever our leader's ties with our movement, the people and women, and to erase our leader, who creates continuous development, from the social memory. However, these efforts have been frustrated for 25 years in the person of our Leader. With his 'breathless' resistance, our leader has shown everyone, especially us militants, how to frustrate the conspiracy. In this context, our attitude towards the immoral war against the paradigm of democratic modernity in the person of the guerrilla is to resist to the end with the strength we take from our leader. The compass of Leyla Sorxwîn, Axîn Muş, Destan Botan, Ardem Ararat and dozens of other martyred comrades has been the resistance attitude revealed in the stance of the Leader. Our basic reality that makes us fight is this stance put forward by our Leader and our martyrs.

'We call on everyone to be a soldier of the freedom dance'

As the militants of the leader and the successors of our martyrs, we are also in position, in action and in resistance. With the awareness that the PKK is a movement of labour and revenge, every day we hit colonialism right in the heart like Sara and Ruken, Rojhat and Erdal did. The most recent revolutionary operation action at Hill Amediye, in which 49 invaders were punished, is once again proof that the PKK militancy, advancing in the line of the Leader and martyrs, will sooner or later but surely defeat colonialism. In this sense, we believe that the insistence on the PKK militancy, which has been in resistance for 46 years and every moment of which is experienced breathlessly, will bring our people, women and humanity the free future they deserve, and we call on everyone who seeks freedom to be a soldier of the freedom dance around this glorious resistance.

With each passing day, the influence of the PKK is spreading, the injustice of the conspiracy against our Leader is being exposed, and the crime of genocide against our people is being understood. The participation from 74 countries of the world in the campaign launched with the slogan 'Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, Solution to the Kurdish Question' and the increasing efforts to remove the PKK from the terrorist list are linked to this reality. Everyone who meets with the PKK sees the rightness of the PKK's ideological, political and military line and agrees with this rightness. This level that the PKK has reached is a great achievement particularly for our people and for the entire world humanity. In this sense, the PKK is a stand against injustice, inequality and marginalisation. The PKK is the movement of hope for all peoples. PKK is the name of insisting on remaining human. Being a member of the PKK is the definition of remaining honourable in the 21st century. In this context, we once again salute our Leader, who has conduced to our resurrection with the PKK, and congratulate him once again on this sacred day. Our struggle will be based on claiming and protecting the PKK life created by our Leader until the end.

As YJA Star forces, we have reached the level to perform the most effective strike with the vast experience we have gained in the war. Our strength is professional, warrior and sacrificial. With this power and motivation, there is no task that we cannot accomplish, and we have the determination and ability to overcome all obstacles. In this sense, we welcome the coming year on the basis of the claim to embrace our gains, to expand them and to win victory. Our tasks for the period are clear and we are ready. We know that our people will embrace our glorious resistance in this process in which we are in resistance at every moment, and with the strength we receive from them, we are advancing towards our goals with unwavering determination. We welcome the process with the militant reality locked on victory and express our promise and determination to resist until the end. Victory will surely be for those who resist in the Apoist sacrifice line."

VDJ demands the lifting of the ban on the PKK in Germany

The Association of Democratic Lawyers demands the lifting of the ban on the PKK's activities that was issued in Germany thirty years ago, saying: "The criminalisation of the Kurdish opposition must come to an end."

ANF
NEWS DESK
Saturday, 4 Nov 2023

Thirty years ago, the then Federal Minister of the Interior, Manfred Kanther, banned the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from operating in Germany. This year, the "Lift the PKK ban" campaign has launched a series of lectures to draw attention to the democratic deficit of the PKK ban in Germany and to create a deeper awareness of the goals of the Kurdistan Workers' Party in society, which revolve around gender liberation, social ecology and grassroots democracy. There will also be a nationwide demonstration against the PKK ban in Berlin on 18 November. The whole of November has been declared a month of action against the PKK ban.

The Association of Democratic Lawyers (Vereinigung Demokratischer Juristinnen und Juristen, VDJ) issued the following statement supporting this demand:

“On 22 November 1993, the then German Minister of the Interior imposed a ban on the PKK's activities. This was followed by bans on numerous organisations and media that were accused of being part of the PKK structure. The PKK has been listed as a terrorist organisation by the EU since 2002. Since then, hundreds of Kurdish activists have been charged with violating these bans and with violating Sections 129a and 129b of the German Criminal Code, and some have been sentenced to long prison terms. The more far-reaching attempt to criminalise gatherings of Kurdish organisations in general has so far failed in the courts.

As early as 1993, the Federal Ministry of the Interior justified the repressive measures as follows: "The activities of the 'Kurdistan Workers' Party' (PKK), including its sub-organisations 'Kurdistan National Liberation Front' (ERNK), [...] violate criminal laws, are directed against the idea of international understanding, endanger internal security, public order and other significant interests of the Federal Republic of Germany."

Even at the time, there were considerable doubts as to whether the ban actually served German security interests or rather the political interests of the Turkish government. Although Abdullah Öcalan had already declared his renunciation of violence in 1995, nothing was done in Germany to pave the way back to legality.

In the meantime, even the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had to make the following qualifying statement in its 2022 report: "Although peaceful events and activities continue to take centre stage in Europe, violence remains a strategic option for the PKK ideology."

Instead of proven violence, violence has become a vague strategic option, a legally intangible presumption. There have therefore been repeated attempts to end the criminalisation of the PKK by legal and parliamentary means, and rightly so. A motion tabled by the parliamentary group of Die Linke in December 2014 demanded:

Initiation of political steps to lift the ban on activities under association law for the PKK and its affiliated organisations as well as associations and media close to it, ending all sanctions under immigration law, amnesty, revocation of criminal prosecution as a foreign terrorist organisation, initiative at EU level to remove the PKK from the terror list, continuation of peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK.

The PKK has repeatedly taken legal action against inclusion in the EU list of terrorist organisations. The ECJ only ruled in its favour because the EU's decision was formally flawed. In May 2022, the PKK once again applied to the Federal Ministry of the Interior to have its ban on activities lifted A decision is still pending.

The VDJ supports this application as well as other initiatives to end the criminalisation of the PKK, and the demands made by the Left Party parliamentary group in the Bundestag in 2014 are still valid:

1. to take political steps to lift the ban imposed in 1993 on the PKK and its sub-, subsidiary and successor organisations as well as its affiliated associations and media,

2. to revoke the authorisation of the Federal Ministry of Justice to prosecute the PKK as a foreign terrorist organisation under Section 129b of the German Criminal Code,

3. to end all sanctions in connection with the ban on the activities of the PKK and its sub-, subsidiary and successor organisations as well as its affiliated associations and media, the classification of the PKK as a foreign terrorist organisation pursuant to Section 129b of the German Criminal Code and its listing on the EU terror list,

4. to initiate political steps for an amnesty for all those who have only been convicted of membership or support of the PKK or its sub-, subsidiary and successor organisations or its affiliated associations and media on the basis of the ban on PKK activities under association law, or who are currently under investigation,

5. to campaign at EU level for the removal of the PKK (including organisations listed as a.k.a. such as KADEK, Kongra-Gel) from the list of terrorist organisations and to veto any further listing of the PKK at the next vote on the list at the Council of the European Union,

6. to encourage the Turkish government and the PKK to continue the peace talks that have begun in a constructive and transparent manner with the aim of securing lasting peace through the implementation of democratic reforms in the area of human and minority rights,

The VDJ calls on the Federal Government to respond to the motion of May 2022 and to implement the demands of the Left Party from 2014. The criminalisation of the Kurdish opposition must come to an end.”

Americans Shouldn’t Accept Erdogan’s Cynical Stance On The PKK

By Michael Rubin

19fortyfive.com

December 08, 2022

“We are determined to root out this terrorist organization,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared shortly after a bomb exploded on an Istanbul pedestrian mall, calling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) “enemies of Islam and humanity.”

For NATO leaders, diplomats, and those in Washington prone to accept and amplify Turkish talking points, Erdogan’s concerns were “legitimate.” Many repeated Turkey’s charge that PKK affiliates in Syria were responsible for the attack, something both Syrian Kurds and the PKK deny.

Such deference to Erdogan has a cost.

Turkey today uses the Istanbul bomb both as a reason to conduct a preplanned operation to eradicate Kurdish self-governance across northern and eastern Syria, and to incite the Turkish public against the United States. “We know the identity, location and track record of the terrorists. We also know very well who patronizes, arms and encourages terrorists,” Erdogan declared, trying to incite anger toward the United States, which has supported the Syrian Defense Forces’ fight against the Islamic State.

While there are legitimate arguments for close U.S.-Turkish ties, it is a mistake to both conflate Turkey with Erdogan and to assume principle rather than politics shapes the Turkish position toward the PKK.

From the very formation of modern Turkey, the country’s leaders discriminated against the country’s Kurds. For Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his successor İsmet İnönü, the problem was the Kurds’ religiosity and resistance to laicism. Subsequently, Turks sought to repress Kurdish ethnic and cultural identity. It was against this milieu and outright racism that Abdullah Öcalan broke with Turkish leftists and founded the PKK on ethnic grounds.

At first, the PKK did engage in terrorism against fellow Kurds and Turks, and embraced Marxist ideology. In August 1984 PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan launched an insurgency and terror campaign, seizing towns in southeastern Turkey and using loudspeakers to declare separatist goals. Over the following decade, fighting between the PKK and the Turkish army resulted in perhaps 20,000 deaths. While Turkey engaged in systematic human rights abuses both before and after the PKK insurgency, PKK attacks on civilians were a tactical mistake as the Turkish public began to see the Kurds as an enemy group rather than a victimized minority, a fact that set the Kurdish cause back decades.

With the end of the Cold War, the PKK liberalized its economic philosophy and shed its separatist demands. With time, PKK evolved first into a more traditional insurgency, and then a far more dormant one. This is the major reason why the United States did not initially designate the PKK to be a terror group; it did so only in 1997 not on the merits of the group’s actions but rather because Ankara demanded it as a condition of a multi-billion dollar arms sale.

None other than Turgut Özal, prime minister and then president during the height of the PKK’s violent campaign, recognized the change in the PKK. Özal repeatedly stood up to Turkey’s ossified elite and broke the taboo surrounding liberalization of Turkey’s Kurdish policies to include allowing the Kurdish language, Kurdish education and television broadcasts. Özal also first proposed establishment of the Kurdish safe-haven in Iraq, albeit to avoid a refugee influx into Turkey. As the Turkish military gained the upper hand over the PKK in the early 1990s, Özal even pushed the Turkish government to address the economic discrimination that fueled separatist fire. Had a heart attack not felled Özal in his prime, it is possible if not even likely the PKK and Turkish state would have begun formal negotiations to end the insurgency.

Özal was not the only leader who sought to end the conflict with the PKK, although he was in hindsight the most sincere. Öcalan welcomed talks and shed doctrinaire inflexibility. Indeed, the PKK evolved with time just as Turkey had. Erdogan repeatedly reached out to the group and its proxies in the belief that his brand of Islamism might form a common bond and that Kurds might offer him electoral support. PKK members even agreed to lay down arms and move to Syria, where, with very few resources, they established a successful and progressive government. For Erdogan to complain that PKK members live in northern Syria is disingenuous since he sent them there as part of a peace deal.

Erdogan’s cynicism and dishonesty run deep. He made myriad promises to Turkish Kurds prior to each election, only to renege on them after. Ultimately, Turkey’s Kurds saw through his cynicism. They voted in earnest for the predominantly Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (or its earlier iteration), breaking through the ten percent threshold to loosen Erdogan’s grip on parliament. Erdogan responded not by respecting the democratic will, but by arresting its leadership.

This brings us back to the present. Diplomats might appease the Turkish government in the mistaken belief they can appease Erdogan. They err in the belief that short-term appeasement will discourage further violence. Academics and think tank analysts should not be constrained by existing government policy, however. To substitute volume and repetition of Erdogan statements for research is both dishonest and poor research methodology. It is also anachronistic given developments in Turkish-Kurdish relations from the 1990s to the present. Here, there is a parallel to South Africa. Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was both Marxist and engaged in terrorism in its origin, but both Mandela and the group he led evolved to seek compromise and peace.

There is something very wrong when Americans who have never interacted with or confronted the Syrian Kurdish leadership with their concerns, let alone bothered to visit the region to see whether Erdogan’s characterizations are accurate, seek to be more Turkish than the most ardent, intolerant, and extreme Turkish political groupings. The tragedy is that such academic malpractice can lead to very real consequence with the furtherance of conflict and the murder of even more innocents.

PKK, 45 years struggling for the existence, freedom and honour of the Kurdish people

Formally founded on 27 and 28 November 1978 the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) core group was made up largely of political science students led by Abdullah Öcalan in Ankara.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Monday, 27 Nov 2023

Formally founded on 27 and 28 November 1978, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) core group was made up largely of political science students led by Abdullah Öcalan in Ankara. The group soon moved its focus to the large Kurdish population in south-east Turkey. On 27 November 1978, the group adopted the name "Kurdistan Workers' Party".

The 1980 Turkish coup d'état pushed the organization to another stage with the members doing jail time, being subject to capital punishment, or fleeing to Syria.

The first congress of the organization was held in 1982 and outlined the various phases necessary for the liberation of Kurdistan.

In 1984, on 15 August, the PKK carried out its first armed action.

The founding of the PKK was initially the answer to the bitter alternative of “assimilation or extinction” in a state that was committed to the ideology of ethnic homogeneity. Abdullah Öcalan, Haki Karer, Kemal Pir, Sakine Cansız and a handful of comrades-in-arms decided on the path of resistance against the feudalism of the time and a colonialism aimed at exploitation and ultimately extermination.

These first militants refrained from writing pages of declarations of intent and theoretical treatises on independence and self-determination. They preferred practice. "We have to live the alternative that we always talk about," said Öcalan. So they looked for a way into society, talked to people everywhere about their everyday problems, founded small circles of "help for self-help" and showed how social resistance can develop - even on a small scale. With empathy, seriousness and determination, the still young PKK lit the fire of self-empowerment.

One of the greatest achievements is the break with the concept of nation states. Wherever the PKK movement is active, attempts are being made to push back the state and rely on social self-organization. A growing "grassroots revolution". The "Declaration of Democratic Confederalism" proclaimed in 2005 as a strategic realignment of the party is evidence of the PKK's ability to learn from mistakes and respond to social changes with new answers.

The PKK in its own words

"Our party, since its inception, has been struggling for the existence, freedom and honour of the Kurdish people against the genocide begun by the racist-chauvinist Unionists at the beginning of the 20th century, which aimed to end the freedom of the Kurdish people and wipe them out from history. In this sense, the decision taken on 27th November 1978 to become a party was also a decision for national existence and resistance. This is why this day is being celebrated as national resistance by our people.

Over the years, the PKK has fought to safeguard and realize the freedom of the Kurdish people against the physical and cultural genocide and assimilation policies of the Turkish nation-state. Our party has staged a great resistance against one of the biggest army’s in the world, supported by NATO, and also Gladio (deep state) organization to bring the Kurdish people to the point of declaring democratic autonomy."

PKK, 45 years of great struggles and great achievements

On the occasion of its 45th founding anniversary, the PKK Executive Committee declared its determination to continue fighting against all forms of patriarchy, nationalism, racism, the liberalism of capitalist modernity and to create a democratic system.

ANF
BEHDINAN
Thursday, 23 Nov 2023

On November 27th, the PKK celebrates its 45th founding anniversary. On the occasion of this historic date, the PKK called for the coming year to be the year of the liberation of the Kurdish representative Abdullah Öcalan, jailed in Imrali, and the resolution of the Kurdish question. The statement from the PKK Executive Committee said: "We are now celebrating the 45th anniversary of the founding of the PKK, our pioneer in the fight for freedom. As a movement, a people and democratic humanity, we enter the 46th year even stronger and more determined on the basis of the global freedom campaign. We are convinced that this year we will achieve important achievements to guarantee the physical freedom of Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan].

The 45th year was a year of great struggle and great achievements

With this in mind, we congratulate all our comrades, especially Rêber Apo, our patriotic people and our revolutionary-democratic friends on November 27th, the celebration and founding day of the party. We remember with deep respect, love and gratitude all of our courageous martyrs, starting with Heval Haki Karer up to those who died in the 45th year, whom we would like to remember here by naming comrades Leyla, Axîn, Rojhat and Erdal. For the 46th year of the PKK, we announce that we will fight even harder on the line of apoism and the martyr and achieve even greater victories."

The statement continued: "As is well known, Rêber Apo and the PKK were not born into active, ongoing resistance, nor did they inherit the possibilities of such resistance. On the contrary, the PKK emerged and developed as a modern national liberation, freedom and democracy movement in an environment in which the classic uprisings had been completely crushed, all momentum had been stifled and the Kurdish people were almost annihilated on the basis of a cultural genocide brought to the brink of extinction. The PKK emerged and developed solely thanks to the creative efforts of its leader Abdullah Öcalan and the great courage and sacrifice of the Kurdish people, led by young people and women. For this reason, every moment was a moment of intense struggle. Each year witnessed much more extensive resistance and war than the previous, and everything from a few words to a free life was achieved through great sacrifice by the fallen. The PKK's 45th year was also a year of great struggle and full of successes.

Apoism became global

Everyone today knows and accepts the fact that the Kurdish people, through the great struggle led by Rêber Apo and the PKK, overcame the cultural genocide and won everything for their survival and freedom through the struggle led by Rêber Apo and the PKK. With the struggle of the last half century, the Kurdish slave mentality and the threat of extinction have been overcome and a free Kurdish identity has been created, an identity in which people have the strength and will to pay any price for their freedom. Kurdistan has transformed from a bastion of reaction to a bastion of the freedom struggle. A place that inspires all oppressed humanity. Kurdish society became aware of the apoist ideology of freedom and organized itself. She led the most important war of freedom in history. On the basis of such a struggle, apoism was globalized and the Kurdish freedom struggle became a fire lighting the path of all oppressed humanity."

The 21st century has become the century of women’s liberation

The statement added: "The PKK's struggle in its 45th year has brought all of these developments to a climax. The guerrilla resistance led by the struggle in the Zap, Avaşîn and Metîna areas and the brave struggle of our people and our friends in the four parts of Kurdistan and abroad have dealt severe blows to the AKP-MHP fascism and brought it to the brink of collapse. The comprehensive revolutionary people's war and resistance for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo and against the isolation, torture and extermination system on Imrali has reached a strength that also influences the agenda of regional and global politics. The Kurdistan Free Women's Movement, which developed on the lines of 'Jin Jiyan Azadî', has impressed women all over the world with its ideological and practical struggle and has already made the 21st century a century of women's freedom. The Kurdish youth movement is a pioneer in building a global youth movement as an alternative of democratic modernity to capitalist modernity. She has the will to shape the future with her own hands.

A new global democracy movement has begun

We welcome the guerrilla, popular, women and youth resistance in the 45th year of the PKK, which is following the trail of resistance in all areas from dungeons to the mountains, from the four parts of Kurdistan to all places in the world developed by Imrali; We congratulate their success and honor all those who died in the process. We believe that all this self-sacrificing resistance will become even more successful and stronger in the 46th year and wish everyone much success in this regard.

It is clear that we will enter the 46th party year with the campaign 'Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and a solution to the Kurdish question' announced on 10 October. This global freedom campaign was initiated by our friends and is supported by our people and all of humanity. Now there are actions in every region and every day demanding the physical freedom of Rêber Apo and the solution to the Kurdish question. Our people and our friends are entering the new year of the party with this broad and effective mobilization. Women and young people are leading this campaign on a global scale. Freedom-minded and democratic people of all genders, nationalities and social classes are taking part in this campaign. A new global fight for freedom and democracy has begun. This great struggle, which is developing for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo and on the basis of the adoption of his democratic, ecological and women's liberation paradigm, shows that a new 'global democracy movement' has indeed begun."

Participate in the Freedom Campaign

The statement added: "It is clear that the PKK's 46th year will make this active freedom campaign its basis. All struggles, from guerrilla to women's, youth and popular resistance, will unite in this global freedom campaign. Our movement, our people and our friends will fight and win against the fascist dictatorship of Tayyip Erdoğan and his alliance through this campaign. In the 45th year of the struggle, the foundations of the murderous system were shaken and a process was initiated in which all balances were disturbed. In the 46th year, the freedom struggle will complete this development and destroy AKP-MHP fascism.

On this basis, it will open the way for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo and a solution to the Kurdish question. In this context, we call on all comrades, our patriotic people and our democratic friends to properly understand the meaning of the global freedom campaign launched on 10 October, to participate fully and strongly in it and to use it in diverse and creative ways to lead forms of fighting to victory."

The path is open, the light lies before us

The statement remarked: “Our goal for the 46th year, our aspirations and will to succeed are based on this. Based on the global freedom campaign, no violence, no invasion, no massacre, no persecution and no deception will be able to prevent us from moving further towards the physical freedom of Rêber Apo and a solution to the Kurdish question. The people of Kurdistan will never allow themselves to become victims of regional and global conflicts of interest, like the people of Gaza. The liberalism of capitalist modernity, as well as the nationalism, fundamentalism, sexism and positivist scienticism that these wars give rise to, will be strongly and effectively combated in all areas. Efforts are being made to ensure that all oppressed groups and peoples develop consciousness and organize themselves to wage a common struggle based on democratic confederalism. Democratic confederalism is based on democratic autonomy and democratic nationhood. On this basis, the line of development and strengthening of the strategic alliance with the freedom and democracy struggles of all oppressed groups and peoples and the use of all kinds of tactical relationships will be pursued.

It is clear that in the 46th year our path is open and leads into the light. It is clear where, what and how we should act. Let us understand these realities more accurately and deeply, internalize the apoist paradigm of freedom more, participate more in the global freedom campaign, and fight with more creative methods in every field and lead the campaign to victory! Let's make the 46th year of the PKK the year of Rêber Apo's physical freedom and the solution of the Kurdish question!

On this basis, we once again warmly congratulate Rêber Apo, all our companions, our people and our friends on November 27th, the day of the party, and call on everyone to celebrate the founding day of the PKK with a variety of actions. We will reconnect it with the global freedom campaign to celebrate with great enthusiasm!

Against all forms of patriarchy

We would also like to remember 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. We condemn all forms and dimensions of patriarchy. We believe that the revolution for women's liberation will be further strengthened by developing the fight against violence against women. We declare that both men and women should participate in activities on this basis, and we welcome all actions that develop on the basis of the women's liberation revolution and wish them great success."

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

Pentagon: Iran-backed militias, PKK coordinated vs. Turkish troops in Iraq

Turkey’s targeting of veteran PKK cadres in Iraq has pushed the Kurdish guerrillas to collaborate with an unlikely partner, a new Pentagon report suggests.

A truck drives on a road in the province of Sirnak, Nov. 10, 2007, near the Turkish-Iraqi border, south-eastern Turkey. - JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP via Getty Images

Jared Szuba
@JM_Szuba
May 3, 2022


US military intelligence believes Iran-backed militias have been coordinating with Kurdish guerrillas to launch attacks on Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq, according to a Pentagon inspector general report released today.

Prominent Iran-backed militias have publicly slammed Turkey’s military operations targeting fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the mountains of northern Iraq, citing violations of Iraq's sovereignty.

The militias are also behind a small but increasing number of rocket attacks on Turkish forces in both Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to the declassified report. Some of the strikes in Iraq were carried out “in cooperation with the PKK,” the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported.

“Following Turkish airstrikes in February that targeted the PKK in northern Iraq, a new Iran-aligned militia group conducted a rocket attack against a Turkish expeditionary base north of Mosul,” the report read. The Turkish outpost near Zlikan, northeast of Mosul, has repeatedly come under rocket fire in the past year.

“The DIA assessed that the militias probably will continue to coordinate with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, in response to Turkish air and UAV strikes on PKK positions,” the report read.

Why it matters: Since the battlefield defeat of the Islamic State, Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq have typically focused their rocket and drone attacks on bases and diplomatic facilities used by the US in Iraq. They have also targeted political rivals and the Iraqi prime minister.

Such attacks have been less frequent in recent months, however. That may be due the militias' desire to avoid actions that could weaken the standing of their political affiliates amid the ongoing government formation following last year’s elections, according to the DIA's assessment.

Now, the unpopular expansion of Turkey’s military operations against the PKK in Iraq's Kurdistan region appears to be giving Iran-aligned groups space to carve out some new legitimacy.

“The militias probably calculate that their attacks against Turkey will deter Turkey from attacking the PKK in federal Iraq while enhancing their public image as defenders of Iraqi sovereignty,” the DIA reported.

The Pentagon’s assessment raises questions as to the extent to which cooperation between the Iran-backed militias and PKK-linked groups has spread beyond northwestern Iraq’s Sinjar region, where both Baghdad and Ankara have sought to dislodge militants affiliated with both factions.

“There does seem to be some significant militia-PKK cooperation going in the Sinjar area and potentially around Mosul too,” said Alex Almeida, the lead security analyst at Horizon Client Access.

“They’ve hit Zlikan with rocket barrages over six times so far this year, plus a drone attack last month on the Iraq-Turkey export pipeline infrastructure up near Fishkhabur,” Almieda told Al-Monitor, adding, “Usually the rockets are fired from the Shabak militia areas of the eastern Nineveh Plains, in federal Iraq.”

Almeida expressed skepticism that the militias’ motivations stretch beyond political posturing. Lobbing rockets at Turkish forces, he said, is a way for the militias to “boost their [Iraqi] nationalist credentials on the cheap."

The background: The PKK and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are ideologically distinct, but both battled against the Islamic State and in its wake have built broad networks of their own affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria which have resisted attempts by central governments to challenge their autonomy.

Turkey announced a new military operation to encircle core PKK strongholds in the mountains of Iraq northern border region last month. Meanwhile, Iraq’s military has sent armored units to suppress clashes with a PKK-trained Yazidi militia known as the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) in the country’s northwest, fueling speculation that Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s government is coordinating security operations with Ankara.

Turkey’s government sees Iraq’s Sinjar region as a key node linking PKK strongholds in northern Iraq with the groups’ affiliates in Syria. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a ground operation into Sinjar to dislodge PKK-linked fighters if necessary.

Last year, Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, former IRGC official Iraj Masjedi, triggered a diplomatic row when he admonished Ankara to withdraw its troops from Iraq, adding that Turkey had no justification to intervene in Sinjar. Just over a month later, a Turkish soldier was killed in a rocket attack at a base near Bashiqa.

With US support, Iraq has been fortifying its open desert border with Syria by installing cameras, watchtowers, concertina wire, and constructing sections of trench and concrete wall.

Know more: Read Fehim Tastekin’s story on the latest moves in Sinjar.

TURKEY'S WAR ON KURDISTAN

Turkey ends 'first phase' of military operation in N. Iraq, as Kurdish commentators warn of an 'occupation'

Dana Taib Menmy
Iraq
26 April, 2022

Turkish soldiers in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. [Getty]

Turkey on Monday said it had "successfully completed the first stage" of its cross-border military incursion, dubbed "Operation Claw-Lock", into northern Iraqi Kurdistan to fight against militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as several Kurdish political observers warn Ankara's main strategy is to "occupy the region."

On April 18 Turkey launched "Operation Claw-Lock" against the PKK in the Metina, Zap and Avasin-Basyan areas of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

"Our operation continues as planned with great success. We wish God's mercy upon our martyrs," Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was quoted by Anadolu News Agency as saying.

"The first phase of the operation has been successfully completed," he added, before stressing that a new phase of the operation had already begun and will continue until the goal of defeating the PKK is achieved.

Turkey calls in Iraq envoy to defend new offensive

"Some 56 PKK terrorists were eliminated in the operation so far. Right now we have taken most of the area under control, however, there are many caves in this area…Our only goal is to eliminate terrorists. Once the area is cleared, Turkey's border will be fully locked against security threats," Akar said according to the Daily Sabah.

On its part, the People's Defense Forces (HPG), the military wing of the PKK, on Monday said in a statement said that "19 Turkish soldiers were killed, 2 more were injured, 6 helicopters were damaged, and one drone was shot down."

"The occupying Turkish army has once again resorted to vicious methods and used toxic chemical gases during the battle since it fails to advance against our forces, who are inflicting heavy blows on them. Despite all the dirty war methods employed by the occupying Turkish army, which has committed war crimes using chemical weapons," excerpts of the statement claim.

Turkey shells Kobane, US calls for 'de-escalation'

The PKK has been waging an insurgency for greater autonomous rights against the Turkish state since 1984, with tens of thousands estimated to have been killed so far. The PKK has been categorised as a "terrorist organisation" by Ankara and its Western allies.

"The Turkish state is just using the PKK as a pretext for its step by step strategy of occupying the Iraqi Kurdistan region and reviving the former Ottoman Empire," Kamaran Mantik, a Kurdish University political science professor, told The New Arab during a brief phone interview.

"Ankara has the green light of NATO, Russia, and Iran to occupy northern Iraq, which was known as Vilayet Mosul of the Ottoman Empire," he added.

Turkey Falsely Claims Iraq Agreed to Attack in Northern Iraq

April 22, 2022
Nisan Ahmado

Turkish troops in action against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, June 17, 2020. (AP)



Recep Tayyip Erdogan
President of Turkey
“I wish success for our heroic soldiers involved in this operation, which we are carrying out in close cooperation with the central Iraqi government and the regional administration.”
Source: Al-Arabiya News, April 20, 2022

FALSE

On April 18, Turkey launched a military offensive aimed at purported Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) hideouts in northern Iraq, saying the group was planning a cross-border attack.

During an April 20 parliamentary meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country’s military had to act against terrorist organizations infiltrating Turkey. He claimed only terrorists opposed such operations.

“I wish success for our heroic soldiers involved in this operation, which we are carrying out in close cooperation with the central Iraqi government and the regional administration in northern Iraq,” Erdogan said.

That is false.



In fact, on April 19, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry denounced the Turkish operation in a statement on its website, saying it refused to let Iraq be a place for “conflicts and settling scores for other external parties.”

“Iraq regards this action as a violation of its sovereignty and the sanctity of the country, and an act that violates international charters and laws that govern the relations between countries,” the ministry said.

The same day, the Iraqi government summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad, Ali Reza Guney, handing him what it described as “firmly-worded note of protest” to “put an end to acts of provocation and unacceptable violations.”



That does not sound like “close cooperation.”

On April 21, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry summoned Iraq’s charge d'affaires to convey “discomfort” over the Iraqi statements, Reuters reported.

Turkey has repeatedly conducted airstrikes in northern Iraq, mainly targeting areas in the Kurdish region where PKK fighters are concentrated. In 2020, Turkey launched two large-scale operations, code-named Claw-Tiger and Claw-Eagle.

About half the 25 million Kurds in the Mideast live in southeast Turkey. The PKK first emerged as a leftist separatist group in the late 1970s and launched a string of violent attacks. Since 2000, repeated efforts to settle differences with the government have failed.

Turkey, the European Union and the United States officially consider the PKK a terrorist group.

The Turkey-PKK conflict has lasted more than 40 years and killed nearly 40,000 people. A pro-Kurdish political party, the HDP, is also active in Turkey in opposition to Erdogan.

Following the attempted military coup in Turkey in 2016, Erdogan arrested thousands of people, increased airstrikes in southern Turkey and conducted military operations in Iraq and Syria.



Erdogan intensified actions against PKK militants in the wake of the failed coup. Meantime, his AKP and allies have moved to shut down the HDP, an effort the United States has denounced.

Turkey says that its latest military operation is in line with the United Nations principle of self-defense. In a news conference held on April 18, AKP spokesman Omer Celik said the operation is a preemptive move to “fend-off a large-scale attack by the PKK.”

“We have to protect our people, based on the right of self-protection enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter, "Celik said.

Celik cited Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states:

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

However, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry rejected Turkey’s claim, saying Article 51 does not permit the breach of an independent country’s sovereignty.

On April 20, the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) also denounced the Turkish operation, stating that the sovereignty of Kurdish and Iraqi territory must be respected. The Peshmerga is the military wing of the KRG and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Without directly criticizing Turkey, on April 19, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said activity in Iraq must respect the country’s sovereignty and regional security.

The KRG blamed the PKK for the Turkish operation. On April 19, KRG spokesman Jutiar Adel said in a press conference that the PKK’s presence is inflicting harm on the Kurdistan region of Iraq. While Adel did not say that the KRG is directly cooperating with Turkey, he called on Kurdish opponents of both Turkey and Iran to find peaceful means to settle issues.



Turkey has been accused of targeting civilians and destabilizing northern Iraq. In February, a Turkish airstrike hit a Kurdish refugee camp in Iraq, killing eight people and injuring 17, including both civilians and PKK fighters. Most of the camp’s 12,000 refugees are Kurds who fled Turkey because of fighting.

Turkish airstrikes in February targeted Iraq’s Makhmour province and Sinjar province – the latter a predominantly Yazidi area.

Turkey has also conducted airstrikes in Syria, targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers an affiliate of the PKK. The YPG, however, is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S. ally that spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria.



Turkish military operations pose a risk to displaced Yazidis who want to go back to their homes. In 2014, 400,000 Yazidis were killed, kidnapped or forced to flee by IS. The U.N. called it a genocide.

IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2018. Today, 350,000 Yazidi survivors live in scattered refugee camps in northern Iraq.

Sweden’s NATO Entry Launches a New Phase for the Country’s Kurds

The conviction of a PKK member may have helped smooth the way for Stockholm’s membership, but it also signals a tense turning point

Tam HusseinTam Hussein is Associate Editor at New Lines magazine
July 31, 2023

Demonstrators in Malmo, Sweden, protest Turkish military attacks against Kurds in Syria in 2018. (Magnus Persson/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

On July 6, the conviction of Yahya Gungor, 41, a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) member, caused shockwaves in the Swedish-Kurdish diaspora. Gungor had extorted a Kurdish businessman in order to get him to fund the PKK, a designated terror organization in Sweden, the United States and the EU. According to the judge, Gungor had been part of a European fundraising campaign and will serve a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence and then be extradited to Turkey. This is the first time a PKK member has been convicted in a Swedish court.

This will worry the 100,000-strong Swedish-Kurdish diaspora, as they see Gungor’s case as politically motivated, aimed at smoothing the Nordic country’s entry into NATO by doing Turkey’s bidding. His case follows the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which Sweden’s security interests changed overnight. Sweden abandoned its long-standing neutrality in favor of NATO membership and, consequently, became dependent on Turkey, a NATO member, which held veto power over the bid. Turkey said it would only let Sweden in if its security concerns were satisfied. Ankara has long accused Sweden specifically, and Europe generally, of being too easy on an organization linked not only to terror attacks but organized crime, including extortion and drug trafficking.

Swedish judges went to great pains to stress that Gungor’s case had nothing to do with Turkish demands that Sweden crack down on the PKK. But that likely won’t stop Swedish Kurds from seeing the decision as a sign of an insecure future. While the political views of Swedish Kurds are manifold and varied, there is considerable sympathy for the organization, even if many disagree with its methods and radical ideas. Many Swedish Kurds still hold a common grievance against the Turkish state and may even have attended PKK rallies in solidarity. Now, displays of sympathy could land them in a Turkish prison.

Such fears are not wholly baseless. Even before Gungor’s conviction, on June 7 a Swedish court approved Turkish demands to extradite Mehmet Kokulu in order to finish off a prison sentence for drug trafficking. From the outside, Kokulu’s extradition appears quite reasonable. States often send convicted criminals to complete prison sentences in the countries in which their crimes were committed. However, Kokulu was also a refugee and a PKK supporter, and the case suggests that anyone who is a PKK sympathizer might face the prospect of extradition in spite of their refugee status. Both court cases appear to signal the end of Sweden’s tolerance for the political activities of its Swedish-Kurdish citizens, and may herald their becoming a suspect community. Yet in reality, that relationship between Swedish society and its Swedish-Kurdish citizens has always been one of alternating admiration and suspicion, since the time the latter arrived in the country.

When Kurds arrived in Sweden after World War II in the 1960s, Sweden had gone from being a country whose citizens migrated to other countries to one which required migrants for its growing industries. The first wave of Kurdish migrants was not dissimilar to the German foreign workers (“Gastarbeiter”) and came mostly from southeastern Turkey. The second wave came in the late ’70s and ’80s and were far more educated, middle class and politically active. They were also affected by political instability, repression and martial law which they suffered not only at the hands of the Turkish state, but also the Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi states. None of these countries wanted to see a Kurdish state being carved out of their territory.

The Kurdish diaspora felt aggrieved. Many of these countries that had sprung up from the former Ottoman empire erased their identity, either under the guise of Turkish nationalism or pan-Arabism. This took forms including the genocidal policies of the Iraqi Baath Party, culminating in the Anfal campaign, which killed thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s, and the land seizures of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, which aimed to create an “Arab belt” by seizing land from Kurds and bequeathing it to Arabs, and, in the case of Turkey, the process of Turkification, which sought to turn Kurds (or “mountain Turks,” as they were euphemistically known) into assimilated Turks bereft of an independent ethnic identity.

The latter policy manifested itself in the suppression of Kurdish language and culture in Turkish institutions. Since Kurds did not speak Turkish very well, they were left behind in a rapidly modernizing country. Even in 2022, the Kurdish soprano, Pervin Chakar, was allegedly canceled by her local university in the city of Mardin, on the Turkish-Syrian border, for including a Kurdish folk song in her repertoire. So the freedom experienced in Sweden was not underestimated by the nascent Swedish-Kurdish diaspora.

According to Barzoo Eliassi, a researcher of social policy at Oxford University, and Minoo Alinia, professor of sociology at Uppsala University in Sweden, Kurds were regarded as a “culturally remote and incompatible group in Swedish society.” Facing immense prejudice and racism and feeling a sense of alienation from their homeland, the Kurdish diaspora developed a sense of their “Kurdishness.” Sweden had become a melting pot, where Kurds from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran could gather freely for the first time, having previously been separated by national boundaries. Martin van Bruinessen, an anthropologist who specializes in the Kurds, notes that the presence of Kurdish intellectuals helped to stitch the community together and contributed to the spread of Kurdish nationalism.

As Eliassi and Alinia point out, the first generation did not care whether they were accepted by Swedes or not. They were migrants and they knew it; they were just thankful to be in a country that didn’t persecute them. For the first generation, prejudice was a price worth paying for the immense political freedom they experienced in their daily lives. For Kurdish women in particular, life in Sweden led to opportunities that they would never have experienced back home.

For their children, however, the situation was very different, as they didn’t have that pre-migratory experience of their parents. For them, to be accepted as Swedish mattered, and the realization that they were never going to be “Svensk Svensk” (Swedish Swedish) took a toll on them. If they didn’t face overt racism, at the very least, they experienced what Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the Swedish-Balkan soccer player, identified as “undercover racism.” They experienced the stigma that came with not having a surname like “Andersson or Svensson,” as he put it. It manifested itself in fewer job prospects or the near-complete segregation of foreign-born Swedes, who lived in self-contained suburbs like Rinkeby away from their white compatriots.

Alinia, who has written extensively on the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden, told me that Kurds were made to feel doubly incompatible with Swedish society, especially after 9/11. Not only did they experience the prejudice that many Muslim communities faced globally but they were also affected by the backlash that followed the honor killings of Pela Atroshi in 1999 and Fadime Sahindal in 2002. Atroshi was killed by her uncles for moving out of the family home. Sahindal was shot by her father for having a Swedish boyfriend and speaking out in the Swedish Parliament. It was a common accusation that Kurdish men were seen as “perpetrators” and women “their victims,” Alinia said. It made second-generation Kurds feel spurned by their country of birth.

And so sometimes, the second or third generation became even more hardcore Kurdish nationalists than their parents. Unlike the latter, who had experienced life in their homeland, the second generation created little idyllic Kurdistans in their heads, far removed from the messy political reality that always comes with such nation-building projects. As Alinia points out, nationalism became the framework and created a sense of “collective identity,” perhaps even more so when, in 2005, following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a federal Iraq was created and Kurdish Iraqis were given an autonomous Kurdistan governorate rich in oil resources.

Arguably, the Swedish Kurds spread and strengthened Kurdish nationalism in Sweden because it gave both first- and second-generation Kurds a way to protect themselves from the prejudice of wider Swedish society; it gave them self-confidence and self-respect. In many ways it anchored them to something, even if it was just a vague idea.

Politically and culturally, however, according to Khalid Khayati, a political scientist at Linkoping University, Sweden became a “gravitational center” for Swedish Kurds. Up until now, at least, the Kurdish diaspora felt they could express themselves freely in Sweden. The Swedish state supported cultural federations in general, and Kurds could form associations and societies in a way that they couldn’t in Turkey or Syria. Kurdiska Riksforbundet i Sverige, the Federation of Kurdish Association in Sweden, had 40 or so associations and many other associations were formed in the ’90s. Kurds also established several TV and radio channels, as well as newspapers. Kurdish libraries and publishing houses printed books in the Kurdish languages that riveted the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden. These activities would be difficult or impossible in Turkey. Unlike many other ethnic minorities in Sweden, Swedish Kurds had managed to penetrate many spaces of Swedish society, rarely available to ethnic minority Swedes.

As someone born in Stockholm and raised in Rinkeby, to spot a white Swede there is a rarity, something noteworthy, and to witness the grit and tenacity of Swedish Kurds is extraordinary. Not only did Swedish Kurds manage to elect six members (MPs) to Parliament in 2018 but they had journalists, intellectuals, writers, academics and pop singers in wider Swedish society, too. In fact, such was the political skill of some that Amineh Kakabaveh, an independent MP of Kurdish heritage and a former PKK guerrilla fighter, for one brief moment held the decisive vote that could have resulted in the fall of the Swedish Social Democrats’ minority government. Kakabaveh managed to leverage her single vote to secure concessions for the Kurdish factions fighting in Syria.

But there were problems too. Many of these societies were dominated by supporters of the PKK, which started life as a Marxist-Leninist and radical leftist party. Even though there were other political parties in Kurdish politics, the PKK was the loudest in channeling the grievances of the Kurdish diaspora. The problem was that the PKK was outlawed by Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme after a PKK defector was killed in 1984. When Palme was assassinated in 1986, the national security service, SAPO, suspected that the PKK had killed him out of revenge. These allegations proved baseless, and over the years the Swedish state left them more or less alone because they threatened neither the Swedish state nor the West, despite the fact that the group was accused of involvement in terrorism, human trafficking and the heroin trade. A 2019 paper by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction suggested that the PKK controlled the nexus for heroin trafficking in southern Turkey and there was “limited” open source evidence that the PKK was involved in importing narcotics into Europe. Until recent years, the PKK was never deemed “a question” for the Swedish state, according to Svante Cornell of the Institute of Security and Development Policy, and so they were left to do their politicking among the Kurdish diaspora unchecked.

With the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, however, turning a blind eye toward the PKK was seen as tacit support. The Kurdish political groups seized northern Syria by 2012 and captured the Western imagination in the battle for Kobani and Rojava in 2015. While as many as 300 Swedish nationals joined jihadist groups and made Swedish headlines by beheading Syrian pilots, ramming a truck into a famous department store in Stockholm and taking some of their blond and blue-eyed children to the Islamic State caliphate, the Kurds led the fight against them. One of the PKK’s offshoots, the YPG, was prominent in the fight against the Islamic State. For a fleeting moment, Kurds could do nothing wrong, as the YPG appealed to Swedish sensibilities. They seemed egalitarian. Kurdish women fought on the front lines against a barbaric jihadist group that enslaved Yazidis and oppressed women. No longer were the Kurds seen as the perpetrators of honor killings. Popular support translated into political support; Sweden, alongside the U.S. and other NATO countries, supported the YPG in its fight against the Islamic State.

Such support, however, was deemed unacceptable to Turkey, especially as the truce between it and the PKK ended in 2015. As a result of the renewed clashes between the two, according to the International Crisis Group, from 2015 up until very recently, 6,677 fatalities have occurred in Turkey, 614 of whom were civilian victims. In 2016, the Kurdish Freedom Hawks, said to be an offshoot of the PKK, bombed transport hubs in Ankara and a mosque in Bursa, in northwest Turkey, as “payback” for a Turkish military operation. While not all Kurds are part of the PKK, Turkey believed that Sweden was not only supporting the YPG but harboring cadres involved in extorting money and funding the PKK. These fundraising activities supposedly affected not only small stores in Rinkeby and elsewhere in Western Europe but also the streets of Turkey in acts of terror. Turkey needed to cut off the indirect relationship between the PKK and the Swedish government. In this, Sweden was not an exception in attracting Turkey’s ire over PKK activities. Other countries such as France had also fallen afoul of Turkey, but Sweden arguably occupied a special place because of its important role in Kurdish cultural and political life. Turkey saw its opportunity in 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian invasion led Sweden to discard its neutrality by applying for NATO membership. This application, however, could have been vetoed by Turkey, meaning that Sweden had to placate Ankara’s security concerns. Moreover, by 2022, Sweden was governed by a right-wing coalition led by Ulf Kristerson that relied on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, which was even less sympathetic to immigrants, let alone Kurdish causes. And so Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom distanced the government from organizations like the YPG, while also turning its attention to the PKK’s activities at home. While wider Swedish society fretted over being dictated to by Turkey, the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden felt a deep betrayal at this seeming about-face from the Swedish state. After all, Kurds had died on the frontline fighting on behalf of the West. They were also holding European jihadist women and children, including Swedes, in camps such as al-Hol and Roj in northeastern Syria.

The cases of Gungor and Kokulu were not seen as merely coincidental by Swedish Kurds but rather as betrayals auguring an insecure future. For many Swedish Kurds, the new detente between Sweden and Turkey could mean their extradition and the beginning of a new relationship between them and Swedish society; one in which they are viewed as a suspect community.

Turkey steps up strikes on militants as conflict escalates in Syria

FASCIST ERDOGAN'S WAR ON THE KURDS

IMPERIALIST INVASION OF SOVERIGN SYRIA

Updated Fri, October 6, 2023

Smoke rises from Qamishli


By Daren Butler, Tuvan Gumrukcu and kilo

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turkish security forces attacked Kurdish militants in northern Syria and eastern Turkey, and Ankara said it will continue to destroy their capabilities across the region as conflict escalated on Friday nearly a week after a bomb attack in Ankara.

After U.S. forces shot down a Turkish drone in northern Syria on Thursday, Turkey confirmed the incident but assigned no blame, indicating it may want to contain any tensions with its NATO ally.

The military "neutralised" 26 Kurdish militants in northern Syria overnight in retaliation for a rocket attack on a Turkish base, the defence ministry said. Turkey typically uses the term "neutralise" to mean kill.

The rocket attack on the base, by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, killed one Turkish police officer and wounded seven officers and soldiers in northwest Syria's Dabiq area on Thursday evening, Ankara said.

Turkey also conducted air strikes and destroyed 30 militant targets elsewhere in northern Syria on Thursday night, including an oil well, a storage facility and shelters, the defence ministry said.

On Friday, the ministry said Turkey's military had conducted another round of air strikes in northern Syria and destroyed 15 other militant targets where it said militants were believed to be. It did not say where in northern Syria the strikes, carried out at 1900 GMT, had hit.

"As has been done in Iraq, all the capabilities and revenue sources developed by the terrorist organisation in Syria will continue to be destroyed in a systematic way," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

In Turkey, two Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were "neutralised" in eastern Agri province in a clash with commandos during an operation with combat drone and attack helicopter support, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a statement.

He said counter-terror police detained 75 people suspected of links to the PKK in an operation across 11 provinces.

The PKK previously claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in Ankara that left the two attackers dead and wounded two police officers. Turkey said the attackers came from Syria but the Syrian SDF forces denied this.

TURKISH-U.S. TENSIONS

Turkey lists the YPG as a terrorist organisation and says it is indistinguishable from the PKK, which has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.

The United States and European Union deem the PKK as terrorists, but not the YPG.

The YPG is also at the heart of the SDF forces in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State militants. U.S. support for them has long caused tension with Turkey.

The SDF said Turkish attacks had killed eight people since the Ankara bombing.

Underscoring the tension, the Pentagon said the United States had on Thursday shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of NATO ally Turkey.

A Pentagon spokesman said Turkish drones were seen carrying out air strikes in Hasakah, northeast Syria, and one drone that came within less than half a kilometre (0.3 miles) from U.S. troops, was deemed a threat and shot down by F-16 aircraft.

The Turkish foreign ministry statement said one of Turkey's drones was lost during operations against Kurdish militants in northeast Syria due to "different technical evaluations" with third parties on the ground.

Without citing a specific country, it said it was working with the relevant parties on the ground to improve the functioning of non-conflict mechanisms on the ground.

Later on Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held a call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss the downing of the drone, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said.

"During the call, Minister Fidan conveyed to his counterpart Blinken in strong terms that, as an ally, the United States must stop working together with the YPG terrorist organisation in the north of Syria," the source said.

Fidan also told Blinken that Turkey's military operations in Syria would continue, the source said. The two ministers agreed to work on non-conflict mechanisms between the allies in Syria and Iraq in a way "that will not pose an obstacle to our counter-terrorism battle" after the drone was downed, the source added.

A State Department spokesperson said Blinken highlighted the need for Washington and Ankara to "coordinate and deconflict" their activities on the call.

Ankara, which has said all PKK and YPG targets in Syria and Iraq ARE now "legitimate targets" for its forces, said on Thursday a ground operation into Syria was one option it could consider.

Turkey has mounted several previous incursions into northern Syria against the YPG.

(Reporting by Daren Butler, Tuvan Gumrukcu, and Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Jonathan Spicer, Nick Macfie, Andrew Heavens and Sandra Maler)

Talks after US fighter jet shoots down armed Turkish drone in Syria
Thomas Mackintosh - BBC News
Fri, October 6, 2023 

File photo of a US-made F-16 fighter jet plane


The top US and Turkish diplomats have spoken by phone after US forces in Syria shot down an armed Turkish drone.

Washington said the drone came too close to its ground forces in Syria, but Ankara merely said it was lost during operations.

During the call between the Nato allies, Hakan Fidan told the US Turkey would keep targeting Kurdish groups.

The US works with Kurdish YPG forces in Syria, but Turkey views them as separatists and terrorists.

Mr Fidan told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Turkey's "counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and Syria will continue with determination".

Meanwhile a US State Department spokesperson said Mr Blinken highlighted the need for Washington and Ankara to "coordinate and deconflict" their activities.

On Thursday US military officials said a US F-16 fighter jet shot down the armed Turkish drone which was operating near American troops in Syria after giving several warnings.

Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Patrick Ryder told reporters that American forces had observed several drones carrying out airstrikes near Al Hasakah in north-eastern Syria at 07:30 local time (04:30 GMT).

Some of the strikes were approximately 1km away from US troops, prompting them to take shelter in bunkers, Ryder said.

Four hours later, the F-16 downed the drone after commanders assessed there was a potential threat, he said.

"It's regrettable when you have two NATO allies and there's an incident like this," he told reporters.

It marked the first such incident between the two Nato allies.

There are about 900 US troops operating in Syria as a part of the mission against the Islamic State jihadist group (IS).

Turkey has been launching air strikes against Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq after a suicide blast hit its interior ministry in Ankara.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said the interior ministry bombing had been carried out by a group linked to them.

The PKK is considered a terror group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US.

Turkey views the PKK and the YPG as the same group. However the US has been working with the YPG, which is part of the group of US-backed forces known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that has fought against IS in Syria.

Shortly after the phone call between Mr Blinken and Mr Fidan, Turkey said it had launched renewed attacks on Kurdish target in northern Syria.

The Turkish defence ministry said it had hit 15 Kurdish targets "with the maximum amount" of ammunition and they included "headquarters and shelters".

Who are the Kurds?

The PKK launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984, calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.

In the 1990s, the PKK rolled back on its demands for an independent state, calling instead for more autonomy for the Kurds. More than 40,000 people have died in the conflict.

Fighting flared up again after a two-year-old ceasefire ended in July 2015.

IT WAS A UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE BY THE PKK NOT RENEWED BY ERDOGAN

Turkish airstrikes kill at least 11 in northern Syria, Kurdish security forces say

Jomana Karadsheh, Hamdi Alkhshali and Gul Tuysuz, CNN
Thu, October 5, 2023 

Reuters


Turkish airstrikes killed at least 11 people in multiple Kurdish-controlled locations in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish Internal Security Force said Thursday, the latest response from Ankara’s forces following a bomb attack in Turkey’s capital claimed by Kurdish militants.

In a post on its official website, the Kurdish Internal Security Force, known as Asayish, said the locations targeted by Turkey included the vicinity of a camp for displaced people and several villages.

“Eleven people were martyred, including five civilians and six members of the Internal Security Forces,” Asayish said.

Eight civilians and two members of the Kurdish security forces were wounded, it added.

In a statement Friday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed 30 targets and “neutralized” multiple Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants during the operation in northern Syria, citing its self-defense rights from Article 51 of the United Nations Charter to justify the strikes.

The strikes come after a bombing in Ankara over the weekend claimed by the PKK, which has waged a nearly four-decade long insurgency and is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

At least one civilian was killed in the attack Sunday when militants hijacked a car, and two police officers were injured in the bombing outside Turkey’s Interior Ministry building.

Later Sunday, the Turkish Defense Ministry said its warplanes had destroyed 20 PKK targets in northern Iraq in response to the attack.

According to Ankara, the PKK trains separatist fighters and launches attacks against Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq and Syria, where a PKK-affiliated Kurdish group controls large swaths of territory.

“In the investigation following the latest incident, it was determined by security forces and intelligence that the terrorists came from Syria and were trained there,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a news conference on Wednesday.

Fidan warned that all facilities belonging to the PKK and related People’s Protection Units (YPG) groups in Iraq and Syria would be “legitimate targets” of the Turkish Armed Forces.

“The response of our armed forces to the terror attack will be very clear and they will once again regret having carried out this attack,” Fidan said.

Kurds, who do not have an official homeland or country, are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

Portions of Kurdistan – a non-governmental region and one of the largest stateless nations in the world – are recognized by Iran, where the province of Kordestan lies; and Iraq, site of the northern autonomous region known as Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or Iraqi Kurdistan.

In recent years, Turkey has carried out a steady stream of operations against the PKK domestically as well as cross-border operations into Syria.

In November 2022, Ankara blamed the PKK for a bomb attack in Istanbul that killed six and injured dozens.

Terror attacks in Turkey were tragically common in the mid to late 2010s, when the insecurity from war-torn Syria crept north above the two countries’ shared border.

CNN’s Hande Atay Alam contributed reporting.

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