Turkey

A Europe of borders and resistance

Here’s what the “Fortress EU” of ever increasing land, air and sea fences and more actual and conceptual borders says to us all, and not only to the refugees of Syria’s war: There is no place for you to live, because I want to grab your resources and check your routes. There is no other place for you to go to breathe. There is no way to walk. The only option to endure, to endure, to adapt, to live with the annihilation of any planning for a better future. And, to a large extent, those messages represent the broader social, economic, and cultural values of today’s capitalism. If Europe greeted...

Calais: police have attacked 73%

Research by the charity Help Refugees and the Refugee Rights Data project has revealed the shocking extent of the police brutality, racist attacks and poor living conditions faced by migrants at a the Calais “Jungle” camp. According to the research, three-quarters of refugees in the “Jungle” camp near the French port have been the victim of violence at the hands of police. The charity also says it believes nearly half of the Calais’s refugees have also suffered violence directed at them by citizens, mostly carried out by far-right groups. The survey, which interviewed 800 inhabitants of the...

The Kurds, Aleppo, Russia, and the USA

Michael Karadjis of the Australian Socialist Alliance has written a long and informative analysis of what he reckons to have been a U-turn by the Kurdish nationalist movement in Syria, the PYD, under the title " The Kurdish PYD’s alliance with Russia against Free Aleppo: Evidence and analysis of a disaster " . He criticises PYD clashes with other rebel groups in Syria, and the PYD's project of a reunification of Rojava (the Kurdish-claimed area of northern Syria) against the wishes of Arabs and Turkmen and other minorities within its declared borders. Several reports indicate that the PYD, and...

The Kurds and Turkey’s ambitions

Aso Kamal, a member of the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan, spoke to Solidarity . This is the second part of the interview. We published the first last week. There is no stability in the Middle East. Kurdistan stretches across different countries — Turkey, Iraq, Syria. There is conflict between the big powers: Russia and US. In the region there are two poles: on the one hand, Iran and Assad, and on the other, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Political parties and powers are divided between those two poles in the region. Erdogan sees the local administration of the Kurdish people in Syria as a...

Turkey's hidden civil war against the Kurds

Across areas in south-eastern Turkey, areas that are overwhelmingly ethnically Kurdish, a virtual civil war is going on. The right wing Turkish AKP government’s response has been what they describe as “security operations”. These were first launched in the Sur district of Diyarbakır and the Cizre and Silopi districts of Şırnak in mid-December. The alleged target of this offensive is the Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), which had an on-off ceasefire with the Turkish government in the last few years, whilst Kurds increasingly turned to legal political campaigning through their party, the HDP...

Little hope for Syria talks

The UN-convened Syria peace talks started on 1 February, but the opposition, or rather the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) selected by Saudi Arabia and the “Sunni Axis”, is meeting in separate sessions from the Syrian government team.. The largest Kurdish organisation, the PYD, and their leader Salih Muslim, are not there. The US wanted them in, but Turkey’s president Erdogan barred them. Arab forces involved with the PYD in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) have consequently refused to take part. Turkey insists that the PYD is part of the same organisation as the Turkish-Kurdish...

Daesh strikes in Jakarta and Istanbul

Following attacks in Paris and Beirut in November last year, along with the shooting down of a Russian passenger jet, Daesh has stepped up its deadly operations outside of the claimed borders of its “Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria. Reflecting tactics that have long been the preferred method of Al Qaeda, Daesh claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Sarinah shopping mall in Jakarta Indonesia on 14 January. The attack, which killed four and injured many others, took place near foreign embassies and the UN and hotels used by foreign tourists. Indonesia is not the most fertile recruiting...

US-UK bombing won't stop Daesh!

On Wednesday 2 December (after we go to press) the House of Commons will vote on proposals to extend UK air strikes to Syria. As Jeremy Corbyn has given Labour MPs a free vote, Cameron is likely to have a majority for extending the bombing. The government says the renewed military campaign, now including UK, US, France, Turkey and the Gulf States, will be aimed at pushing back Daesh (Islamic State). But it is unlikely to make a decisive impact on Daesh’s position. It is more likely to perpetuate the current stalemate between all the military-political forces in Syria. That is, in fact, the...

Greece and the refugees: solidarity first!

Fences in Evros (on the Greek-Turkish border), Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Austria… The Calais tunnel and the “protection” of the French and UK borders… Fences in Mexico. Walls in Israel. Visible and invisible fences through the sea, through the land, though the air. Refugees and migrants demonstrating near sunbathers on a beach in Calais, on a beach in Lesbos, on a beach in Kos. Refugees and migrants with no names stacked between borders and outside the realm of geographical boundaries and temporality. In uncharted territories, people who concretise the meaning of Michel Foucault’s...

AKP wins in Turkey

In Turkey’s snap election held on 1 November, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) got 317 seats out of 550 and won more than 49% of the vote, compared with 41% in the June 2015 general election. The main secularist Kemalist-nationalist party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), on the other hand, again found itself disappointed with a vote share of 25% and 134 seats. However, the biggest surprise came from the fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which lost nearly two million votes to the AKP, slipping to 12% from 16.3%. The pro-Kurdish, leftist People’s Democratic Party (HDP)...

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