Turkey

The PKK and Rojava

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the movements it leads are the main forces resisting ISIS in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). What is the PKK? The PKK was founded in 1977 by a small group of students who had previously been involved in the banned Dev-Genç (Revolutionary Youth) organisation, one of several revolutionary organisations that formed in Turkey in the 1960s. PKK defined itself as a "Marxist-Leninist" organisation prepared to wage armed struggle for an independent Kurdistan, and its base was mainly the Kurdish peasantry in the mountains of South Eastern Turkey. It found auxiliary...

"Support the Kurds, expose imperialism": an interview with revolutionary socialists in Turkey

Workers' Liberty has links with the Turkish organisation Marksist Tutum (English language site here , main Turkish site here ). We interviewed them about the current conflicts in the Middle East. What is your assessment of the Turkish government's policy with regards to ISIS? Despite official denials and recent back steps, the Turkish government supported ISIS wherever it suited their interests. It did this in various ways: providing them shelter, arms aid, training facilities, treatment of ISIS militants, providing safe passage to Syria via Turkey etc. Recently it abandoned apparently some of...

Solidarity with the Kurds, or NATO-bashing?

At the 1 November demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of besieged Kobane, it struck me that the speakers — and more broadly, the left — were not singing from the same page. On the one side there were those who were demanding that Britain and NATO do more to help the Kurds fighting against the Islamic fascists of IS. For example, Peter Tatchell led the crowd in chants demanding that David Cameron authorise the dropping of more aid to the Kurds, including weapons. There were calls for Turkey to be suspended from NATO because it, unlike other NATO countries, was not prepared to help the...

ISIS threat is still strong

ISIS (Daesh, the “Islamic State” movement) now governs over six million people across Iraq and Syria and despite an apparent slowing of new foreign fighters coming to join them they have maintained a large group of fighters and a formidable military capability. The Albu Nimr tribe, a Sunni group in Western Iraq, had continued to fight ISIS in Anbar province despite Abadi's Baghdad government failing to provide arms. ISIS has now executed almost 400 members of the tribe as a punishment for its resistance. ISIS is now closer to the Haditha Dam and the largest airbase in Anbar. The Iraqi army and...

Solidarity with democratic, workers' and socialist forces in the Middle East resisting ISIS! Mobilise for 1 November!

(Muayad Ahmed, secretary of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, addresses the conference.) Click here for index page for documents from AWL conference 2014 The Alliance for Workers' Liberty conference (London, 25-6 October) sends solidarity to democratic, working-class and socialist organisations resisting ISIS and other oppressive forces in Kurdistan, Syria and Iraq, including our comrades in the Worker-communist Parties of Kurdistan and Iraq . We support the people of Kurdistan in their fight for self-determination and self-rule. More broadly, people in Kobane and elsewhere are fighting a...

Help the Kurds defeat ISIS

Fighting has continued across Syria and Iraq between ISIS (“Islamic State”) forces and Kurdish militia and Iraqi military. Airstrikes around the town Kobane (in Syria near the Turkish border) of by the US-led military coalition have intensified, and the march of ISIS has been slowed. However the airstrikes have not forced back ISIS in either Iraq or Syria. The prospect of a drawn-out conflict remains. Four hundred ISIS fighters are reported to have entered the Iraqi towns of Fallujah and nearby Karma. The town of Hit, 80 miles from Baghdad, has also been claimed by ISIS. While ISIS has been...

Anti-Islamophobia, genuine and cynical: a reply to Aaron Kiely on Kurdistan (and Bosnia and Kosova and Afghanistan and Chechnya)

During the recent row in the student movement about Kurdistan, five members of NUS national executive who are active in NUS’s Black Students’ Campaign issued a statement . This article is not a response to that statement as such. What pushed me to write this was who one of the five signatories was: Aaron Kiely, a member of the "Student Broad Left" group, a front for Socialist Action . In the context of the rise of ISIS, the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, and Western intervention, the statement talks about “blatant Islamophobia” and “the demonisation of Muslim peoples”. To put it bluntly, this is...

Help the Kurds against ISIS!

Kurds and their supporters demand that the Kurdish Peshmerga, YPG (People’s Protection Units) and other militia be armed with heavy weapons, armour-piercing bullets and tanks in order to resist the ISIS ultra-Islamists who threaten them with massacre in Kobane (near Syria's border with Turkey) and elsewhere. Masrour Barzani of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq told the BBC: “We have not asked for any ground forces. Our Peshmergas are here, they are giving their lives, and all we need from the rest of the world is to help us with effective weapons to protect these people”. Kobane remains...

Solidarity with the Kurds is our first concern

As fighters from “Islamic State” (IS) enter the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, Kurds abroad have been demonstratiing in several major European cities. In a conflict between the democratic, secular Kurdish forces and the fascistic barbarism of IS, Kurds should expect the support and solidarity of the UK left. Over the summer, British socialist organisations were rightly a dynamic force in building demonstrations against Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza, with up to 150,000 marching in London alone. Like the Palestinians, the Kurds are an oppressed nation struggling for self...

Syrian Kurds face ISIS massacre

Tuesday 7 October: Forces of the “Islamic State” movement (ISIS) have entered the Kurdish city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border. After taking a hill commanding the city on 5 October, ISIS has now begun to enter at ground level. Kobani had taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees and was touted at one time as a safe haven for those escaping IS. Previous incursions of IS members into Kobani had been quashed by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), but it looks like street by street fighting will now see the city taken, leading to a massacre of Kurds and other minorities who have...

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