Mehmet Aksoy

Submitted by Matthew on 11 October, 2017 - 9:26 Author: Gerry Bates

Mehmet Aksoy, a London-based Kurdish socialist activist, has been killed by Daesh while volunteering with the Kurdish YPG national liberation forces. Aksoy, a trained film-maker, was volunteering as a press officer with a unit of the YPG when a Daesh unit attacked his position a short distance from the front line in Raqqa.

Aksoy had been active in the Kurdish national liberation movement in London for some time. An editor of the Kurdish Question website and Director of the London Kurdish Film Festival, he stepped up his activity following Daesh’s massacre of Yazidis at Sinjar in 2014 and their incursion into the Kurdish canton of Rojava in Syria. Aksoy led Kurdish protests in London at that time, including blockades of train stations and marches.

In April 2017, Turkish warplanes bombed a YPG headquarters in Qereçox in Rojava, killing members of the YPG Press Corps. After this attack, Aksoy was determined to join the YPG as a press officer, reporting in English and making films to support the YPG’s fight against Daesh and for Kurdish national liberation. He chose the nom de guerre Fîraz Dağ in honour of his uncle Fîraz, who was killed by the Turkish state fighting with the PKK in the 1980s.

Workers’ Liberty send their condolences to Aksoy’s family and his comrades.

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