The political and military upheaval in Syria has given Turkey the opportunity to intensify its attacks on the Kurdish areas of northeastern Syria, the ‘Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’ (AANES), known as Rojava. For Turkey, the existence of a self-governing Kurdish entity on its southern border is unacceptable and is an obstacle to its wider regional interests in the Middle East and Central Asia. Bob Shepherd reports.
After the end of the First World War the western imperialist powers divided up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire; new borders were drawn, with the areas where Kurdish people lived being split between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The largest numbers of Kurds were in Turkey, the smallest number in Syria. Throughout the rest of the 20th century the Kurdish people resisted imperialist domination and struggled for autonomy and self-determination. In 1920, as Kurds and Arabs resisted the British imperialist occupation of Iraq, Winston Churchill ordered the dropping of gas bombs on Kurdish villages. Today between 15-20 million Kurds live in Turkey, yet they are denied the right to freely communicate in their own language and their political parties are regularly banned. In 1978 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was formed which demanded Kurdish self-determination and the right to form an independent state. In 1984 it launched an armed struggle against the Turkish state, led by Abdullah Ocalan who remains the ideological leader of the organisation and affiliated parties in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK). Ocalan has now been in a Turkish maximum security prison for 26 years. The PKK is designated a ‘terrorist’ organisation by Turkey, Britain, the US and the European Union. At the end of November 2024 the Labour government gave the go ahead for the Metropolitan Police to arrest Kurdish activists in London charging six people under the Terrorism Act as members of the proscribed PKK. The RCG fully supports the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination and has consistently reported on their struggle in FRFI.
Kobane and Rojava
In 2015 the Kurdish People’s Defence Units (YPG) and Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) led a desperate defence of the Syrian/Kurdish city of Kobane against attacks by the Islamic fundamentalist group ISIS. The Kurds were isolated, with Turkey blocking support from crossing the border and no support coming from any other Middle Eastern country. It was only with the eventual backing of US airpower that the ISIS attacks were repulsed and Kobane was saved. This turned the tide on ISIS’s advance through Syria and, with the continued backing of US airpower, the Kurdish forces pushed ISIS out of Rojava. They established control over a vast area east of the Euphrates river containing some of Syria’s most fertile agricultural land and its main oil fields. Later, in 2015, the AANES governing body in Rojava, on the advice of the US, renamed its military wing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It was still based on the YPG and YPJ, but also included military units from Arab and other Syrian ethnic groups. It holds thousands of ISIS prisoners in camps in Rojava on behalf of the imperialist countries.
The constitution of the AANES is a progressive charter which separates the state and religion, proclaims the equality of women and promotes a form of direct democracy. The dominant Kurdish political party in Rojava is the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the KCK which is designated, along with the SDF, as a terrorist group by Turkey. The SDF has been used by US imperialism as its ‘boots on the ground’ in neutralising the threat from ISIS and this has given both the PYD and the SDF some protection from an all-out onslaught from Turkey.
Turkey’s latest assault on Rojava
The 27 November 2024 military offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) against the Assad government rapidly led to the fall of the Syrian regime with HTS forces entering Damascus on 8 December. In conjunction with the HTS offensive, their allies in the misnamed Syrian National Army (SNA) began attacking Kurdish positions west of the Euphrates River around the city of Manbij, targeting not only Manbij but also the strategic Tishreen Dam. The SNA is completely controlled by Turkey and has been based in Afrin, formerly a majority Kurdish area, in northwest Syria; it is made up of a collection of jihadist groups put together, armed and trained by Turkey to operate as an anti-Kurdish militia on its behalf.
Following several days of fighting, the SNA, with drone support from Turkey, took control of Manbij after the SDF withdrew. The SDF General Commander Mazlum Abdi announced that he had agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in order to guarantee the safety of the civilian population: ‘Our goal is a ceasefire throughout Syria and the initiation of a political process for the future of the country.’ The fighting for control of the Tishreen Dam continued, though. The Dam is one of the most important in Syria and generates vast amounts of electricity. Control of these resources would give the SNA a major advantage in its attempts to take control of areas of Syria east of the Euphrates presently under SDF control.
Turkey’s expansionist ambitions
Turkey aims to seize this opportunity to destroy the political and military structures of Rojava. It intends for the SNA, with Turkish military support, to neutralise the SDF and subordinate the Syrian Kurds to a Turkish-aligned government in Damascus. Turkey is hoping to use the state’s collapse to achieve the political goal it has long been pursuing in northern Syria which is the elimination of any form of Kurdish self-government. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly announced his intention to establish a 30-kilometre-wide security buffer inside Syrian territory along the border with Turkey. This is supposedly to protect Turkey from Kurdish ‘terrorists’. If he succeeds this will effectively mean the end of the AANES and self-government in Rojava.
In a speech in December Erdo-ğan outlined Turkey’s expansionist regional aims: ‘Our vision cannot be limited to 782,000 square kilometres…Turkey is greater than Turkey. Those asking why Turkey is in Libya or Somalia cannot comprehend this vision’. Erdoğan’s vision reflects the interests of the dominant section of the Turkish ruling class who look back with nostalgia to the days of the Ottoman Empire and see oil-rich regions of the north of Syria and Iraq and cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk, and Aleppo as part of a new Turkish empire.
Turkey has its sights set on Syria’s oil and gas sector: before the civil war Syria produced approximately 400,000 barrels of oil per day, now it produces less than 30,000 barrels and these come from oil fields mainly controlled by the SDF and their US backers. Turkey’s Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar proposes bringing existing oil fields back to full production, constructing new pipelines and integrating Syrian oil exports into Turkey’s network. He also has designs to export Syrian natural gas to Europe via Turkey. ‘Long-term cooperation could include new oil and gas pipelines connecting Syria to Turkey’s export terminals’, he stated. One obvious obstacle to Turkey’s plans for the exploitation of Syria’s oil and gas reserves is clearly the Kurdish autonomous region of Rojava, the AANES. This is one of the major reasons for Turkey’s insistence that the AANES and the SDF are disbanded and come under the control of a central government in Damascus.
Kurdish and Palestinian self-determination
The struggles of the Palestinian people and the Kurdish people for self-determination are the defining battles being waged in the Middle East at the present time. Both represent a revolutionary challenge to imperialism and their allies in the region. It is in the interests of both struggles to actively support each other.
However, the failure of the international movement to build real support for the revolutionary liberation struggle of the Kurdish people has left the movement isolated, and allowed reformist and even reactionary tendencies to emerge which have at times compromised that necessary solidarity. Bourgeois sections of the movement, particularly in Iraq, have openly sided with imperialism. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, dominated by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), is closely allied with US imperialism and has also collaborated with Turkey in attempting to undermine the AANES in Rojava.
In Syria, the tactical alliance of the SDF with US imperialism is a direct result of its abandonment by other allies in the region, including a deal between Russia and Turkey in 2019 to force Syrian Kurds to withdraw from the border area. The political fruits of such compromises were evident in the KCK statement on Gaza in October 2023, which attempted to strike a neutral position between the imperialist armed Zionist war machine and the Palestinian liberation struggle and condemned the tactics of Hamas. Israel has been attempting to capitalise on this reactionary stance: Kurdish media reported that in January Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar held a long telephone call with the AANES Foreign Relations Department co-chair Ilham Ahmed in which Saar expressed support for the democratic rights of the Kurds and other ethnic and religious groups in Syria. According to the reports, Ahmed did not challenge Saar on the genocide Israel is carrying out in Gaza or the expanded Israeli occupation of Syria itself.
Turkey, the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan
It is clear that Turkey is also making political moves to blunt the revolutionary and anti-imperialist content of the Kurdish struggle. The historic leader of the PKK and its affiliated Kurdish parties in the KCK, Abdullah Ocalan, has been imprisoned since 1999 and denied any political visitors for nearly ten years. At the end of December 2024 he was allowed a visit by two members of the Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM). This followed the unprecedented call from the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, for Ocalan to be allowed to address a meeting of the DEM if he called for the end of the armed struggle by the PKK. This was significant as the MHP is in an alliance with the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Erdoğan. In a message sent back with his visitors Ocalan said he had ‘the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr Bahçeli and Mr Erdoğan…I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the call’.
The DEM party co-chair Tuncer Bakırhan called the developments a ‘historic opportunity to build a common future…We are on the eve of a potential democratic transformation across Turkey and the region. Now is the time for courage and foresight for an honourable peace’. This call for a democratic and peaceful way forward has been supported by a number of major Kurdish figures in Turkey including some, like Ocalan, who have been in prison for a number of years.
That the Kurdish movement is today under pressure to lay down its arms reflects the failure so far of the international solidarity movement to build real support for its demand for self-determination – a demand that can only be realised through an uncompromising struggle against imperialist intervention in the Middle East and unity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Unban the PKK! Drop the charges against Kurdish activists arrested in London!
Defend Rojava! Turkey out of Syria!
Self-determination for the Kurdish people! Imperialism out of the Middle East!
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 304 February/March 2025
