Not long ago our little group met with two British volunteers who had spent several months at work in the Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM), in a territory in northern Syria also known as Rojava. They are members of Plan C, a group of comrades who have been providing practical support and solidarity to the leftist revolution growing in that region. I’m going to write up what I learned from them – please bear in mind that this is my perception of the salient points of their talk, but I’ve given a lot of my own context which I’ve tried to cite where possible.
In spite of the dramatic and extremely serious situation currently developing because of the Turkish invasion of Afrin, the focus of our meeting was to discuss the way society is organized in Rojava, and attempt to dispel some common misconceptions about the region. For me certainly, accurate information about Syria has been difficult to come by. Our speakers had tried to be conscious of their own biases, and emphasized that people tended to see what they wanted over there. I suspect this is because of a repressed leftist political will in places like the UK; as soon as we see something resembling our ideas of justice and equality being realized anywhere in the world, our energy and fervent longing for something new causes us to project like a goddamn IMAX, obscuring the reality of what is happening on the ground.
A side-effect of this phenomenon that amused our speakers was that (for example) anarchist volunteers would arrive in Syria and be shocked to find that a centralized state exists in Rojava, or that people still use money there, or that there are some private industries still. I’m going to give you the straight dope, imperceptibly mingled with my own biases. Fortunately, I only use facts for my opinions and therefore I am only biased towards reality. I recommend that you open your mind completely and accept my second-hand account as the literal truth, and that you regard my perceptions as both authoritative and popular. If by any chance you have reason not to do so, contact me.
=== Contents
– Introduction to the Region and the Revolution
– Communalism
– Feminism
– Ecology
– The Economy
– Revolution and Regime
– The Future
– Volunteers
– Conclusions: Key lessons from Rojava
=== Introduction to the Region and the Revolution
The history of the region is very complex. One of the reasons there was such massive resistance in the UK to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was that it was so clear-cut and thus, easy to rally people behind, but the comparatively poor mobilisation in this country in response to Syria might have a lot to do with the incomprehensible picture painted by the media, a tangle of competing factions with obscure motivations. Possibly the lack of clear information is due to the stakes of our own establishment in the region – the security state in the US is so gigantic and blind that they’ve ended up arming two opposing sides of the civil war, and their corresponding media mouthpieces are interested in painting two disparate pictures in the minds of civilians in the west. I’m going to do my best to give a brief picture of the context of the revolution for the purpose of leftist activists here, but necessarily I’m editorialising a bit. Other articles that may be helpful are by Adam Curtis and our friends at Pluto .
The Kurdish homeland is spread across four national borders – historically they have lived in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. They don’t have an independent state to call their own, a situation that’s largely a product of imperial line-drawing. Kurds share a common culture and language, although after a hundred years of division accents are starting to turn into dialects. As a people with a strong national identity living within countries that have been ruled by some pretty unpleasant fellows, Kurds have a long, storied and bitter history of enduring oppression and massacre, and perhaps as a result most Kurds have a shared sympathy with each other – and for some, a co-morbid sectarianism and a distrust toward their non-Kurdish neighbours that is expressed as outright discrimination.
In Kurdish communities across this region, underground organizations and political parties formed to try and support people’s needs where a state might fall short or be actively hostile. The Turkish republic’s repressive policies towards non-turkish populations naturally produced such a reaction among the Kurds – In 1978 the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (the PKK) was formed by Abdullah Ocalan and some of his student friends to wrest power away from the government in Ankara and form an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.
They were starting from a pretty poor position, with Kurdish language and culture banned completely within Turkey’s borders, but the PKK saw the coup in Ankara in 1980 as an opportunity to seize power by force. After over a decade of brutal civil war, in 1999 Ocalan was captured by Turkish and American secret agents in Nairobi and imprisoned on an island in the shadow of Istanbul, guarded by a thousand soldiers. This gave him a lot of time to read. His ideas started to evolve away from Marxism-Leninism as he began to dream of a different world. The fruits of his work were smuggled out to his audience abroad, and it caught in the imaginations of many, transforming the PKK in Turkey and their sister organization the PYD in Syria by 2005, and reverberating among Kurdish communities through the long years of Ocalan’s imprisonment.
Ocalan remains a contentious symbol; apparently his face is the only one banned on Facebook, and Turkey reportedly employs several thousand people to scour social media and mass-report anything to do with him. I include a rendition of Ocalan that should pass scrutiny.
The Turkish government unsurprisingly sees a group that shoots their police and soldiers as terrorists, and as the powerful Turkish army is a significant fraction of the strength of NATO close to the Russian border, the USA has followed suit. Nonetheless some states (most recently Belgium) have started regarding the PKK as the opposing side in a legitimate civil war.
While Ocalan’s ideas were not universally accepted among Kurds, many communities on both sides of the border began to organize along the lines of what Ocalan called “Democratic Confederalism”. The ideology under-girding this new society has three central tenets:
– Communalism: Decisions are taken on as local a level as possible, relying on local collectives to both democratically determine the path forward for a community, and provide basic services, training and materials to those that need them.
– Feminism: Kurdish feminism is a little different to the west, but is guided by the principal that “A society is not free until women are free”. Elected positions in Rojava famously consist of both a male and female who together hold office.
– Ecology: Building a sustainable economy, as close to self-sufficient as possible, should be the goal of any society.
More on all these later.
In 2012, the Syrian civil war caused the Assad government to basically abandon the north of the country, where many Kurds lived. This was the opportunity for the PYD – they took control as the government left and started organizing collectives in line with Ocalan’s thinking. Initially they were allied with the Kurdistan Regional Government across the border in Iraq, but in 2013 they broke off formal ties. Barzani, the Iraqi-Kurdish prime minister was unpopular with our speakers; he’s not a revolutionary at heart and is in favour of the capitalist economy. Still, the Iraqi Kurds, while generally more conservative than their cousins in Syria, have been showing solidarity by keeping covert supply lines open to help with the fight against ISIS.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that ISIS is insanely bad. No less a threat to the Kurds than to anyone else in the region, their conquest of much of Rojava in 2014 was abetted by the Turkish government under President Erdogan, who had long sought the end of Kurdish political aspirations and saw ISIS as a group of crazies that might do the trick for him. As the last remaining areas under PYD control shrank, most of the world seemed content to watch this group of marginalised leftists being swept out of existence. The Americans, who had been bombing ISIS in the region for some time, were reluctant to prevent their advance on the city of Kobani in September 2014 for fear of upsetting their allies in the Turkish government, which was openly enthusiastic about the imminent massacre.
But then the USA changed tactics and began hitting ISIS more heavily. I’d like to think it was public pressure and shame that did it, but almost certainly the yanks saw an opportunity to get some leverage in the region. Their decisive intervention and helped the People’s/Women’s Protection Units (YPG/J) remove ISIS from their country, and saved thousands of people in the process. The Kurds pressed the attack and liberated a lot of territory inhabited by other ethnic groups. They quickly realised that you can’t force people into your way of life. Currently most of the people working in the region are committed to multi-ethnic integration and representation in both the civil service and military. In 2017, at the cost of many lives, Raqqa was liberated from ISIS control. A majority Arab area, they have just formed their first commune.
The followers of Ocalan now represent a sort of state-within-a-state, within the territory of Syria, officially called the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria and originally consisting of three “cantons” along the Turkish border. Afrin is to the west, isolated from the others by a strip of land controlled by Turkish proxies. On the other side of that, Kobani is in the middle, and Jizira is to the east. Currently the Federation has about four million inhabitants, and houses many more refugees, in an area larger than Wales.
Critically, it’s important to understand that the revolution in Rojava did not happen immediately. Ocalan didn’t make a facebook meme that converted everyone in Kurdistan into a progressive socialist. Rather, it was the combination of a big, imaginative idea, expressed through an organization (the PYD, mostly) doing necessary work in their community, over the course of decades.
The specific nature of the revolution’s implementation can also be confusing. You have the standing contradiction of a party that internally has a strict hierarchy and still carries a lot of Leninist ideology, trying to organize a communal, decentralised society on the ground. This is a big source of the conflicting impressions that western leftists have of the society in Rojava, where you can focus on one thing or the other and see a reflection of your ideal vision of society. Naturally, reports from people who have volunteered in the YPG/J might not be representative of the civilian life – claims from leftist squaddies that the people there “don’t have any personal property at all” are incorrect, but less surprising when you consider that ISIS tended to smash things up as they were leaving, and there wasn’t really any personal property to own.
It’s also important to bear in mind that this revolution represents a complete shift in modes of thought in a very conservative society. The rate of social change is extremely impressive considering the circumstances, but a truly democratic government can only work with the consent and support of the people. I’ve seen leftist organisations in the UK shunning the cause in Rojava because their vision of society doesn’t exactly coincide with what’s happening on the ground, which I think is myopic at best. Maybe a few people might be upset not to see the immediate adoption and integration of their pet cause to someone else’s revolution. But to my mind, there’s something going on here that we seldom hear about and what the people in the Federation are trying to do deserves our attention and support.
Let’s take a closer look at how the three planks of the revolution translate into practice.
=== Communalism
This is an overview of life in the communes, however, for a more rigorous discussion of their structure and the way they operate, I have been recommended the book “The Revolution in Rojava” by Pluto Press, available here. I’ve not had a chance to read it yet.
Communes are the most local level of decision making, and the most fundamental units of revolutionary democracy. Each commune represents up to two hundred families, in either urban or rural settings, although recently there have been efforts to resize them into groups of about a hundred families. Most of them are named for martyrs who have died in the war.
Commune meetings occur every two weeks or so, and discuss a variety of topics, ranging from planning for celebrations or demonstration to matters of life and death to the nitty gritty of implementing the infrastructure required to keep their community safe and fed. The communal organization is responsible for a lot of fundamental jobs:
– They provide education and training, in the form of fairly intense courses mostly on weekends, in both ideology and practical skills.
– They make decisions on how to spend resources.
– They sell bread and oil for cheaper than you could buy in the markets! This draws many people in.
– They provide security, and a venue to resolve conflicts.
Communes also contain commissions, specialised groups that focus on solving a particular set of problems. These commissions are headed by elected co-chairs – one man and one woman. In addition, commissions have an enforced gender ratio, where neither men nor women can constitute less than 40% of the group’s makeup.
Co-ordination on a larger scale is managed through several layers of local and regional councils. Co-representatives from individual communes (who typically represent a village or neighbourhood) are sent to city or county councils to make decisions that might affect the whole region.
Local security is also provided by the communes. While the army are currently fighting to prevent an invasion by Turkey or ISIS, away from the front lines there aren’t police in Rojava in the same sense as here. Communes run local police (the Asayish) whose job it is to investigate and arrest miscreants, but the courts are operated by the state. The hope is that eventually a fully communal society will be sufficiently trained as to be capable of self-policing and a professional Asayish force will no longer be needed. There are also communal “volunteer police”, mostly comprised of grannies armed with assault rifles who are committed to defending the revolution from any threat. Our guests found them extremely intimidating.
There is also a state in Rojava with legislative powers, running a multi-party democracy – it’s not an anarchist utopia, as you might have heard. The most recent elections were in 2017, and the PYD gained an absolute majority. Many of the smaller parties espouse similar ideologies to Ocalan, but some others are more conservative or even outwardly counter-revolutionary. It is essential to the unity of the people in Rojava that there is representation for every ethnic group in parliament. Amusingly, the British first-past-the-post electoral system has been ignored by the Kurds who have opted for proportional voting systems to elect their representatives.
The PYD, through the TEV-DEM movement, are among the strongest voices directing the revolution. However, the boundaries of the party are blurry and many people who have invested their lives in the communes aren’t members, or are even vocal critics of the party.
=== Feminism
Possibly the most radical change in the region has been with regard to woman. Until recently, society had been harshly patriarchal. Such a society is ill-equipped to producing just, let alone safe, outcomes in case of rape, domestic violence or honour killing. Living in an environment where it was expected for newlyweds to hang bloody bedsheets in their windows the morning after, underground women’s organizations were a necessity, and not just to covertly provide bedsheets. With the advent of the revolution, women have taken a far more active role in society, which has transformed with a speed that would appear shocking to people who were unaware of the groundwork laid in place years before.
Pictures of female soldiers shooting assault rifles at ISIS in the rubble of Kobani captured the imaginations of many here in the UK (often for frankly insulting reasons), but the feminism of Kurdistan differs from what we know of here in the west. Liberals here are obsessed with installing women into positions of power and authority, in order to further enact an exploitative capitalist agenda – not a position I personally respect. More close to my heart are radicals who want to abolish genders entirely, to make gender irrelevant unless you’re trying to breed with someone. But Jineology, the Kurdish feminism, resembles neither fully. It is more focussed on ensuring equal participation as well as equal representation of men and women, at all levels of society.
While this is the principle, in practice it’s more difficult. You can’t just codify liberation into law, and the lived situation on the ground varies considerably. To their credit the PYD understand this and have a variety of strategies for liberating people.
For example, more representation in the communes for women is an important way of achieving progress, but in many regions the local committees are dominated by men. Often men will turn up and say that their wife can’t make it, as she’s busy with the children. This excuse doesn’t last long before the husbands are dismissed and told to hang out with the kids, and send the wife to discuss their issues with the rest of their neighbours.
A big part of the commune’s job is education and training, and this extends to changing people’s mindset – women who have spent their entire lives in a rigid patriarchy need training to learn how to speak up and fight for their ideas on equal terms with men, and they need practise at expressing themselves. On the flipside, men need to learn how to co-operate productively with women in society and give them the same respect they’d give their brothers. The training also has a general purpose of teaching people how to structure their ideas, how to speak with confidence even if they’re not natural extroverts. This is also important because confident women are unlikely to let themselves get put into symbolic positions!
In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, domestic violence was a big problem. Even now there are women’s villages for people in a bad situation who have had to endure abuse in their community, or even had to deal with their family disowning them. But there are positive sides. One of our speakers said that it was astonishing to her how she didn’t have to deal with catcalling in the streets in Syria – still a problem over here that shows no sign of abatement. After the revolution, disrespectful behaviour on the part of men in the community results in pressure for them to participate in courses explaining the corrosive consequences of their poor attitude. Catcalling is all about making a sister feel like she is owned; naturally there is no room for it in an egalitarian society.
The general opinion of even the most cyncial activists, as well as the bulk of women in the region, is that the recent ban on polygamy in the Federation has been a massive step forward. No longer do they have to deal with the fear of being replaced by a younger wife and kept effectively as chattel. Many traditional practices (like dowries) have been banned too. The most interesting change is the liberalization of divorce – Islamically, divorce is as simple as saying the word three times, but culturally there was a lot of pressure on people to stick it out, and prejudice against divorcees. The rates of divorce since the revolution have increased by hundreds year on year.
The flipside of this is that some men grouse about only getting one wife now. In Britain we well know the screeching of the privileged when a disadvantaged group gets the same rights as them, and this has taken place in Syria, too. There are reactionary, capitalist parties active in Rojava that promise a return to patriarchy, and I suspect that the loss of the ability to personally dominate another human being is going to be a wedge issue for conservatives in future who want to fight against the revolution.
Incidentally, gender relations among the YPG and YPJ are interesting; they view each other as brothers and sisters in arms, and it’s weird to have romantic feelings for your siblings! So within the armed forces they keep celibate, but of course, marriage outside is perfectly fine.
This is a recent article from an activist living in the Federation who has played a part throughout the revolution – it’s as clear and practical an account as you can get on what it’s been like changing a society like this.
=== Ecology
Ecological considerations are an important part of PYD ideology, but due to the ongoing war they haven’t been a primary objective of the people living in the Federation. When Assad controlled the region he mandated that only wheat could be farmed there and there was little other industrial development. The region was known as the bread-basket of Syria, but only growing one kind of crop had obvious negative consequences for the environment. In the aftermath of the war with ISIS, the ecosystem of the region has been severely damaged, and most of the economy is still centred around the war effort. However, the Federation government are committed to an ambitious ecological program, planning to plant a massive forest in Jizira canton, repair the dry and polluted rivers and transition the agriculture away from wheat and into more diverse foods, which would allow local regions to act more autonomously.
Rojava also has a lot of oil, and this presents a dilemma. The people living there are well aware of how the future of the planet depends on leaving oil in the ground. But the damage to infrastructure in the region has been so extensive that just a little oil sold to help reconstruction wouldn’t hurt, right? The pragmatic path is fraught with dangers; oil is valuable and it will be difficult to judge Syrians who want to make use of it, but of course, being dependant on oil is not the desired end-goal of the revolution.
=== The Economy
Northern Syria is currently under an embargo. The Kurds are not well liked by any other faction of the civil war. The Assad government’s position in the south is now fairly secure and they don’t feel any need to make concessions, and as Assad is the de-jure president of the whole country, his government must approve for anything to be transported through his territory to people in the north. The Free Syrian Army, the opposing side in the civil war, are the other major players, but they’re a complex alliance of different forces. What democratic factions exist in the rebel army are dominated by hardline religious groups like the Al-Nusra front, whose fundamentalist ideology makes them little inclined to help the secular and progressive people in Rojava. There is an officially closed border between Iraq and Syria, although not all these roads are, uh, diligently watched. The remaining ISIS-controlled areas tend to only export shitty attitudes and suicide bombers, for which there is little demand. The less said about Erdogan the better.
This has obviously made things difficult. Self-sufficiency is now an important value among everyone living in the region, but beyond this there are three larger economies operating side-by-side in north Syria:
– The war: A dominating presence. The war effort takes up about 80% of the material economy in Rojava, with the need to support 50,000 active soldiers supplanting other considerations. This command-economy is operated centrally by the government.
– The private sector: A small number of private industries still exist in Rojava! Mostly farms and small factories, these are independently owned and run for profit, though the intention of the PYD is to collectivise them.
– The collectives: Described by our speakers as “aspirational”, collectives of a few dozen people are common in the northern Kurdish cities, running things like laundry and bakeries, and in the countryside some farms have been collectivised. The efficiency of this form of economy is largely why the communes are able to offer goods at very low prices, and while it’s still small, this kind of work is something people in Rojava want.
Logistics were initially a big problem. The north was deliberately left undeveloped by the Syrian government in the past, and new organizations needed to be built from scratch to ensure everyone was able to eat. This is particularly important as the chaos of the civil war has driven large numbers of refugees north, roughly doubling the population of the three cantons. It’s a testament to the work done by the PYD and the communes that the main source of tension between newcomers and natives isn’t economic, but more to do with differing ideologies. Ethnic tension is also an issue, but the revolution (and its representative forms of government) have spread to non-Kurdish areas, which has inspired broader support.
The war has critically damaged the medical system. Supplies are always wanted for and the embargo makes replacing damaged equipment extremely difficult. The conflict has also naturally driven doctors out of the country, along with many other people with valuable training who had the means to leave. Proper doctors take years to train, and it’s not the sort of thing a small collection of neighbours can readily provide through weekend training courses. Communal health committees, leftist organizations from abroad and the Red Crescent are working to fix this.
On the flipside, the rampant homelessness on British streets would shock and ashame any Syrian. Society in the north of Syria had long tended to be more communal, and many people are raised to think nothing of whole families sleeping in the same room. Sharing food and resources is a big part of why there hasn’t been mass starvation; to almost anyone living in Rojava the idea that such problems could exist in one of the richest nations on earth is unbelievable. Boy, can you imagine if an enterprising capitalist had bought up the entire food supply, appointed and fattened up a few cops to guard it in a bunker somewhere and forced the population to sell their labour to them in order to keep their families from starving? So can the people in Rojava. That’s why they’re socialists.
=== Revolution and Regime
In 2012 the survival of Assad’s regime was not assured. Thanks to the intervention of the Russians, who have backed their proxy to the hilt and essentially saved Assad’s life as well as his government, the Syrian Arab Army has driven the Free Syrian Army from large swathes of the country. Newly secure and confident about their future in the world, Assad’s dictatorship has turned its eyes back to the northern provinces that they once abandoned to ISIS. I doubt they are impressed with the antics of a large swathe of their country who operate independently and control a significant proportion of the country’s arable land, as well as much of its oil supply.
Tensions are further exacerbated by the Americans, who cynically see the Federation’s autonomy as a bargaining chip, a way to gain leverage in a part of the world where they had none before, and a check on Assad’s power. While the attitude of the Kurds toward the yanks is probably equally cynical – they’ll take guns and air support where they can get it – they know better than most that the Americans do not have the interest of Kurds in general and socialists in particular at heart. The USA has its own reasons to want Assad gone, and their hostility to the regime means that any attempt from the PYD to negotiate directly with the Assad government towards some kind of power-sharing situation that might protect them from attack could mean an immediate loss of American backing. For a new movement surrounded by threats, this could be the final presage of disaster.
This puts the revolutionary government in a tough position politically, and these tensions play out on the street. Several cities are shared between the Assad regime and the Rojavan revolution, and relations between different neighbourhoods – and governments – can change on a dime. Some places are glad to take part in the new way of life; others need convincing. So how does the revolution spread?
– Ideologically: The revolution represents a libertarian democratic vision and ideology that’s spread through conversations. Our speakers had done a lot of work sitting with Syrian families, talking to them about how the new way of living might be able to connect to their hopes and offer them a release from their fears. It’s a lot of work, but there is no other way to build a commune than with consent from the ordinary people who will end up running and benefiting from it. This practical approach has its own advantages, as many people who don’t like the revolution still respect the work they have done and the way they spread their message. And there are many groups of people who benefit from the new ideology, particularly women, but also minority groups who got a bad deal from Assad. The prospect of a truly democratic nation, where everyone can have some influence, is for these people very appealing.
– Materially: The collectives can provide staple foodstuffs for very cheap, and is also a hub of community defense from bandits and calculated sorties from the likes of ISIS. Their practical function draws many people in, where they can be taught about the larger project of which the collectives are a part.
– Educationally: People are better motivated to learn and build when they’re doing so not for the benefit of a distant overlord, but for their family, friends and neighbours. Through the training and education offered by the communes, the ideology of the revolution is intertwined with practical lessons on how to rebuild Rojava.
– Socially: In day to day life, through social relations between people, trust can grow between sectarian and religious enemies. The shared goals of the revolution can bridge between these divides. The benefits of the new way of living are shared among friends in different neighbourhoods, and this can change people’s minds or at least arouse their interest.
– Legally: The revolutionary government operates courts in their territory, and the laws that are enforced therein can be an agent of social change – the laws banning polygamy are the most obvious example of this. While there are limits to legalism, having a court system that enforces laws that are decided on democratically and support the revolution’s goals is still helpful.
But in the end, there is no sudden declaration of independence. A neighbourhood gradually becomes less dependent on the services provided by the Assad government, and begin to meet their needs instead through the communal system – that’s what it takes, and that’s all it takes.
=== The Future
The end of 2017 seemed to augur well for the Rojava project. The new way of life enjoyed broad popular support, it seemed likely that a peace with Assad was possible, ISIS had been beaten back, elections had been held successfully and people were starting to rebuild.
Recently, this has changed. The role of Turkey in the Syrian civil war is complex but almost entirely malign; ISIS had been a favoured proxy, but recently President Erdogan has found more subtle and perhaps more controllable forces to do his work. In 2016, the Turkish army and a large contingent of irregular fighters, nominally allied with the Free Syrian Army opposing Assad, invaded Syria as part of “Operation Euphrates Shield”. Their stated goals were to push ISIS back from the border, but many on the ground believe that Erdogan hadn’t turned on his former allies at all. The SDF had been advancing across the Euphrates river that bordered Kobani canton in the west, and were likely to rout ISIS completely and in doing so connect the three cantons of Rojava. Erdogan’s hatred of Kurds is absolute, and the “operation” was likely a way to prevent the SDF from completing their objective. Allegedly, the ISIS fighters living around Jarabulus just shaved their beards and joined up with the Turkish-backed rebels.
Whatever the arrangement between Turkey and ISIS, in practical terms a large strip of land in Syria between Kobane and Afrin was occupied after 2016 by the rebels. But in January of this year, talk by the Americans of training up thirty thousand Kurdish soldiers to “watch the border” in the north was seen by Erdogan as a valid pretext to invade Afrin. Their stated practical objectives were to prevent the PYD in Afrin from linking up with the PKK in Turkey, although geographically this doesn’t make sense – Afrin is across the border to central turkey; if they wanted to prevent the PKK linking up with the Syrian Kurds it would make more sense to attack in eastern Rojava, near Jizira.
More likely the true motivation is twofold – first, a swift victory would produce a boost to Erdogan in the 2019 elections. In the last five years his government have exerted increasing control over Turkish civil society, and after the attempted coup against him in 2016 he has been able to arrest and torture any journalist with enough spine to oppose him, as well as decapitate the pro-minority HDP that had come close to costing his majority in elections a few years ago. The media environment in Turkey is pretty insane at the moment. Scenes of glory and bloodshed will bring out the oinking hordes of Erdogan’s reactionary base, and with the opposition crippled that would be enough to grant him another term. Secondly, many hardcore religious fanatics who were formerly fighting in the ranks of ISIS fled accross the border into Turkey as the Kurdish militias liberated their territory. These are people that the Turkish government feels comfortable manipulating, but might not want to deal with long-term. Depositing them in Rojava where they’ll get to rape their merry way through a bunch of subhuman socialists will solve the problem nicely.
Perhaps because of these goals, the invasion force has consisted of irregular salafist fighters acting as infantry, while Turkish crewmen drive tanks and fly aircraft to support them in relative safety – too many Turkish flags draped over coffins would dull the propaganda’s edge, after all. As of my writing, this plan hasn’t gone terribly well. In over a week the invaders have taken a handful of villages, but the YPG/J have been able to fight them to a standstill in many places, and have destroyed several tanks and other expensive pieces of Turkish military hardware. The Kurds are battle-hardened and are well aware of their enemy’s intentions – pictures of mutilated YPJ fighters have shocked the world, and the invading soldiers freely make blood-curdling threats. On the flipside, the Turkish army lost many experienced commanders when Erdogan purged them in search of possible coup plotters, and the militias that comprise the bulk of their infantry have not acquitted themselves well in the face of other enemies. Turkey’s power looks overwhelming on paper, but their victory over this tiny enclave is by no means assured.
A comrade in the region has estimated they could hold out under siege for four months. Much of the SDF is still fighting ISIS in the east; they have mounted raids to counter the Turkish advance, but they’re still losing ground. No-one wants to think of what would happen if they were overrun. Immediate political support around the world is imperative, and political isolation might force the Erdogan into withdrawing.
=== Volunteers
Who volunteers for Rojava? “The adventurers, the crazy, and the starry eyed dreamers”. Two week tours are common for westerners who then come away, as I’ve said, seeing what they want to see. However, the longer you stay in the region, the more you discover the depths of your ignorance. Even after talking with different folks for twelve hours a day, you can come away with far more questions. The assumptions you will have made in the west your entire life will not function as useful heuristics in Syria.
But even though I cannot fully understand what has happened from so far away, I feel strongly that it’s important to recognise the unique nature of this project. Revolution is a process, and it isn’t over.
If you want to help, organize people.
If you can’t organize, demonstrate.
If you can’t demonstrate, donate.
If you can’t do that, try writing to your MP!
Important domestic tasks for comrades here in the UK are de-listing the PKK as a terrorist organization, as has recently happened in Belgium, trying to get Ocalan out of his island prison, and opposing the ongoing invasion of Afrin.
=== Conclusion: Key lessons from Rojava
The big lesson for us here in the UK is that revolution is a process; a long, drawn-out process that can take place over decades. It involves a unifying idea, a vision of a better world, it involves practical organization of people on the ground to provide things for each other that the state and the private sector have no interest in, and it most of all takes patience, the willingness to spend hours giving your life up to your neighbours.
I must again emphasize: There was no sudden blossoming of radical ideas! Like a religious conversion, much of the groundwork is laid invisibly during a person’s lived experience, and though it appears sudden, in truth the mortal shock that brings new ideas to life is just the most visible part of the process of change.
Another lesson is that social change can be enacted in many ways. You can’t rely on a central government to do everything, as anything the government gives can be taken away a few election cycles later. Local organizations are crucial for effecting real social change, but these too have limits. Without a libertarian socialist ideology capturing the PYD, the situation in north Syria might have been very different. There is a place for large-scale political organizing and trying to win elections for leftist candidates, but the critical work is with people in need. We have a lot of theory and it’s fun to talk about it, but change is going to mean going out among people who are suffering, and that’s very difficult.
But it can be done – it is, it will be done, if we learn our lessons and work as we should, I believe we will not have reason to dread our coming opportunity, no matter what form it takes.