Three Feminist, Democratic Socialist Leaders Were Just Assassinated. You Had no Idea. That is a Problem
Despite achieving some notoriety for playing a primary role in the defeat of the Islamic State, the Syrian Kurds have since been completely abandoned. Yet their democratic revolution carries on under existential threat
Just in the past two years, and with near total impunity, the Turkish regime has carried out thousands of attacks on Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and within their own borders. Yet, despite vast international influence in the region, the mainstream media remain mostly silent. The greater left remains distant.
The Revolution in Northern Syria is a rare bright light emanating from the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. The autonomous region’s subsequent ongoing transition to a direct democratic, socialist, and feminist society with ethnic pluralism at its heart, is arguably the largest and most successful left revolution since the Spanish Civil War. It is no coincidence that part this revolution was influenced by American anarchist and Spanish Civil War historian Murray Bookchin. A pairing made when the left flank of the Kurdish liberation movement, spread headed by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), began to drift away from traditional nationalist Marxist Leninism and towards stateless and pluralistic direct democracy with a hyper focus on feminist liberation.
After the rise of the Islamic State, the Syrian Kurds, whose Democratic Union Party shares an ideological overlap with the PKK, found themselves almost on the brink of genocide. When, with the help of the International Coalition, and the formation of a multi ethnic, multi gender army they fought back and delivered the Islamic State their first major military defeat in the Kurdish stronghold of Kobani in 2014. Just three years later they found themselves at the doorsteps of Raqqa, the ISIS capital, and in 2018 they took all remaining ISIS territory within Syria.
Rojava (officially the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) has been no stranger to attacks beyond Islamic State. Both the Assad regime and other jihadist groups have repeated engaged the Rojava defense forces in an attempt to either reassert or establish control. Of course there exists no greater threat to the region than the Turkish state. Turkey’s first major assault against Rojava, towards the end of 2016 was primarily driven to stop the creation of a land bridge between the majority Kurdish Afrin canton in the West and the rest of Rojava in the East. It should be noted, that a member of DSA, Michael Israel, was killed when Turkish warplanes struck their Western positions while they were engaging ISIS.
In 2018, without provocation, the Turkish state invaded Afrin canton, causing one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations since the Nakba in Palestine in 1948. Currently under occupation, Afrin city and region is housed by a bunch of warring Islamist gangs, including Al Qaeda, who continue to persecute and torture remaining ethnic minorities and women, while fighting each other over spoils with Turkish state oversight.
In 2019, Trump haphazardly heeded Erdogan’s demand to redeploy US troops so Turkey could launch a second major war and occupation of Rojava, all with similar results to the occupation of Afrin. Eerily, many in the Western left supported the war, seeing the welcome and small presence of US forces and worse than a murderous war and occupation, even by another imperialist NATO member.
The Democratic Socialist of America couldn’t even muster a statement in support of Rojava at the time. Most of the US diplomatic and military core simply ignored the atrocities and attacks that continue to follow, and in the off chance they make a statement the perpetrator is never mentioned.
While the recent murder of the three Kurdish women were deemed worthy of condemnation, US Central Command simply referred to “an attack”. Just some inevitable tragedy without a perpetrator, not unlike how the US media react when the police needlessly shoot someone.
There are some beginning signs of anger, however, as just prior to the murder of the three women in Syria, the Turkish armed forces shelled a civilian resort in the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq. The attack killed nine people, including children. All were Iraqi Arabs on holiday.
This attack sparked massive street protests and attacks on Turkish government buildings, including several military outposts in Iraqi territory. The nine civilians are to be considered martyrs by the Iraqi state, thus giving their survivors certain benefits, a privilege that has not been extended to dozens of Iraqi Kurds killed also at the hands of the Turkish regime.
Turkish army attacks are often tolerated, with little commendation, from both the Iraqi central government as well as the part of the Iraqi Kurdistan region controlled by the conservative Kurdistan Democratic Party who shares close ties with the Turkish state. This attack, however, caused the more powerful actor, the Iraqi state, to bring a formal complaint to the UN Security Council and is demanding the expulsion of the Turkish Army from Iraqi territory.
While the latter is unlikely to happen, even such rhetoric is usually unheard of. There is also a small but growing bipartisan effort within the US government to stop arms sales to Turkey, including F-16 fighter jets used to attack Kurds with no air defense capabilities.
There is simply no reason why we, as democratic socialists, can’t put similar effort and energy into defending our ideological allies overseas that we do for the Palestinians. Just because the Israelis might make better bogeymen for certain left dogma, it does not make the Kurds in Syria any less deserving of our support and allyship.
Not unlike in Palestine, suffering in Kurdistan happens because powerful forces both allow it to and partake it in, including those right within our own state. While always under threat, the Turkish regime is yet again gearing up for another large scale attack on Rojava, and unlike under Trump, the US has made clear that it will not be in support. Our democratic socialist organizations, and any organizing under a progressive banner, should engage in support of our stateless, anti state comrades overseas.
