Kurdistan

More than 80 people attended the Solidarity with Kobane and Rojava dayschool in Nottingham on 31 January 2015. The event was organised by Nottingham Kurdish Solidarity Campaign and the Kurdish Society of Nottingham Trent University. Speakers included: Alan Semo, UK Representative of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the PKK’s Syrian sister party; Aysegul Erdogan, Roj Women and an Islington Labour councillor; Zaher Baher, Kurdish Anarchists Forum and Haringey Solidarity Group; Houzan Mahmoud, activist with the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq; Chris Leslie MP (Nottingham East); and Derek...

Kurdish fighters have expelled Daesh (ISIS) from inside the Syrian border town of Kobane. This is a huge physical and symbolic blow to Daesh’s ambitions. Some Daesh forces reportedly remain in the Maqtala district, on the eastern outskirts of the town. Daesh is said to have lost more than 1,000 fighters since it began its advance on the town on 16 September 2014 in an attempt to control the border between Syria and Turkey. At one point the group had taken over most of the city. Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), later reinforced by the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga, slowly pushed...

The Kurdish Construction Workers' Organisation, active mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan, is appealing for support in its campaign to get recognition from the Kurdish Regional Government. The Kurdistan Regional Government must formally recognise the Organization of Construction Workers in Kurdistan! As a part of the working class, the construction workers of Kurdistan have never been provided the basic rights they deserve nor has any formal authority taken responsibility for the lives, health or future prospects of the workers. Ruling parties in this region have established trade unions, however these...

The politics of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in western Kurdistan/Syria (Rojava) and the nature of governance there has been debated on the revolutionary left with some anarchist, autonomist Marxist and libertarian communists seeing more or less enthusiastically welcoming the democracy taking root there. Workers’ Liberty backs the Kurdish struggle the YPG defence of Kobane against the Islamic State; but we do not back the politics of the forces on the ground. The YPG (Democratic Union Party) are closely linked to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Historically the PKK was a...

Day-Mer is a Kurdish and Turkish community organisation in London. Oktay Cinpolat, who is part of the management of Day-Mer and Day-Mer Youth, spoke to Solidarity . Day-Mer was set up in 1989 by a group of community activists, some of who had known each other in Turkey. We work with and on behalf of Turkish and Kurdish people living and working in London, to help them solve their problems and promote their cultural, economic, social and democratic rights; to strengthen solidarity amongst themselves as well as local people; and to help their integration into society. For us this is possible by...

According to the Kurdish website Rudaw, the Syrian-Kurdish forces in Kobane, augmented by peshmerga troops from Iraqi Kurdistan, are now pushing back the ultra-Islamists of Daesh (ISIS, or “Islamic state”). Kurdish commanders in Kobane say that they now control half the city, which is in a Kurdish-majority part of Syria close to the Turkish border, and the other half is “destroyed” by US air strikes against Daesh. Regaining territory, however, is a slow process of street-by-street fighting. In Iraq, on 23 November Daesh launched an attempt to take the city of Ramadi, but elsewhere they have...

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The situation in Kobane has been boosted by the arrival of Iraqi-Kurdish peshmerga fighters, whose commander Ahmaf Gardi has stated that: "We will not leave until the city is wiped clean of ISIS". A representative of YPG, the military wing of the PYD, is quoted as saying that the "existence of peshmerga in Kobane changed the balance of power. We are advancing towards ISIS positions, and now the majority of the city is under our control". Figures released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimate that over 1,000 people have now been killed during the siege of Kobane. The majority of...

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...

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...