Medya News Audio Articles

In a particularly depressing article on their website, the HDP list the history of Kurdish political parties in Turkey. Turkey’s first pro-Kurdish party, the People’s Labour Party (HEP), was established in 1990 and managed to survive three years before being banned. Subsequent pro-Kurdish parties lasted even shorter, just six months in the case of HEP successor the Freedom and Democracy Party (OZDEP). To adapt a phrase from Oscar Wilde, to ban one Kurdish political party might be regarded as authoritarian zeal; to ban nine begins to look like fascism.

"The problem is not the fact that SDF fighters are in a chopper close to Duhok, the problem is that Kurds can’t move easily in their own lands anymore while trying to defend it against assorted aggressors," says Fréderike Geerdink.

The statement concludes with a clear call for revolution:
“We are at a point in history where if we want our society to be a bit better than the day before, we have only one solution and that is "revolution". We need this nationwide unity in order to be triumphant in our revolution for "women, life and freedom"! No to forced headscarf, no to oppression! Yes to freedom and equality!”

Apparently the violently sexist, and terror approach of the Islamic state are more compatible with the Turkish government than NES’ principles of direct democracy and women’s rights. Think back to what the Turkish prison system did to Garibe Gezer, and what ISIS did to their own captives.

For Erdoğan needs the Kurds – or, more precisely, needs a perpetual war against their democratic political project to distract voters from domestic economic woes and increasing securitization which has decimated both civil society and legitimate political opposition in the country. What is less often recalled is that Erdoğan also benefits from his love-hate relationship with the US political administration.

Releasing Nedim Türfent and others is not enough. What is needed, is for them to be recognised as political prisoners and their names to be cleared. The communities where they come from already recognise that, but the state has to acknowledge that too. Eventually, that is what the struggle is all about: Getting people out of jail, and celebrating their contribution to bringing down fascism.

On Monday 28 November , Medya News convened an online panel via Twitter Spaces to bring together expert voices to analys the latest development whether now is the time that president Erdoğan will make his next move to seize and occupy swathes of land in Kurdish-Led north and East Syria (NES,and How he is benefiting from shits in the region geopolitical reality.

Now it seems this ugly, recent history is repeating itself. A Turkish invasion will not only mean the chaos of air strikes and subsequent opportunities for ISIS cell members to spread further havoc. It will mean creating new swathes of territory for ISIS to operate in. It will mean humanitarian disaster as Turkey strikes power stations, hospitals and other vital infrastructure, creating the perfect conditions for ISIS to make back the ground which the Kurds and their local allies wrested from them on behalf of the world across many years of bitter warfare.

The false image that the Turkish president Erdoğan paints of Turkey as a victim of terrorism works incredibly well. The international community seems to be swallowing whole the bait laid at their feet. Turkey must be stopped. Someone must reverse the current developments affecting the Kurds. Ethnic cleansing is underway.

That’s how Erdoğan re-enforced the power he was about to lose: he cooperated with ISIS to incite a spiral of violence, mainly against Kurds because Kurds and their political demands and well-organized and undestroyable opposition are the nightmare of every Turkish nationalist. If anybody would have predicted that in the summer of 2015 to somebody not following Turkey closely, they possibly would have reacted with: “Ah, so that’s the conspiracy?” But it happened.