For the last several years, anarchists, anti-capitalists, and many people on the Left have been supporting the ongoing struggle and evolving movement in Rojava, as an autonomous region in Kurdistan began to take shape, making up parts of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.
There, both a sea change has taken place in the form of growing support for “Democratic Confederalism,” which embraces many aspect of anarchism, ecology, and feminism, as well as in the fierce resistance by the YPG and the YPJ against ISIS. In the battle against the Islamic State, many anarchists and anti-capitalists have also joined in the struggle and given their lives.
However, after the fall of ISIS in Raqqa, the Turkish state quickly moved to attack the Kurdish forces, and began a campaign of bombing and attacking various cities starting with Afrin.
Does this mean the death of the Rojava Revolution, and with it, a hope of an anti-capitalist and anti-Statist way of life? Will our comrades in the YPG and YPJ, as well as our anarchist sisters and brothers be slaughtered?
How can we act in solidarity with those on the ground? These are hard questions of which we do not have answers, but already people .. are rallying in support of the Kurdish struggle for autonomy and freedom.
We are sorry to hear about the death of Ursula Le Guin who wrote the first great anarchist utopia novel, The Dispossessed.Ursula was an extensively learned and astonishingly creative person, Though she herself once claimed modestly to be ‘just a bourgeois housewife’ her created worlds have had an enormous influence, and right up to her death at 88 yrs she continued to get more radical and angry with the insane capitalist system.
”I started by reading a whole mess of utopias and learning something about pacifism and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance. This led me to the nonviolent anarchist writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman. With them I felt a great, immediate affinity. They made sense to me in the way Lao Tzu did. They enabled me to think about war, peace, politics, how we govern one another and ourselves, the value of failure, and the strength of what is weak.
So, when I realised that nobody had yet written an anarchist utopia, I finally began to see what my book might be. And I found that its principal character, whom I’d first glimpsed in…
note: hundreds of journalists have been jailed in Turkey and exiled reporters have received death threats on state TV.. “Blow the brains out of three or five of them. Look how frightened they’ll be,” (see link below post). This post is shared public information and does not necessarily reflect the views of the blogger.
Turkish terrorist aviation attacked the people of Jilbir. Located in the district of Sherawa, Jilbir has been the victim of an overwhelming massacre of which the victims have not yet totaled. Several children have been charred by the Turkish terrorist bombs in which it is possibly the worst terrorist massacre of what we endure in 2018. And the terrorists are the second NATO armyHundreds of aerial bombings have been reported. . … more photos of Turkish atrocities in Afrin. HERE http://kurdiscat.blogspot.com.es/2018/01/turquia-comet-una-matanca-de-criatures.html
SDF: Turkish attacks on Afrin repelled and the area was cleared of gangs
AFRIN (ANF) – Syrian Democratic Forces General Command released a statement about the latest situation in the Turkish state’s invasion operation against Afrin Canton of Rojava. Full text of the statement is as follows; “Turkey tries to realize its plans on the region by deceiving the peoples of the region. Turkish occupation army, with the mercenaries it has long been training in Turkey, wants to sow the seeds of hostility between Arab and Kurdish entities of Afrin. Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries tried to invade parts of Afrin under the cover of Turkish air force, tanks and artillery shelling.
The local YPG volunteers proudly post a video of the destruction of an invading Turkish tank. But Turkey has the 2nd army in Nato with 1000’s of tanks and has been given a free hand by Russia for round the clock aerial bombing.
Our forces have been carrying out a special operation on Turkish troops and terrorists in the last few hours. As the operation and clashes continue heavily, current results are as following; The operation has been taking place in five different areas. Adah Manli, Shadia and Surka villages of Raju district and Shinkal village of Bulbul district have been fully cleared off Turkish troops and the mercenaries. Intense clashes at some parts of the border area are continuing. Turkish occupation army and its mercenaries’ attempts to enter Afrin once again failed. Turkish occupation army, who failed advance into Afrin on the ground, once again targeted civilians with multiple airstrikes. The bombardment carried out on Rubar IDP camp, Cilbir village of Sherawa district and the area surrounding Afrin city center caused many civilian deaths. Turkish occupation army attacks Reyhanli district of Hatay city itself only to legitimate the ongoing massacre and blames our forces for this. We once again stress that we have nothing to do in shelling civilian settlements. We never target the territory outside of our borders. We once again stress that the social media rumors and the allegations delivered by some media outlets should not be trusted unless officially confirmed by General Command statements. SDF General Command will keep the public up to date about the results of the battle and resistance. During the clashes that are still going on, a number of Turkish soldiers and its mercenaries were killed. Detailed statement on theresults of the attacks and our resistance is going to be issued later.” from .. http://kurdishdailynews.org/2018/01/21/sdf-turkish-attacks-afrin-repelled-area-cleared-gangs/
Turkish anti riot police officers block People’ Democracy Party’s (HDP) headquarter as HDP members call a protest against Turkey’s “Olive Branch” operation in Syria on January 21, 2018 in Diyarbakir. Turkey on January 20 launched operation “Olive Branch”. 35 people were ordered arrested for posting tweets against the invasion. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday warned the HDP not to take to the streets to protest the operation in Afrin: “You are being closely followed. If you try to take to the streets, know that our security forces will be at your neck.” “If anyone is in the streets upon calls [from the HDP], they will pay dearly for it. This is a national fight, and whoever opposes us will be crushed.” Erdoğan added. from: https://www.turkishminute.com/2018/01/21/erdogan-threatens-hdp-over-afrin-whoever-opposes-us-will-be-crushed/
Erdoğan’s news agency targets exiled journalists over Afrin messages
”Aydın Ünal, a former speechwriter of President Erdoğan and current Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy, warned Turkish journalists in exile of extrajudicial killings in a column published on Dec. 4 in the pro-Erdoğan Yeni Şafak daily.
The AKP deputy listed the names of journalists to be targeted: Ekrem Dumanlı, Adem Yavuz Arslan, Celil Sağır, Bülent Keneş, Abdülhamit Bilici, Erhan Başyurt, Emre Uslu, Akın İpek and Can Dündar.” ”In an undated video of a live TV program shared last month on social media, journalists Cem Küçük and Fuat Uğur, staunch supporters of President Erdoğan, called on the Turkish intelligence service to assassinate former Zaman daily Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı and columnists Emre Uslu, Abdullah Bozkurt and İhsan Yılmaz: “Blow the brains out of three or five of them. Look how frightened they’ll be,” he said. from https://www.turkishminute.com/2018/01/22/erdogans-news-agency-targets-exiled-journalists-over-afrin-messages/
Mercenary-terrorists confess being trained in Turkey
”Turkey has been training thousands of terrorists to attack the Kurds, many of them forced to join up as their salaries (via Saudi, Qatar, the US, etc) have been cut as the Syrian war winds down. A number of them are thought to be ex ISIS jihadists. .. earlier report:… Terrorist Mohammad Aqel Akk said U.S, Qatari and Saudi personnel trained them for 45 days in Salqin, Idleb and later they went to complete their training in Turkey where every trainee was given USD 200.
“We then returned to Aleppo and commenced a huge attack on army posts in Aleppo, but our operation was a failure and we got caught,” he added. https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/terrorists-confession
”People get together with a buzz of good-will to put their energy into cultural and practical things – brain-storming and building festivals for a wider public, putting on regular social events, bands, workshops, or maintaining and improving the infra-structure of ADM community: the mission to cover the roof with solar panels, to improve the roads and tracks, to lay down water pipes, make an internet network, grow a garden, collect scraps for the pigs, sow wildflower seeds… The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
The ADM is the biggest cultural freehaven in the Netherlands. Our community consists of around 125 people from all ages, nationalities and walks of life.We transformed a disused, derelict shipyard from the Amsterdam Drydock Company into a thriving Living Experiment, sharing our space, visions and creations. We produce our own projects such as Green ADM, festivals, concerts, workshops and arts.
International academics: “An attack against the peaceful citizens of Efrîn is a flagrant act of aggression against a region and a peaceful and democratically governed population” Saturday, January 20, 2018
We, the undersigned academics and human rights activists, demand that the leaders of Russia, Iran and the United States ensure that Turkey does not break the sovereignty of the Syrian borders and that the people of Efrîn in Syria can live in peace.
In Efrîn, the mostly Kurdish population, is one of the most stable and secure regions in Syria. With very little international help, Efrîn has hosted so many Syrian refugees in the last five years that its population has doubled to 400,000. Efrîn is now surrounded by enemies: jihadist groups backed by Turkey, al-Qaeda and Turkey itself.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to attack the YPG Kurds or the Popular Protection Units, with which the United States has allied themselves against IS.
Turkey accuses YPG of being “terrorists” despite the long history of YPG of creating democratic local government councils in each of the peoples that have freed from IS and its repeated statements that are not interested in Turkey and that they want to function only as the defense of the Syrian Kurds and other ethnic groups living in the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), also known as “Rojava”, which includes Efrîn.Continue reading “Chomsky and Human Rights Activists defend Efrîn (Afrin) from Terrorist Turkey”
Our article in INFOSHOP from a few weeks ago entitled, “Stick It To The Manarchy” generated a lot of response and enthusiasm. We have a response to the criticism, clarifying a few points along with our analysis of the dialogue..click .HERE. Our criticism of manarchy and its implications is our way of contributing to the dialogue. Competitive, aggressive, elitist, and exclusive behavior is contrary to our understanding of anarchist ideals and practice. “Manarchy” is the term we use to describe this behavior because it exemplifies traditional male gender roles.[1]A 2013 global study on homicide by theUnited Nations Office on Drugs and Crimefound that males accounted for about 96 percent of all homicide perpetrators worldwide.
the original post.
Stick it to the Manarchy
By The Rock Bloc Collective
Manarchy: Aggressive, competitive behavior within the Anarchist movement that is frighteningly reminiscent of historically oppressive male gender roles. Such behavior includes acting macho, holier than thou and elitist. Manarchy often results in exclusivity.
We feel obliged to share our discomfort with manarchy as it presents itself in the Anarchist movement. We are excited and inspired by the development and practice of Anarchist ideals, and we must remain critical of our movement in an effort to maximize our effectiveness. Anarchism and direct action are powerful forces, yet we are still susceptible to taking on some of the oppressive cultural practices of the very system we are challenging.
We are two women and two men, all white and coming from economically privileged backgrounds. We are Anarchists. We support direct action and the Black Bloc as a tactic for empowerment. In this article we focus on what has been coined “manarchy.” We intend to explain and criticize manarchist behavior by running through a series of experiences that we have had at mass actions, conferences, and in our day-to-day organizing.Most insidious is the dogmatism of ‘no compromise’ that is often accompanied with a macho spirit that assumes a ‘tougher than thou’ attitude toward dominant culture as well as allies in the movement. Continue reading “The ‘Manarchy’ debate: Fighting ingrained Sexism.”
We, the undersigned academics and human rights activists, demand that the leaders of Russia, Iran and the United States ensure that Turkey does not break the sovereignty of the Syrian borders and that the people of Efrîn in Syria can live in peace.
The Free 