tekosina-anarsist

This week, we’re sharing a key in-depth conversation with Errico, a combatant member of Tekoşîna Anarşist, an internationalist anarchist formation in critical solidarity with the Rojava Revolution..

by The Final Straw Radio at TheFinalStraw via thefreeonline on 26.12.24 at https://wp.me/pIJl9-Fis Telegram https://t.me/thefreeonline

For this episode, Errico answers some questions we had about what’s been happening in Syria and concerns from within the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. You can find ideas and updates from the TA formation on their blog, https://tekosinaanarsist.noblogs.org. Past interviews with TA can be found here.

Errico’s voice has been re-recorded by a comrade for anonymity. The transcript is already up in the show notes and at our website for easier reading, translation and sharing and you can find past interviews we’ve done with TA linked in the show notes. And there is an announce-only signal group that anyone can join with updates and analysis by anarchists in the region or paying attention which we’ll link in our shownotes. Just a headsup, the usernames of members of this group will be visible to the all other users there and it might be a good opportunity to set up your signal username and make your phone number unfindable for better anonymity prior to joining the signal group ( https://signal.group/#CjQKIN0TDK_nsHV4uXRtLIdaUOL2R6yv7uvRs8c3RUiXLr-EEhBPEntGCDqJQOD4pzU36i6O )

We simultaneously recorded an interview with Cedric and Khuzama, two libertarian communists and editors of and contributors to the blog Interstices-Fajawat.org about their insights into Syria. This interview will be coming out soon, so keep an eye on our feed.

Transcript

TFSR: Would you please introduce yourself to the audience with any name, pronouns, location, and affiliation that you want to share?

TA: Yeah, so this is Errico here. I’m talking from the provisional press office of Tekoşîna Anarşist, based at the moment a few kilometers away from the front lines. So for this, the best pronouns I can use is they then, if needed, but yeah, maybe that’s it.

TFSR: Would you remind listeners about Tecoxina Anarchist and its relationship with the PYD and the Rojava revolution?

TA: Tekoşîna Anarşist is an anarchist organization that has been working for more than seven yearsnow in the northeast Syria. We are here in critical solidarity with the revolution in Rojava. We see how the values that this revolution is like promoting are extraordinarily close to what we see as anarchism, as libertarian socialism and therefore many anarchists from all around the world has been coming here, had been fighting and defending this revolution. Some of us, we saw the need of building a more stable project that can learn from this revolution in a more collective way to be able to not only learn these lessons, but also being able to translate it and share it with other anarchist organizations and comrades all around the world.

When we talk about our works here, we are a military structure that cooperates with the Syrian Democratic Forces. We are integrated inside the Syrian Democratic Forces and we are with them in the front lines fighting against the enemies that tried to destroy this revolution. Mostly we have been in the front lines against the Islamic State but since 2018 and the invasion of the Turkish army in Afrin, we have been also in the front lines against the Turkish army and its proxies. As a military structure, also, we want to promote a reflection of what does it mean for anarchists to be engaged in a military context because we know that anarchism often has been also connected with anti-militarist movements.And this is also part of our tradition, but here we see the necessity of being part of the defense of this revolution in a military sense. So we often say that we are not a military organization, but a militarized one, because the conditions on the ground had forced us to take up weapons to defend this revolution and even our life, especially in the front lines against the Islamic State. And this was something that got a lot of international attention and this is a bit like the part that has been more mediatic. But for us, most of our work is also to function as a political organization here. As I say, critical solidarity with Rojava and trying to bring practical aspects to the meaning of international solidarity because when we talk about international solidarity, we can see that the capacity to bring solidarity on the ground with other struggles is often limited and we wanted to reflect on how we can directly bring this solidarity.

And there was this sentence that we often like from a really interesting revolutionary group from Denmark that was saying that “solidarity is something you can hold in your hands.” And we try to put this in practice and not stay in the symbolic solidarity, but be here shoulder to shoulder working with our Kurdish and with our Arab Syrian comrades and doing the work that is necessary on the ground to keep developing and defending this revolution. This means a lot of things that maybe we can talk about and discuss further in this interview but this also means relations with other political groups, with our political structures. You were mentioning the PYD, that it’s true that PYD is maybe the political body of part of the revolutionary bodies that are here. PYD is a political party that was created in 2003 to represent the voices of like Kurdish people here in northern Syria. But on the ground, and I think it’s important to understand PYD is mostly all people that is trying to bring solutions and like develop whatever is needed for the society to function. So what does it mean on the ground? They have an office and when people have problems, when there are conflicts in the different things that happen in the daily life, people often go to this office and discuss with the friends to try to find solution. This includes a big range of things like from how new buildings that are being built are coordinated, to garbage collection, but especially it comes to political talks with different elements. So there is like a close relation between PYD and the autonomous municipalities of each area that they try to help each other to solve the social problems.

There’s a nice story, you know… In the town that I’m right now, we were buying groceries so often in the shop that we kind of became friends with the shop owner. And some months ago, this shop owner asked “how are you?” and he was telling us that now he was asked to be responsible for the PYD office and this was him inviting to their office. So we came over for tea and were talking a bit about the situation of the city and the problems that they were facing. So we have a friendly relation, but the PYD is mostly like a local social center, mostly they have their office that functions as a social center to talk with the neighbors and discuss the situations on the ground. So this is part of our work, this diplomacy of like being in contact with the situation that the people is living here facing the same challenges and difficulties and problems and try to find solutions together with them.

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