August 16, 2024 • 42 mins
James explains the significance of the ongoing Turkish bombing campaign against southern Kurdistan and what this means for the Kurdish freedom movement as well civilians in the region.
https://www.kurdishpeace.org/research/human-rights/the-kurdish-refugees-at-the-southern-border/
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
In the last few weeks, indeed the last few months,
the eyes of the world have been on the trusties
afflicted on the people of Palestine on a daily basis.
For the first time in most of our lifetimes, tens
of thousands of people have taken to the streets to
lift their voices for a stateless station of Palestine and
against Israel's un checked mass murder of civilians. It's something
I never thought I would see in the US, and
(00:36):
one of my first visits here, I was staying at
a bed and breakfast in the Bronx in late December.
It was cold and I was wearing a kafir to
stay warm, as I still often do. I remember wearing
it while I was talking to small guys while I
was waiting for the train, and we talked about Palestine
for a long time. I ended up giving one of
them my kafir and he gave me some cool badgets,
so I still have one jacket somewhere. I was hopeful
(00:58):
after that, but since then I've lived here for more
than a decade. It was really not for about fifteen
years that I saw someone else in the US without
a direct connection to Palestine who wanted to show up
for the Palestinians. It's an important cause and it's one
that we've been supporting here on our podcast with our
coverage and speaking for myself also with my presence when
I can. But as the world looked at Gaza, bombs
(01:20):
also fell on Kurdistan. It's equally hard, if not harder,
to find solidarity for the Kurdish freedom movement in the
United States. I have a Kurdish kafir as well. A
Kurdish migrant there met in the mountains gave it to
me on one cold night last year after I said
good evening to him in Comanche. Stinks of campfires and
cigarettes and I wearried all the time. I don't think
(01:41):
anyone has ever recognized it, let alone said anything positive
about it. But someone did once ask me if it
was a rasped thing. So while our eyes have been
on Gaza, those of Turkish drones and warplanes have been
on the mountains of southern Kurdistan. Bombs have been going
off in kurdis Dine for a very long time. Indeed,
before Gernica, Britain was dropping bombs on people in the
(02:03):
Middle East without paintings to commemorate it. State boundaries and
alliances have changed a lot since those first poems, as
has technology, but the fact that death from above has
remained a consistent tool of the colonial state hasn't changed.
When I was in kurdis Dan in October twenty twenty three,
it was amidst almost constant drone strikes. I had to
(02:26):
conduct my interviews in a climate of secrecy and concern,
somewhat for my own safety, but also for the safety
of my interviewees, who took great and serious personal risks
to come and meet me. One of the people I
met was Zagros Heuer, a spokesman for the kurdis Dan
Communities Union or in Kurdish Koma sivakn Kurdistdani, it's generally
(02:47):
known as the KSEK by its Curtis initials. Recently I
connected with Zagros again and I asked him to explain
this latest round of aggression.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Hello, dear James, I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
As far as your first question is concerned, I can
say that this operation has started from sixteenth of April,
six days before advanced visit to Baghdad, and in the
last weeks the Tekish Army has extended these operations and
(03:19):
this invading army has moved further deep into the Iraqi
territory and the Kurdistan region. Now they have set up checkpoints,
they stop civilians, they interrogate them. According to CPT report,
CPT stands for Community Community Peace Making Teams.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
It is.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
A civil society organization active in Iraq and Kurdistan Region
of Iraq. According to CPT report, in the last months,
there has been two hundred thirty eight bombardments in those
areas and the two thousand hectares of agricultural land have
(04:08):
been burned to ashes. And now six hundred two villages
are under the threat of displacement and one hundred and
sixty two of them have already been displaced.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
They have been raised to earth. From the start of this.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Year, according to CPP data, oney seven hundred attacks have
been have been done and this comes against the backdrop
of attacks in twenty twenty three where one thy five
hundred forty eight bombardments have taken place.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
If you're not familiar with the KCK on his behalfs
are Grossi speaking, you can think of it as the
umbrella group that unites various Kurdish freedom movements in Bakur
north but Sure or south or west, and Rodulat or east,
to use the Kurdish terms. These parts of the Kurdish
homeland are found in different states respectively. They are in Turkey, Iraq, Syria,
(05:11):
and Iran. In each of these states, Kurdish people represent
a minority. Under the Assad regime. In Syria, Syrian Kurds
were stripped of their citizenship and forced out of their
homes and what is known as the Arab Belt program.
In Turkey, they've been bombed, banned from speaking their language,
and even have their very existence denied by the state.
(05:32):
In Iran, tens of thousands of Kurds were killed when
they rose up for autonomy in nineteen seventy nine, and
they still cannot teach their children in their own language.
In Iraq, they were subjected to genocidal violence, chemical weapons,
and the murder enforced Arabization of tens of thousands of
Kurds during what is known as the Anfhal. If you
ever find yourself in Sulomania or Slomani as it's known
(05:53):
in Kurdish, you can visit the Incredible Museum there, which
documents the tortured history of the Kurdish people at the
hands of the Iraqi state. It's a very moving place.
On entering the museum, you'll walk through a hallway that's
covered from floor to ceiling with broken pieces of mirrors.
Each represents a life cut short during the anph After
(06:14):
this entrance, the first exhibit you'll see has a large
sign that says, in those days, we had no friends
but the mountains. It's an old and sometimes overused aphorism
about the Kurds, but it's not untrue. In the mountains
of southern Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement aims to liberate
the Kurdish people from all four states, and indeed from
(06:34):
the state altogether, and it's in these mountains that's found
a place where it could avoid state violence. The mountains
of Kurdistan have long provided a safe place, and especially
in recent years, the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan controlled by
Baffet Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan which shares power in
the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq with the Kurdistan Democratic
(06:57):
Party headed by Musud Barzani. The Kurdish Freedom Movement, that
is the casey K, has been able to exist largely
without the state. This, of course has always been unpopular
in Anchoror, and he didn't Bagdad. A recent offensive by
Turkey seek not only to displace the PKK that's the
Curdistan Workers Party which is part of the k c
K and its allies from the mountains, but also to
(07:20):
extend their state control there. Now, I could go on
f on a diversion about James Scott here, but that's
another episode that I'm working on, so I'll spare you Instead.
I asked Mohammed Hamasila, a Kurdish historian, to explain the
impact of this latest round of aggression and how local
people felt about it.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
People here in Samni, in the p K controlled area
or even in Kulasan, our sympathy with PK sympathy with
the sympathy so they see the really extra struggle against
(08:03):
an enemy went to invent the whole son went to
move the want to burn the vocal stand is in
my point of view, it's it's not that the case
of of peak of and there are there they have
the same issue on the same stand with with with
(08:26):
with the with the Sirian part of Augustan.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
People here. So I'm especially in getting one or not
the pewty control. I think that.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
With the with the struggle of Java, the struggle of
of and they did very issue for for for their
people and they have actually very concrete program for for
the future.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Turkey, however, seeing the existence of the movement as a
threat to its national security, has begun a campaign to
eliminate the movement wherever it finds it. As Muhammad mentioned,
the history of the Kurdish people in Turkey is one
that's riddled with state of violence, and it's that which
I want to discuss today. Turkey has long vacillated between
a genocidal denial of the existence of Kurdish people, recognizing
(09:22):
that they exist only in so far as it allows
them to be targets for bombing. We could really start
this history almost anywhere in the twentieth century. Indeed, following
a series of suppressed rebellions, the entirety of northern Kurdistan
was closed military area in which Turkey did not allow
foreigners from nineteen twenty five to nineteen sixty five. But
I want to start it just after a coup in
(09:43):
nineteen eighty, when Abdullah Oujelen had recently founded the PKK
or Kurdistan Workers' Party and was beginning to view a
vision of Kurdish liberation that was rooted in a Marxist,
Leninist and socialist analysis and ideas of national liberation. Soon
after the nineteen eighty coup, Turkey began to refer to
the Kurds as Mountain Turks, and although it doesn't do
(10:04):
this as much anymore, it did recently release school books
in the Aarbacere, a majority Kurdish region, that made no
reference to the Kurds or their language, and asserted that
people that spoke a dialect of Turkish don't they speak Kurdish.
It's this denial of their very existence. Zagrest told me
that made the Kurdish Freedom Guerrillas take up arms in
(10:24):
nineteen eighty four, which is actually forty years ago. Yesterday,
you were listening to this on the day it comes out.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
But after the military of nineteen eighty and the inhumane
tortures in the notorious prison of the Arbaker Armed City,
the movement embarked on a strategy of legitimate self defense,
on which the military struggle against the Turkish state starting
(10:52):
from fifteen of August nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Four, Since then, there have been periods of ceasefire and
periods of conflict, with tens of thousands of lives lost.
Both sides have killed civilians as part of their attacks
on the other. The most recentcies fire was signed twenty thirteen,
and as a result, the PKK began slowly withdrawing to
the mountains of Iraqi, Kurdistan. In twenty fifteen, when the
(11:16):
Syrian Kurdish YPG and YPGA fighters were leading the battle
against ISIS, Turkey broke the ceasefire between the PKK and
itself began attacking the Kurdish fighters, forcing them into a
war on two fronts. As far as Turkey is concerned,
the YPG, YPJ, KCK, YBS in Azed Areas and all
(11:37):
other elements of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement are just different
names for the PKK, which it considers to be a
terrorist organization. Everyday life for Kurdish people in Turkey can
be hard. I've spoken to hundreds, if not thousands of
them in the last year, often sitting around fires in
the mountains, working together to build wooden shelters for their children,
(11:57):
or sharing the balls of beans at my friends curt
Because the state refused to feed the people it was
detaining in the open air for days. These aren't conversations
I recorded, because that wouldn't be safe. There's a very
real danger of these folks not getting asylum and being
sent back to a country where they've seen their friends murdered,
their election results denied, their job applications thrown away, and
(12:19):
their language suppressed. Having them on the record would be
a huge risk to their safety. And not every interaction
I have with people, even people I'm writing about, has
to we turned into content to go between the adverts.
So sometimes I just do things because I like to
do them. If you'd like to know more about these stories,
you could find a link to a piece I wrote
for the Kurdish piece ins due in the show notes. Anyway,
(12:41):
here's an ad break. The situation in Iraq is different.
The Kurtis do An Aotomina's region enjoys a great degree
(13:03):
of autonomy from Baghdad. They're chiefly run by two parties,
the KDP and the p UK. The KDP enjoys influence
in Abil Or how Lay and Kurdish in Slomania. The
p UK is in control in these areas, especially those
of the KDP. A more neoliberal vision of Kurdish identity
is pursued, and how lahis or skyscrapers lid up all
(13:24):
night huge mansions, but also the whole areas of the
city struggling to get by or sometimes not even having
active cee around water. The vision of Kurdish identity here
is not a threatening to Turkey, and the KDP seems
to take the line that the PKK or to keep
its struggle within the Turkish borders. The PUK has been
more sympathetic to the KCK. The PKK. It's often in
(13:44):
the mountains near Slomanian du Hok that Turkey targets Kurdish
guerrillas and their infrastructure. For the last forty years, Turkey
has remained extremely hostile to division of Kurdish liberation, with
the democratic and federal system that Ojerland and the movement
that follows him have adopted. I asked Zagros to explain
the connection between the Kurdish struggling North and East Syria,
(14:05):
which may listens will probably be familiar with, and the
element to the Kurdish freedom movement in other parts of
Kurdistan which they might not be familiar with. And I'll
ask interview I spoke to Zagros about history in Spain.
Now it's history. To give me a history lesson. By
the way, he calls the Oderland leader appo here rab
apple in Kurdish. It's a common contraction that's used all
(14:27):
over Kurdistan, and apple is also the evocative form of
the Comanche word for a paternal uncle.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
A leader uncle migrated to the Middle East. He migrated
to Syria and Lebanon. I mean months before the military
coup in Turkey, in the military coup of nineteen eighty.
He went there on his own. There was only one
comrade with him. First he entered the city of Kogani
(14:55):
and from the he found his way to Lebanon, to Beirut.
In Lebanon, he made relations with the Palatinian groups. He
even took part in the resistance of the Palatinian groups
against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. For nearly twenty years,
he waged the freedom of struggle from Lebanon and Syria.
(15:19):
In doing so, he educated, he trained, and organized the
Kurdish people in Rajawa, Kerkistan.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
In this sense, his struggle is twofold.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
First day he developed self awareness in the people of
Rajawa with regard to the natural and cultural identity, and
brought the Rajawa people together, who had been divided by
the many Arab builts and demographic change operations of the
bath regime. All these organizational activities were done despite the
(15:57):
Sydian regime, and he managed to run a delicate balance
to foil the repressive measures of the Syrian regime.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
There I'll just interject here to explain these terms. Bathis
Syria and Hafizala said and his son bashirol A said,
attempted to divide and deny the existence of the Kurdish
people in many ways. Some of these included omitting them
from censuses, denying them citizenship, prohibiting the public use of
their language and demographic transfers, and installed belts of Arab
(16:27):
people in areas that were majority Kurdish. Nonetheless, a Sid
also saw benefit allowing the PKK to exist within his borders,
especially in the parts of Lebanon that Syria occupied, in
order to use them as a tool against other states.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Secondly, he got this nationally and culturally aware people of
Rajava to support the struggle in North Kordistan.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Therefore, thousands of Rojava.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
You were first organized and educated in villages in cities,
and then they joined the Gerula struggle and fought in
North Kodestan in Baku Karalistan. There's a struggle served to
unite Rajawa and North Koralistan Baku Karalistan and developed shared
(17:17):
national political awareness and attitudes. Thousands of Rajawa youth boys
and girls film martyr in the ranks of the Gerula Struggle.
Leader Appo tried to reach out to all cities, to
all villages, to all families, and even to all individuals
in Rojawa Kalistan. This has created a strong national, social, cultural,
(17:43):
and let's say a philosophical point between Leader Apple and
the Rajava people because a neglected and divided people had
united around him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
This isn't an episode about the entire history of the PKK.
I wouldn't be the person to write that, but I
will attempt to speed run it here anyway. Upper was
arrested in Arabia in nineteen ninety nine. Ever since then
he's been held in prison, often without access to visitors
or his lawyers, and at some points on an island
where he was a solitary prisoner surrounded by hundreds if
(18:14):
not thousands of guards. His human rights are almost universal
knowledge to have been violated by this arrangement, and despite
a quarter century of detention and Turkish moves towards Europe,
there seems to be no willingness on a part of
the Turkish state to release him. In his time in jail,
he began to read more and correspond with many thinkers,
including Murray Bookchin. Buukchin influenced his sinking a great deal,
(18:38):
and gradually, through this and other influences, Osla moved away
from a Marxist Leninist analysis and national liberation goals and
instead began to conceive feminist and ecological revolution that decentralized power,
ensured all authority positions were shared by a man and
a woman, and valued the environment as much or more
than the economy. This libertarian left ideology came to be
(19:00):
known as democratic confederalism, and it is a guiding ethos
for Java and indeed the Casey Care as a whole.
The civil war in Syria provided an opening that the
Kurdistan Freedom movement took advantage of as ASAD forces withdrew
from their regions to fight elsewhere, didn't spring from the
ground in twenty eleven, but instead they'd spent decades building
(19:21):
a movement that they felt could replace the state. Today,
millions of people live, work and play under democratic confederist
ideology in the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria,
where it was last year. It's not paradise, but it's
a special place, and by any metric, life there is
better than in the rest of Syria. Right now. For
over a decade, they've navigated a complex system of adversaries,
(19:43):
including the Syrian State, the Islamic State, and the Turkish State.
Just this week, all three of them have tried to
attack Rajava. More than fifteen thousand people men and women
have died in the decade long war against the Islamic State,
which country to much reporting, remained ongoing. It is actually
car bombed a place not far from where I stayed
(20:03):
last October after i'd come home. At times, the USA
has supported the people of Javre in their battle against
Islamic State, but it's also stood by as Turkish bombs
fell on them. But though ra Java is by far
the biggest territorial area which to democratic confederalism is in practice,
much as a movement remains in the mountains of southern
Kurdistan in what is technically Iraqi territory. There are many
(20:26):
more Kurdish people in Turkey, and as a recent election
results show, revolution by the ballot box is not really
an option for them. Javre enjoys autonomy, but it's still
very much ideologically twinned with the part of the movement
that remains in the mountains and dedicated to its struggle
against the Turkish state. Turkey, in return, has crossed the
border with Iraq to attack the KCK and anyone else
(20:48):
who gets caught in the crossfire. As Nagros explained, this
is not new, but the recent change has been notable well.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
During the eighties, nineties and even after two thousand, the
Turkish Army used to do military operations to the other
side of the border into the Iraqi border for several months,
to a draw back to the other side of the
border to its own border afterwards after several months, and
(21:22):
in that period it only had limited number of barracks
and bases in.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
The Iraqi and the Iraqi territory.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
The change now is that Teki has built a new
military roads from Scratch to the Credit Sand region to
northern Iraq. It has built more than one hundred big
and small military bases and barracks in the area and
has no intention to withdraw. As I said, the ultimate
(21:54):
goal is to is to annex all these lands to
the Turkish territory.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Today, Turkish troops can be found deep inside Iraq. According
to the Community Peacemaker Teams, since December of twenty seventeen,
Turkish forces have built over forty bases anywhere from nine
to twenty five kilometers into Iraqi, Kurdistan's territory south of
its border end quote. They have dispatched hundreds of troops
and military vehicles into another state, set up checkpoints, and
(22:22):
even killed civilians a member of the Kig's military. The
Peshmerga fighting has caused massive wildfires. For example, in Sagale Village,
about fifty five percent of the agricultural land has been
burned by Turkish attacks. Incidentally, Turkish shelling in the Autonomous
Area of North and East Syria has also caused similar
fires and destruction of crops in agricultural areas. The Kurdish
(22:45):
Freedom movement is very well established in the mountains of
southern Kurdistan, where they live in tunnels and caves. These
are not caves of tunnels like you played in a
little child. We're talking about villages underground. This makes tracking
them very hard. As we heard another episode, many of
the fighters said to Curtis down as Syrian Arabs repurposed
by Turkey and gind up an anti Kurdish sentiment. But
(23:07):
this is perhaps the least concerning of the way the
tunnels are being attacked. Zagros explained some of the other
things that they've seen.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Data is that they use dogs.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
They tie explosives to the dogs and send the dogs
into the tunnels and they explode the dogs wire remote control.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
In addition to the dogs, he says that the Turkey
state uses chemical weapons inside the tunnels. There are also
reports of suicide bombers definating themselves. The KTK also claims
the Turkey uses thermobaric bombs sometimes called bunker busters, which
create a huge pressure wave from subsequent vacuum.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Also, they are using thermobodic bombs. We have documented the
use of these thermobodic bombs. There are remnants of these bombs.
They are using theemobodic or vacuum bombs against the tunnels,
and they are using some form of explosives which are
more powerful than thermobolic bombs. Got some freedom grillas have
(24:08):
developed literature for it because they do know what kind
of explosively did. But it has the effect of a
nuclear bomb. We got some freedom grilla called nuclear bomb.
They call it so because the effects are high, are
higher than the thermobotic bombs.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I asked Mohammed to explain how people reacting to the
current situation.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
You know, you know invted some parts of you could
understand that.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Actually the the areas under the control or under the
influence of character instead of KDP, and you know that
people here have dislikes.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
This issue is like the version of Turkey to this area.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
It's not just in boss telling people besides the pia
k elements and telling people and building the whole agricultural
area and you know, so and so on.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
So it's kind of an inversion.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
And but here some people on forces in in the
southern part of Kurdusan Orstan, you know, Iraqi Puldustan like
the sympathy with the Picak sympathy, Okay, as they see.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
That they're live.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
So they're struggling against Turkey because if there is no
Bika gay even there is no Biga Gay. The Turkish
forces woll will not withdraw from Kutsa when it controlled
any area of Iraqi kumsant to be saved or southern
it will not withdraw and it's it's excuses Pika k
(25:53):
But things on Earth is telling something else.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Despite what both my guests have seen as alien nation
of the local population, Turkey's continuing with its attacks. I
asked Sagres, what do you thought the goals of this
Turkish invasion of Iraqua.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
The invasion and annexation of these lands is the prime
goal of Turkey. This goal is a long term goal
of the Turkish state since it has been created after
the Luzan Agreement. It has two aspects. Firstly, Turkey lays
(26:30):
claimed to what was once part of the Ottoman Empire
one hundred years ago. Lays claims to the cities like
Mussil and Kirkuk and claims that these these are lends
of Turkey. So the invasion operation in the area of
(26:51):
Batina is up in Matina and Avashin. In the areas
around the cities of Armedia, Dere, Lucei, Laze and Hu
they are at ten to take control of these mountainous
areas and to materialize those long range goals. Turkey already
(27:13):
has a has a big military base near Musil, I
think fifteen to twenty kilometers in northern Musil. It is
called the Bashika Base. So if Teki manages to invade
all these areas in Badina I mean in the cities
of the Hook mountainous areas of the Hook, Turkey would
be able to create a land bridge between these areas
(27:37):
and its base in Musil, and it will be far
easier for Turkey to let's say an ex city of
Muslim and Kirkuktu its lands. Secondly, Turkey has a long
term goal of demographic demographic change in Kurdista. As you know,
(28:00):
Yakistan is a land, the ancestral land of the Kurts,
being divided between four countries Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria
being divided by borders. People from one side of the
border are Kurdish, put on the other side of the
the Arkurdish. In many cases, the borderline go through the city.
(28:21):
They divide the cities, they have divided the villages. They
have divided in the tribes. They have divided large populations.
They have even divided families. This is one of the
characteristics of the border in Kurdistan.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
In fact, Turkey has begun something of an Arab belt
program who is owned in Syria, seeking to resettle Syrian refugees.
Turkish backs Syrian anti government rebels in the areas that
it took from Java in military operations over the last
eight years. This is part of Turkey's plan to return
as many as a million Syrian migrants to a country
stood in the grips of a brutal civil war, and
(28:55):
push the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria back
from the Turkish borders crush it altogether. For Turkey, there's
no distinction between Ajava and the PKK, and thus Turkey
claims the entirety of a Java is a haven for terrorism.
Many Kurdish fighters and international volunteers who fought Isis for
years died fighting the Turkish army in a free and
(29:16):
and the many other territories the Turkey has expanded into
since twenty seventeen. The fighting there was fierce and saw
the YPG and the WIPG, the Men's and Women's armed
forces of Java battling a NATO army with modern armor
and modern airpower. After taking significant losses. They retreated and
I asked Sagros what this means for people living in
(29:37):
a free who had just managed to return to some
semblance of normalcy after Assad's forces left and attacks from
me on Nusfra front became less frequent.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
This is genocide.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I'm in forcing people to leave their lands and replacing
those people with people which are not from that land.
Forcing people to leave the ancestral land and then with
they have lived on for thousands of years, for more
than ten thousand years, and getting Arab jihades Chechen Jihadis
(30:08):
to live in those areas. It is a genocide along
with the ecocide which is now taking place. Thousands of
hectares of forests of agricultural land are now burning. So
what Turkey does is femicide, is ecoside, is genocide in Kurdistan.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And this let's say, what now happens to the curse.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
It's the same thing that happened to the Armenians one
thousand years ago. The genocide of the Armenians was done
by the people who had the same mentality and the
same mindset of Arguona. I can say, so these areas
are very strategic for the curves. They bind the four
parts of Kurdistan together demographically, and now Arduwan wants to
(30:57):
draw a Jihads buffer result between these.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Areas.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
If occurred from Syria wants to go to the Kurdistan
in under the invasion of Turkey, we call it North Kurdistan.
He will have to go through cities and areas populated
by Arab jihadists, by church and jihadists by Kirkman jihadists
by jihadis have been which have been collected from around
(31:25):
the world. So this buffer zone, which is more than
one thousand kilometers long according to Ardua's plan and thirty
to forty kilometers wide, is expected to be inhabited, to
be settled by the jihadis which Ardoan has gathered from
(31:47):
x DASH members, ex NSA members, x al Qaeda.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
At present, it's Turkish occupation. It's a situation in parts
of Syria, but it's also increasingly becoming likely it will
be the situation in parts of Rock. That is often
the case, say to trying to use divisions in Kurdistan
to their advantage, and Turkey in particular is relying on
the well worn excuse of counter terrorism to mount its
incursions deep into a rock. Here's Mohammed explaining.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
That Piker is thinking like in such a way to
support to support maybe pick again. They don't say orally
that that thing. And KDP says that follow the instruction
of Turkey and actually here the force and influence of
(32:52):
Turky and even I ran in the Putick controlled area
is UH is very strong. And people here as people
of the nation, I'm not feeling comfort with such impasion,
such issues. So we are lot like the owner of
(33:14):
our right decision in the area. So we're divided within
ira Iran and Turkey and so on, so and we
are not depending on our people. You know, thousands of
people killed for the nation analysis you know, hopes and now.
Speaker 6 (33:37):
People are.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Frustrate with such such issues, with such situation.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Mahmad also said that was really frustrating for him to
see Curish politicians so influenced by the states that they've
been trying to escape for a century.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
So we are here in a situation from the north,
Turkey from the east, Iran from the south, and all
are they working that the people who pay thousands thousands
of of of you know martyrs south and so of UH,
(34:13):
you know, loss of the people.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
Why you are not depending on.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Your will or the force of your people, why you
are became like like a feather, a feather to the
to the windsor of.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
So forth, which are not you're they're not your friends.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Even in the east, in the north and the south,
there are not new But if you depend on your
own people, on your own to struggle hard, and we
have you know, we have the.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
Legacy of this issue.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
We have the legacy of struggle in this area from
nineteen six.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This is indeed, the evasion of southern Kurdistan would not
be possible without the consent of both the Iraqi and
Kurdistan regional authorities, so gross mentioned. Turkish president reship type
Duwe visited Baghdad on April to twenty second. This was
his first visit to Iraq since twenty eleven. During the visit,
(35:20):
iraqan Turkey side the Joint Security Agreement allowing Turkey to
conduct military operations deep within Iraqi territory. In return, Iraqi
received desperately needed water from Turkey.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
And now in those areas tens of thousands of Turkish troops,
hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, drones.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Brothers have been deploved to the area.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
They are active every day, and they are invading northern
Iraq at a time when the border guards of Iraqi
Iraqi Army border guards are standing by and just watching.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
As you may know, as.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
The result of the agreement between the Iraqi State and
Turky State, the Iraqi border guard forces, let's say they
were decided to be sent to the Iraqi Turkish border.
But now these border guards are not on the Turkish
Iraqi border, the border that we now these border guards
(36:18):
have been deployed forty kilometers thirty kilometers deep into the
Iraqi territory. They don't go to the border. They are
guarding the invading Turkish Army.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
For the people of the region, this means yet more
trauma and more displacement. They were already more than one
million displaced people in southern Kurkistan. Some of them are
living in pretty terrible conditions. I've seen those refugee camps
when I was there last October. But these operations have
created more. Here's just one anecdote to displacement shared by
(36:50):
CPT on their website.
Speaker 7 (36:51):
We met a man named Kakbashir who had tried to
build a cafe here, his dreams of a cafe had
been shattered by Turkish artillery and smaller arms fire coming
from the Turkish base on the hillside nearby. He was
originally from Segurae village, but had been displaced to Ghani
Village by the Turkish military five years ago due to
the loss of his farm in Seguday. He has planted
(37:13):
some vegetables next to the side of his cafe. He
gave each CPT member some sweet basil and invited us
to his village. When we arrived, a man dressed in
immaculate traditional Kurdish clothes stood transfixed staring into the valley.
He was staring at Mejia Village, his home. Mijia is
one of at least nine villages displaced by the recent
(37:35):
Turkish operation. Kakbashir told us that displaced people from the
valley would visit this place daily to gaze upon their
cut off towns and farmland below.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Despite months of shalling and bombing, the military stronghold to
the Kadistan Freedom Movement remained intact, and the more obvious
damage he has been done to civilians rather than military targets.
The hPG, which is the fighting arm of the BKKA
has been able to obtain loitering antiacraft munitions shut down
several drones, but it's still unable to shoot down fighter
jets like the US provided F sixteens to the currently
(38:07):
bombing them for civilians without mounting caves or tunnels to
hide in. The impact is severe and people who have
faced depression and persecution from Saddam Hussein Isis numerous other
states and groups are now once again being displaced. I
want to finish up with the end of Zagoro's message
to me, in which he made a comparison with Palestine,
(38:27):
like I did at the start on the day of
thirst Intrude Zagros, bombs made in the US had just
been falling from Israeli planes on too civilians in Palestine again,
and we discussed the fact that all the solutions being
discussed hinged around the need for states, one state or
two states to solve the problem. But this was a
problem created by states, and it was states sending bombs
(38:49):
to another state to drop on children, both in Kurdistan
and in Palestine.
Speaker 7 (38:53):
There was the problem.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
His Zagos reflection on nearly ten months of bombing in
Palestine and Kurdistan, I just want to explain here that
Abubaka Baghdadi was at one point the leader of Isis
instead now and when he says Dash, he's referring to
the former so called Islamic state.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
The struggle that is now waged in the mountains of
Kurdistan against the invading Turkish army. It is a continuation
of the struggle against Dash in Iraq and Syria, because
(39:30):
ideologically there is no difference between Ardovan and Abuba Baghdadi.
Baghdadi first took Musul, and now Ardovan wants to invade
Mussul too. Ardowan attacks all those places which have been
hubs of resistance against Dash. He attacks Sinjar, he attacks Kobani,
(39:53):
He attacks Kandid Mountains, which are the home of those
who inspired and all organized the fight against the AJ.
On the ground, Erdogan's army is Dash in native uniforms,
in native fatigues. In recent days, Arduan accuses Nitenno of
(40:14):
committing genocide against the Palacinians. Nteno also accuses Erdogan of
committing genocide against the Curts. In fact, what these two
men say against each other is to some extent right,
both of them have been commissioned by the forces of
capitalist modernity to eliminate two people, to eliminate the Curves
(40:38):
and the Palacinians. What Nitano does against the Palacinians is
exactly what Erdogan is doing against the Kurts. What is
needed is to draw the attention of the world's public
opinion to the atrocities of Aldogan's regime and the genocidal
and ecosidal crimes commits against the Kurdish people and their land,
(41:04):
which is Kurdistan. The struggle in Palestine and Kurdistan are
one struggle, the struggle of two people against genocide and examination.
Both struggle needs support from the youth, from the women
all around the world, from democratic forces, from intellectuals, students, unions, workers,
(41:27):
from all people. People need to be united against Ardowan,
as they were united against Dash, as they are now
united against the genocidal attacks in Palestine. The Turkish regime
can be protested everywhere in many ways. Turkish goods and
commodities can be boycotted because they are the source of
(41:50):
funds for Ardowan's war machine, for Ardowan's genocidal army. Delegations
can be formed and they can come to visit Kurdistan
and see with their own eyes the extent of ecosit
and genocidling to understand. Free journalists can shed more light
on the atrocities Avardoan in Kurdistan.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Revolutionary youth, revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
People, men and women can come and join the struggle
in the mountains of Kurdistan, Curd.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Establish your home.
Speaker 7 (42:27):
It could Happen here as a production of crul Zone Media.
For more podcasts in the cool Zone Media, visit our
website cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Col Zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
In the last few weeks, indeed the last few months,
the eyes of the world have been on the trusties
afflicted on the people of Palestine on a daily basis.
For the first time in most of our lifetimes, tens
of thousands of people have taken to the streets to
lift their voices for a stateless station of Palestine and
against Israel's un checked mass murder of civilians. It's something
I never thought I would see in the US, and
(00:36):
one of my first visits here, I was staying at
a bed and breakfast in the Bronx in late December.
It was cold and I was wearing a kafir to
stay warm, as I still often do. I remember wearing
it while I was talking to small guys while I
was waiting for the train, and we talked about Palestine
for a long time. I ended up giving one of
them my kafir and he gave me some cool badgets,
so I still have one jacket somewhere. I was hopeful
(00:58):
after that, but since then I've lived here for more
than a decade. It was really not for about fifteen
years that I saw someone else in the US without
a direct connection to Palestine who wanted to show up
for the Palestinians. It's an important cause and it's one
that we've been supporting here on our podcast with our
coverage and speaking for myself also with my presence when
I can. But as the world looked at Gaza, bombs
(01:20):
also fell on Kurdistan. It's equally hard, if not harder,
to find solidarity for the Kurdish freedom movement in the
United States. I have a Kurdish kafir as well. A
Kurdish migrant there met in the mountains gave it to
me on one cold night last year after I said
good evening to him in Comanche. Stinks of campfires and
cigarettes and I wearried all the time. I don't think
(01:41):
anyone has ever recognized it, let alone said anything positive
about it. But someone did once ask me if it
was a rasped thing. So while our eyes have been
on Gaza, those of Turkish drones and warplanes have been
on the mountains of southern Kurdistan. Bombs have been going
off in kurdis Dine for a very long time. Indeed,
before Gernica, Britain was dropping bombs on people in the
(02:03):
Middle East without paintings to commemorate it. State boundaries and
alliances have changed a lot since those first poems, as
has technology, but the fact that death from above has
remained a consistent tool of the colonial state hasn't changed.
When I was in kurdis Dan in October twenty twenty three,
it was amidst almost constant drone strikes. I had to
(02:26):
conduct my interviews in a climate of secrecy and concern,
somewhat for my own safety, but also for the safety
of my interviewees, who took great and serious personal risks
to come and meet me. One of the people I
met was Zagros Heuer, a spokesman for the kurdis Dan
Communities Union or in Kurdish Koma sivakn Kurdistdani, it's generally
(02:47):
known as the KSEK by its Curtis initials. Recently I
connected with Zagros again and I asked him to explain
this latest round of aggression.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Hello, dear James, I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
As far as your first question is concerned, I can
say that this operation has started from sixteenth of April,
six days before advanced visit to Baghdad, and in the
last weeks the Tekish Army has extended these operations and
(03:19):
this invading army has moved further deep into the Iraqi
territory and the Kurdistan region. Now they have set up checkpoints,
they stop civilians, they interrogate them. According to CPT report,
CPT stands for Community Community Peace Making Teams.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
It is.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
A civil society organization active in Iraq and Kurdistan Region
of Iraq. According to CPT report, in the last months,
there has been two hundred thirty eight bombardments in those
areas and the two thousand hectares of agricultural land have
(04:08):
been burned to ashes. And now six hundred two villages
are under the threat of displacement and one hundred and
sixty two of them have already been displaced.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
They have been raised to earth. From the start of this.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
Year, according to CPP data, oney seven hundred attacks have
been have been done and this comes against the backdrop
of attacks in twenty twenty three where one thy five
hundred forty eight bombardments have taken place.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
If you're not familiar with the KCK on his behalfs
are Grossi speaking, you can think of it as the
umbrella group that unites various Kurdish freedom movements in Bakur
north but Sure or south or west, and Rodulat or east,
to use the Kurdish terms. These parts of the Kurdish
homeland are found in different states respectively. They are in Turkey, Iraq, Syria,
(05:11):
and Iran. In each of these states, Kurdish people represent
a minority. Under the Assad regime. In Syria, Syrian Kurds
were stripped of their citizenship and forced out of their
homes and what is known as the Arab Belt program.
In Turkey, they've been bombed, banned from speaking their language,
and even have their very existence denied by the state.
(05:32):
In Iran, tens of thousands of Kurds were killed when
they rose up for autonomy in nineteen seventy nine, and
they still cannot teach their children in their own language.
In Iraq, they were subjected to genocidal violence, chemical weapons,
and the murder enforced Arabization of tens of thousands of
Kurds during what is known as the Anfhal. If you
ever find yourself in Sulomania or Slomani as it's known
(05:53):
in Kurdish, you can visit the Incredible Museum there, which
documents the tortured history of the Kurdish people at the
hands of the Iraqi state. It's a very moving place.
On entering the museum, you'll walk through a hallway that's
covered from floor to ceiling with broken pieces of mirrors.
Each represents a life cut short during the anph After
(06:14):
this entrance, the first exhibit you'll see has a large
sign that says, in those days, we had no friends
but the mountains. It's an old and sometimes overused aphorism
about the Kurds, but it's not untrue. In the mountains
of southern Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Freedom Movement aims to liberate
the Kurdish people from all four states, and indeed from
(06:34):
the state altogether, and it's in these mountains that's found
a place where it could avoid state violence. The mountains
of Kurdistan have long provided a safe place, and especially
in recent years, the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan controlled by
Baffet Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan which shares power in
the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq with the Kurdistan Democratic
(06:57):
Party headed by Musud Barzani. The Kurdish Freedom Movement, that
is the casey K, has been able to exist largely
without the state. This, of course has always been unpopular
in Anchoror, and he didn't Bagdad. A recent offensive by
Turkey seek not only to displace the PKK that's the
Curdistan Workers Party which is part of the k c
K and its allies from the mountains, but also to
(07:20):
extend their state control there. Now, I could go on
f on a diversion about James Scott here, but that's
another episode that I'm working on, so I'll spare you Instead.
I asked Mohammed Hamasila, a Kurdish historian, to explain the
impact of this latest round of aggression and how local
people felt about it.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
People here in Samni, in the p K controlled area
or even in Kulasan, our sympathy with PK sympathy with
the sympathy so they see the really extra struggle against
(08:03):
an enemy went to invent the whole son went to
move the want to burn the vocal stand is in
my point of view, it's it's not that the case
of of peak of and there are there they have
the same issue on the same stand with with with
(08:26):
with the with the Sirian part of Augustan.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
People here. So I'm especially in getting one or not
the pewty control. I think that.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
With the with the struggle of Java, the struggle of
of and they did very issue for for for their
people and they have actually very concrete program for for
the future.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Turkey, however, seeing the existence of the movement as a
threat to its national security, has begun a campaign to
eliminate the movement wherever it finds it. As Muhammad mentioned,
the history of the Kurdish people in Turkey is one
that's riddled with state of violence, and it's that which
I want to discuss today. Turkey has long vacillated between
a genocidal denial of the existence of Kurdish people, recognizing
(09:22):
that they exist only in so far as it allows
them to be targets for bombing. We could really start
this history almost anywhere in the twentieth century. Indeed, following
a series of suppressed rebellions, the entirety of northern Kurdistan
was closed military area in which Turkey did not allow
foreigners from nineteen twenty five to nineteen sixty five. But
I want to start it just after a coup in
(09:43):
nineteen eighty, when Abdullah Oujelen had recently founded the PKK
or Kurdistan Workers' Party and was beginning to view a
vision of Kurdish liberation that was rooted in a Marxist,
Leninist and socialist analysis and ideas of national liberation. Soon
after the nineteen eighty coup, Turkey began to refer to
the Kurds as Mountain Turks, and although it doesn't do
(10:04):
this as much anymore, it did recently release school books
in the Aarbacere, a majority Kurdish region, that made no
reference to the Kurds or their language, and asserted that
people that spoke a dialect of Turkish don't they speak Kurdish.
It's this denial of their very existence. Zagrest told me
that made the Kurdish Freedom Guerrillas take up arms in
(10:24):
nineteen eighty four, which is actually forty years ago. Yesterday,
you were listening to this on the day it comes out.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
But after the military of nineteen eighty and the inhumane
tortures in the notorious prison of the Arbaker Armed City,
the movement embarked on a strategy of legitimate self defense,
on which the military struggle against the Turkish state starting
(10:52):
from fifteen of August nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Four, Since then, there have been periods of ceasefire and
periods of conflict, with tens of thousands of lives lost.
Both sides have killed civilians as part of their attacks
on the other. The most recentcies fire was signed twenty thirteen,
and as a result, the PKK began slowly withdrawing to
the mountains of Iraqi, Kurdistan. In twenty fifteen, when the
(11:16):
Syrian Kurdish YPG and YPGA fighters were leading the battle
against ISIS, Turkey broke the ceasefire between the PKK and
itself began attacking the Kurdish fighters, forcing them into a
war on two fronts. As far as Turkey is concerned,
the YPG, YPJ, KCK, YBS in Azed Areas and all
(11:37):
other elements of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement are just different
names for the PKK, which it considers to be a
terrorist organization. Everyday life for Kurdish people in Turkey can
be hard. I've spoken to hundreds, if not thousands of
them in the last year, often sitting around fires in
the mountains, working together to build wooden shelters for their children,
(11:57):
or sharing the balls of beans at my friends curt
Because the state refused to feed the people it was
detaining in the open air for days. These aren't conversations
I recorded, because that wouldn't be safe. There's a very
real danger of these folks not getting asylum and being
sent back to a country where they've seen their friends murdered,
their election results denied, their job applications thrown away, and
(12:19):
their language suppressed. Having them on the record would be
a huge risk to their safety. And not every interaction
I have with people, even people I'm writing about, has
to we turned into content to go between the adverts.
So sometimes I just do things because I like to
do them. If you'd like to know more about these stories,
you could find a link to a piece I wrote
for the Kurdish piece ins due in the show notes. Anyway,
(12:41):
here's an ad break. The situation in Iraq is different.
The Kurtis do An Aotomina's region enjoys a great degree
(13:03):
of autonomy from Baghdad. They're chiefly run by two parties,
the KDP and the p UK. The KDP enjoys influence
in Abil Or how Lay and Kurdish in Slomania. The
p UK is in control in these areas, especially those
of the KDP. A more neoliberal vision of Kurdish identity
is pursued, and how lahis or skyscrapers lid up all
(13:24):
night huge mansions, but also the whole areas of the
city struggling to get by or sometimes not even having
active cee around water. The vision of Kurdish identity here
is not a threatening to Turkey, and the KDP seems
to take the line that the PKK or to keep
its struggle within the Turkish borders. The PUK has been
more sympathetic to the KCK. The PKK. It's often in
(13:44):
the mountains near Slomanian du Hok that Turkey targets Kurdish
guerrillas and their infrastructure. For the last forty years, Turkey
has remained extremely hostile to division of Kurdish liberation, with
the democratic and federal system that Ojerland and the movement
that follows him have adopted. I asked Zagros to explain
the connection between the Kurdish struggling North and East Syria,
(14:05):
which may listens will probably be familiar with, and the
element to the Kurdish freedom movement in other parts of
Kurdistan which they might not be familiar with. And I'll
ask interview I spoke to Zagros about history in Spain.
Now it's history. To give me a history lesson. By
the way, he calls the Oderland leader appo here rab
apple in Kurdish. It's a common contraction that's used all
(14:27):
over Kurdistan, and apple is also the evocative form of
the Comanche word for a paternal uncle.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
A leader uncle migrated to the Middle East. He migrated
to Syria and Lebanon. I mean months before the military
coup in Turkey, in the military coup of nineteen eighty.
He went there on his own. There was only one
comrade with him. First he entered the city of Kogani
(14:55):
and from the he found his way to Lebanon, to Beirut.
In Lebanon, he made relations with the Palatinian groups. He
even took part in the resistance of the Palatinian groups
against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. For nearly twenty years,
he waged the freedom of struggle from Lebanon and Syria.
(15:19):
In doing so, he educated, he trained, and organized the
Kurdish people in Rajawa, Kerkistan.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
In this sense, his struggle is twofold.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
First day he developed self awareness in the people of
Rajawa with regard to the natural and cultural identity, and
brought the Rajawa people together, who had been divided by
the many Arab builts and demographic change operations of the
bath regime. All these organizational activities were done despite the
(15:57):
Sydian regime, and he managed to run a delicate balance
to foil the repressive measures of the Syrian regime.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
There I'll just interject here to explain these terms. Bathis
Syria and Hafizala said and his son bashirol A said,
attempted to divide and deny the existence of the Kurdish
people in many ways. Some of these included omitting them
from censuses, denying them citizenship, prohibiting the public use of
their language and demographic transfers, and installed belts of Arab
(16:27):
people in areas that were majority Kurdish. Nonetheless, a Sid
also saw benefit allowing the PKK to exist within his borders,
especially in the parts of Lebanon that Syria occupied, in
order to use them as a tool against other states.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Secondly, he got this nationally and culturally aware people of
Rajava to support the struggle in North Kordistan.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Therefore, thousands of Rojava.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
You were first organized and educated in villages in cities,
and then they joined the Gerula struggle and fought in
North Kodestan in Baku Karalistan. There's a struggle served to
unite Rajawa and North Koralistan Baku Karalistan and developed shared
(17:17):
national political awareness and attitudes. Thousands of Rajawa youth boys
and girls film martyr in the ranks of the Gerula Struggle.
Leader Appo tried to reach out to all cities, to
all villages, to all families, and even to all individuals
in Rojawa Kalistan. This has created a strong national, social, cultural,
(17:43):
and let's say a philosophical point between Leader Apple and
the Rajava people because a neglected and divided people had
united around him.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
This isn't an episode about the entire history of the PKK.
I wouldn't be the person to write that, but I
will attempt to speed run it here anyway. Upper was
arrested in Arabia in nineteen ninety nine. Ever since then
he's been held in prison, often without access to visitors
or his lawyers, and at some points on an island
where he was a solitary prisoner surrounded by hundreds if
(18:14):
not thousands of guards. His human rights are almost universal
knowledge to have been violated by this arrangement, and despite
a quarter century of detention and Turkish moves towards Europe,
there seems to be no willingness on a part of
the Turkish state to release him. In his time in jail,
he began to read more and correspond with many thinkers,
including Murray Bookchin. Buukchin influenced his sinking a great deal,
(18:38):
and gradually, through this and other influences, Osla moved away
from a Marxist Leninist analysis and national liberation goals and
instead began to conceive feminist and ecological revolution that decentralized power,
ensured all authority positions were shared by a man and
a woman, and valued the environment as much or more
than the economy. This libertarian left ideology came to be
(19:00):
known as democratic confederalism, and it is a guiding ethos
for Java and indeed the Casey Care as a whole.
The civil war in Syria provided an opening that the
Kurdistan Freedom movement took advantage of as ASAD forces withdrew
from their regions to fight elsewhere, didn't spring from the
ground in twenty eleven, but instead they'd spent decades building
(19:21):
a movement that they felt could replace the state. Today,
millions of people live, work and play under democratic confederist
ideology in the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria,
where it was last year. It's not paradise, but it's
a special place, and by any metric, life there is
better than in the rest of Syria. Right now. For
over a decade, they've navigated a complex system of adversaries,
(19:43):
including the Syrian State, the Islamic State, and the Turkish State.
Just this week, all three of them have tried to
attack Rajava. More than fifteen thousand people men and women
have died in the decade long war against the Islamic State,
which country to much reporting, remained ongoing. It is actually
car bombed a place not far from where I stayed
(20:03):
last October after i'd come home. At times, the USA
has supported the people of Javre in their battle against
Islamic State, but it's also stood by as Turkish bombs
fell on them. But though ra Java is by far
the biggest territorial area which to democratic confederalism is in practice,
much as a movement remains in the mountains of southern
Kurdistan in what is technically Iraqi territory. There are many
(20:26):
more Kurdish people in Turkey, and as a recent election
results show, revolution by the ballot box is not really
an option for them. Javre enjoys autonomy, but it's still
very much ideologically twinned with the part of the movement
that remains in the mountains and dedicated to its struggle
against the Turkish state. Turkey, in return, has crossed the
border with Iraq to attack the KCK and anyone else
(20:48):
who gets caught in the crossfire. As Nagros explained, this
is not new, but the recent change has been notable well.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
During the eighties, nineties and even after two thousand, the
Turkish Army used to do military operations to the other
side of the border into the Iraqi border for several months,
to a draw back to the other side of the
border to its own border afterwards after several months, and
(21:22):
in that period it only had limited number of barracks
and bases in.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
The Iraqi and the Iraqi territory.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
The change now is that Teki has built a new
military roads from Scratch to the Credit Sand region to
northern Iraq. It has built more than one hundred big
and small military bases and barracks in the area and
has no intention to withdraw. As I said, the ultimate
(21:54):
goal is to is to annex all these lands to
the Turkish territory.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Today, Turkish troops can be found deep inside Iraq. According
to the Community Peacemaker Teams, since December of twenty seventeen,
Turkish forces have built over forty bases anywhere from nine
to twenty five kilometers into Iraqi, Kurdistan's territory south of
its border end quote. They have dispatched hundreds of troops
and military vehicles into another state, set up checkpoints, and
(22:22):
even killed civilians a member of the Kig's military. The
Peshmerga fighting has caused massive wildfires. For example, in Sagale Village,
about fifty five percent of the agricultural land has been
burned by Turkish attacks. Incidentally, Turkish shelling in the Autonomous
Area of North and East Syria has also caused similar
fires and destruction of crops in agricultural areas. The Kurdish
(22:45):
Freedom movement is very well established in the mountains of
southern Kurdistan, where they live in tunnels and caves. These
are not caves of tunnels like you played in a
little child. We're talking about villages underground. This makes tracking
them very hard. As we heard another episode, many of
the fighters said to Curtis down as Syrian Arabs repurposed
by Turkey and gind up an anti Kurdish sentiment. But
(23:07):
this is perhaps the least concerning of the way the
tunnels are being attacked. Zagros explained some of the other
things that they've seen.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Data is that they use dogs.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
They tie explosives to the dogs and send the dogs
into the tunnels and they explode the dogs wire remote control.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
In addition to the dogs, he says that the Turkey
state uses chemical weapons inside the tunnels. There are also
reports of suicide bombers definating themselves. The KTK also claims
the Turkey uses thermobaric bombs sometimes called bunker busters, which
create a huge pressure wave from subsequent vacuum.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Also, they are using thermobodic bombs. We have documented the
use of these thermobodic bombs. There are remnants of these bombs.
They are using theemobodic or vacuum bombs against the tunnels,
and they are using some form of explosives which are
more powerful than thermobolic bombs. Got some freedom grillas have
(24:08):
developed literature for it because they do know what kind
of explosively did. But it has the effect of a
nuclear bomb. We got some freedom grilla called nuclear bomb.
They call it so because the effects are high, are
higher than the thermobotic bombs.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I asked Mohammed to explain how people reacting to the
current situation.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
You know, you know invted some parts of you could
understand that.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Actually the the areas under the control or under the
influence of character instead of KDP, and you know that
people here have dislikes.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
This issue is like the version of Turkey to this area.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
It's not just in boss telling people besides the pia
k elements and telling people and building the whole agricultural
area and you know, so and so on.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
So it's kind of an inversion.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
And but here some people on forces in in the
southern part of Kurdusan Orstan, you know, Iraqi Puldustan like
the sympathy with the Picak sympathy, Okay, as they see.
Speaker 6 (25:26):
That they're live.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
So they're struggling against Turkey because if there is no
Bika gay even there is no Biga Gay. The Turkish
forces woll will not withdraw from Kutsa when it controlled
any area of Iraqi kumsant to be saved or southern
it will not withdraw and it's it's excuses Pika k
(25:53):
But things on Earth is telling something else.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Despite what both my guests have seen as alien nation
of the local population, Turkey's continuing with its attacks. I
asked Sagres, what do you thought the goals of this
Turkish invasion of Iraqua.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
The invasion and annexation of these lands is the prime
goal of Turkey. This goal is a long term goal
of the Turkish state since it has been created after
the Luzan Agreement. It has two aspects. Firstly, Turkey lays
(26:30):
claimed to what was once part of the Ottoman Empire
one hundred years ago. Lays claims to the cities like
Mussil and Kirkuk and claims that these these are lends
of Turkey. So the invasion operation in the area of
(26:51):
Batina is up in Matina and Avashin. In the areas
around the cities of Armedia, Dere, Lucei, Laze and Hu
they are at ten to take control of these mountainous
areas and to materialize those long range goals. Turkey already
(27:13):
has a has a big military base near Musil, I
think fifteen to twenty kilometers in northern Musil. It is
called the Bashika Base. So if Teki manages to invade
all these areas in Badina I mean in the cities
of the Hook mountainous areas of the Hook, Turkey would
be able to create a land bridge between these areas
(27:37):
and its base in Musil, and it will be far
easier for Turkey to let's say an ex city of
Muslim and Kirkuktu its lands. Secondly, Turkey has a long
term goal of demographic demographic change in Kurdista. As you know,
(28:00):
Yakistan is a land, the ancestral land of the Kurts,
being divided between four countries Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria
being divided by borders. People from one side of the
border are Kurdish, put on the other side of the
the Arkurdish. In many cases, the borderline go through the city.
(28:21):
They divide the cities, they have divided the villages. They
have divided in the tribes. They have divided large populations.
They have even divided families. This is one of the
characteristics of the border in Kurdistan.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
In fact, Turkey has begun something of an Arab belt
program who is owned in Syria, seeking to resettle Syrian refugees.
Turkish backs Syrian anti government rebels in the areas that
it took from Java in military operations over the last
eight years. This is part of Turkey's plan to return
as many as a million Syrian migrants to a country
stood in the grips of a brutal civil war, and
(28:55):
push the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria back
from the Turkish borders crush it altogether. For Turkey, there's
no distinction between Ajava and the PKK, and thus Turkey
claims the entirety of a Java is a haven for terrorism.
Many Kurdish fighters and international volunteers who fought Isis for
years died fighting the Turkish army in a free and
(29:16):
and the many other territories the Turkey has expanded into
since twenty seventeen. The fighting there was fierce and saw
the YPG and the WIPG, the Men's and Women's armed
forces of Java battling a NATO army with modern armor
and modern airpower. After taking significant losses. They retreated and
I asked Sagros what this means for people living in
(29:37):
a free who had just managed to return to some
semblance of normalcy after Assad's forces left and attacks from
me on Nusfra front became less frequent.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
This is genocide.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
I'm in forcing people to leave their lands and replacing
those people with people which are not from that land.
Forcing people to leave the ancestral land and then with
they have lived on for thousands of years, for more
than ten thousand years, and getting Arab jihades Chechen Jihadis
(30:08):
to live in those areas. It is a genocide along
with the ecocide which is now taking place. Thousands of
hectares of forests of agricultural land are now burning. So
what Turkey does is femicide, is ecoside, is genocide in Kurdistan.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
And this let's say, what now happens to the curse.
Speaker 4 (30:31):
It's the same thing that happened to the Armenians one
thousand years ago. The genocide of the Armenians was done
by the people who had the same mentality and the
same mindset of Arguona. I can say, so these areas
are very strategic for the curves. They bind the four
parts of Kurdistan together demographically, and now Arduwan wants to
(30:57):
draw a Jihads buffer result between these.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Areas.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
If occurred from Syria wants to go to the Kurdistan
in under the invasion of Turkey, we call it North Kurdistan.
He will have to go through cities and areas populated
by Arab jihadists, by church and jihadists by Kirkman jihadists
by jihadis have been which have been collected from around
(31:25):
the world. So this buffer zone, which is more than
one thousand kilometers long according to Ardua's plan and thirty
to forty kilometers wide, is expected to be inhabited, to
be settled by the jihadis which Ardoan has gathered from
(31:47):
x DASH members, ex NSA members, x al Qaeda.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
At present, it's Turkish occupation. It's a situation in parts
of Syria, but it's also increasingly becoming likely it will
be the situation in parts of Rock. That is often
the case, say to trying to use divisions in Kurdistan
to their advantage, and Turkey in particular is relying on
the well worn excuse of counter terrorism to mount its
incursions deep into a rock. Here's Mohammed explaining.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
That Piker is thinking like in such a way to
support to support maybe pick again. They don't say orally
that that thing. And KDP says that follow the instruction
of Turkey and actually here the force and influence of
(32:52):
Turky and even I ran in the Putick controlled area
is UH is very strong. And people here as people
of the nation, I'm not feeling comfort with such impasion,
such issues. So we are lot like the owner of
(33:14):
our right decision in the area. So we're divided within
ira Iran and Turkey and so on, so and we
are not depending on our people. You know, thousands of
people killed for the nation analysis you know, hopes and now.
Speaker 6 (33:37):
People are.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Frustrate with such such issues, with such situation.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Mahmad also said that was really frustrating for him to
see Curish politicians so influenced by the states that they've
been trying to escape for a century.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
So we are here in a situation from the north,
Turkey from the east, Iran from the south, and all
are they working that the people who pay thousands thousands
of of of you know martyrs south and so of UH,
(34:13):
you know, loss of the people.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
Why you are not depending on.
Speaker 5 (34:19):
Your will or the force of your people, why you
are became like like a feather, a feather to the
to the windsor of.
Speaker 6 (34:32):
So forth, which are not you're they're not your friends.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Even in the east, in the north and the south,
there are not new But if you depend on your
own people, on your own to struggle hard, and we
have you know, we have the.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
Legacy of this issue.
Speaker 5 (34:55):
We have the legacy of struggle in this area from
nineteen six.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
This is indeed, the evasion of southern Kurdistan would not
be possible without the consent of both the Iraqi and
Kurdistan regional authorities, so gross mentioned. Turkish president reship type
Duwe visited Baghdad on April to twenty second. This was
his first visit to Iraq since twenty eleven. During the visit,
(35:20):
iraqan Turkey side the Joint Security Agreement allowing Turkey to
conduct military operations deep within Iraqi territory. In return, Iraqi
received desperately needed water from Turkey.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
And now in those areas tens of thousands of Turkish troops,
hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, drones.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Brothers have been deploved to the area.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
They are active every day, and they are invading northern
Iraq at a time when the border guards of Iraqi
Iraqi Army border guards are standing by and just watching.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
As you may know, as.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
The result of the agreement between the Iraqi State and
Turky State, the Iraqi border guard forces, let's say they
were decided to be sent to the Iraqi Turkish border.
But now these border guards are not on the Turkish
Iraqi border, the border that we now these border guards
(36:18):
have been deployed forty kilometers thirty kilometers deep into the
Iraqi territory. They don't go to the border. They are
guarding the invading Turkish Army.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
For the people of the region, this means yet more
trauma and more displacement. They were already more than one
million displaced people in southern Kurkistan. Some of them are
living in pretty terrible conditions. I've seen those refugee camps
when I was there last October. But these operations have
created more. Here's just one anecdote to displacement shared by
(36:50):
CPT on their website.
Speaker 7 (36:51):
We met a man named Kakbashir who had tried to
build a cafe here, his dreams of a cafe had
been shattered by Turkish artillery and smaller arms fire coming
from the Turkish base on the hillside nearby. He was
originally from Segurae village, but had been displaced to Ghani
Village by the Turkish military five years ago due to
the loss of his farm in Seguday. He has planted
(37:13):
some vegetables next to the side of his cafe. He
gave each CPT member some sweet basil and invited us
to his village. When we arrived, a man dressed in
immaculate traditional Kurdish clothes stood transfixed staring into the valley.
He was staring at Mejia Village, his home. Mijia is
one of at least nine villages displaced by the recent
(37:35):
Turkish operation. Kakbashir told us that displaced people from the
valley would visit this place daily to gaze upon their
cut off towns and farmland below.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Despite months of shalling and bombing, the military stronghold to
the Kadistan Freedom Movement remained intact, and the more obvious
damage he has been done to civilians rather than military targets.
The hPG, which is the fighting arm of the BKKA
has been able to obtain loitering antiacraft munitions shut down
several drones, but it's still unable to shoot down fighter
jets like the US provided F sixteens to the currently
(38:07):
bombing them for civilians without mounting caves or tunnels to
hide in. The impact is severe and people who have
faced depression and persecution from Saddam Hussein Isis numerous other
states and groups are now once again being displaced. I
want to finish up with the end of Zagoro's message
to me, in which he made a comparison with Palestine,
(38:27):
like I did at the start on the day of
thirst Intrude Zagros, bombs made in the US had just
been falling from Israeli planes on too civilians in Palestine again,
and we discussed the fact that all the solutions being
discussed hinged around the need for states, one state or
two states to solve the problem. But this was a
problem created by states, and it was states sending bombs
(38:49):
to another state to drop on children, both in Kurdistan
and in Palestine.
Speaker 7 (38:53):
There was the problem.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
His Zagos reflection on nearly ten months of bombing in
Palestine and Kurdistan, I just want to explain here that
Abubaka Baghdadi was at one point the leader of Isis
instead now and when he says Dash, he's referring to
the former so called Islamic state.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
The struggle that is now waged in the mountains of
Kurdistan against the invading Turkish army. It is a continuation
of the struggle against Dash in Iraq and Syria, because
(39:30):
ideologically there is no difference between Ardovan and Abuba Baghdadi.
Baghdadi first took Musul, and now Ardovan wants to invade
Mussul too. Ardowan attacks all those places which have been
hubs of resistance against Dash. He attacks Sinjar, he attacks Kobani,
(39:53):
He attacks Kandid Mountains, which are the home of those
who inspired and all organized the fight against the AJ.
On the ground, Erdogan's army is Dash in native uniforms,
in native fatigues. In recent days, Arduan accuses Nitenno of
(40:14):
committing genocide against the Palacinians. Nteno also accuses Erdogan of
committing genocide against the Curts. In fact, what these two
men say against each other is to some extent right,
both of them have been commissioned by the forces of
capitalist modernity to eliminate two people, to eliminate the Curves
(40:38):
and the Palacinians. What Nitano does against the Palacinians is
exactly what Erdogan is doing against the Kurts. What is
needed is to draw the attention of the world's public
opinion to the atrocities of Aldogan's regime and the genocidal
and ecosidal crimes commits against the Kurdish people and their land,
(41:04):
which is Kurdistan. The struggle in Palestine and Kurdistan are
one struggle, the struggle of two people against genocide and examination.
Both struggle needs support from the youth, from the women
all around the world, from democratic forces, from intellectuals, students, unions, workers,
(41:27):
from all people. People need to be united against Ardowan,
as they were united against Dash, as they are now
united against the genocidal attacks in Palestine. The Turkish regime
can be protested everywhere in many ways. Turkish goods and
commodities can be boycotted because they are the source of
(41:50):
funds for Ardowan's war machine, for Ardowan's genocidal army. Delegations
can be formed and they can come to visit Kurdistan
and see with their own eyes the extent of ecosit
and genocidling to understand. Free journalists can shed more light
on the atrocities Avardoan in Kurdistan.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Revolutionary youth, revolutionary.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
People, men and women can come and join the struggle
in the mountains of Kurdistan, Curd.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Establish your home.
Speaker 7 (42:27):
It could Happen here as a production of crul Zone Media.
For more podcasts in the cool Zone Media, visit our
website cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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