There has been a coup attempt by persons whose identity and purpose is yet not clear. This attempt comes just before the military council meeting, where Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was reportedly going to assign generals close to himself to the army’s top tier. Another striking dimension of the coup attempt is that it comes at a time when discussions about the fascist AKP government’s foreign policy, were taking place.
Coup attempt is proof of lack of democracy
No matter within which internal and external political factors and focuses, and for what reasons a power struggle is waged, this case is not a matter of defending or being against democracy. On the contrary, this situation is the proof of lack of democracy in Turkey. Such power struggles and attempts to seize power are witnessed in undemocratic countries where an authoritarian power makes coup attempts to overthrow another authoritarian power when conditions are appropriate. This is what has happened in Turkey.
A coup was staged on 7 June
A year ago, Erdoğan and the Palace Gladio (Erdoğan’s secret force), alongside the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), all fascist circles, nationalist military powers (Ergenekon) and a part of the army, staged a coup. This was a palace (Erdoğan) coup against the democratic will of the people [which voted in the HDP and left the AKP short of a majority]. AKP fascism allied itself with all the fascist powers and a part of the army including the Chief of Staff in order to suppress the Kurdish Freedom Movement and democratic forces. The AKP’s fascism drove the army into Kurdish cities and towns, made them burn cities to the ground and massacre hundreds of civilians. Recently it has passed new laws that have give immunity to state forces, preventing trial for the crimes they have committed. In this way the AKP has become a government that has legitimised and made legal the military’s tutelage over democratic politics and society.
Coup attempt from one military faction against another
There was already military tutelage in Turkey before yesterday’s coup attempt; which makes the attempt a coup by one military faction against the existing one. This is why a section of the military has taken sides with Erdoğan, because there is already military tutelage in Turkey.
The fact that the MHP and chauvinistic nationalist circles took sides with the Palace Gladio (Erdogan) and its fascist allies reveals quite clearly that this is not an incident of struggle between those siding with democracy and those standing against it.
Portraying Erdoğan democratic is dangerous
Portraying Erdoğan and the fascist AKP dictatorship as if they were democratic after this coup attempt is an approach even more dangerous than the coup attempt itself. Portraying the fight for power among authoritarian, despotic and anti-democratic forces as a fight between the supporters and enemies of democracy will only serve to legitimise the existing fascist and despotic government.
Democracy forces do not side with either camp
Turkey does not have a civilian group in power, nor is this a struggle between democracy forces and putschists. The current fight is about who should lead the current political system, which is the enemy of democracy and the Kurdish people. Therefore, democracy forces do not side with either camp during these clashes.
The coup against democracy is the one carried out by the fascist AKP
If there is a coup against democracy, it is the one carried out by the fascist AKP government. The political power’s control over the judiciary, the implementation of fascist laws and policies through a parliamentarian majority, the removal of parliamentarians’ immunities, the arrest of co-mayors, the removal of co-mayors from their positions, and the imprisonment of thousands of politicians from the HDP and DBP constitute more of an actual coup. Kurdish people are under unprecedented genocidal, fascist, and colonialist attacks in Kurdistan.
AKP dragging Turkey into clashes
What has brought Turkey to this stage is the AKP government, which has transformed into a government of war against Kurdish people and the forces of democracy. With its monistic, hegemonic and anti-democratic character, it has kept Turkey in chaos and conflict. With its war against the Kurdish people and the forces of democracy, it has kept Turkey in a state of civil war. The latest coup attempt shows that Turkey needs to get rid of the fascist AKP government and have a democratic government. The recent developments make it urgent for Turkey to democratise and get rid of its monist, hegemonic and fascist government.
To sum up, the forces of democracy should confront the legitimisation of the fascist AKP government’s policies under the disguise of democracy, and create a democratic alliance that truly would democratise Turkey. This coup attempt makes it necessary for us to not slow down the struggle against the AKP’s fascism but to enhance it so that chaos and clashes in Turkey come to an end and a new and democratic Turkey emerges.”
Five years after the beginning of the popular Syrian Revolution which demanded democracy and human rights, the Syrian revolutionaries have been decimated through the combined military force of the Assad Regime, the Iranian regime with its sectarian militias, Russian air strikes and military assistance on the one hand, and the ultra-terrorist ISIS and other Salafist – Jihadist organizations on the other hand. Nevertheless a partial reduction of airstrikes by Russia and the Assad regime in early March led to an immediate revival of mass protests of the democratic opposition across the country with banners such as the following in Idlib: “Our peaceful revolution is still in progress until toppling Assad and imposing justice all over Syria.”
Almost half a million people, mostly Sunni Arab Syrians, have been killed mainly by the Assad regime. The population faces a situation that is worsening daily. Russian air raids, Hizbullah and Iranian supported ground forces as well as the December 18, 2015 United Nations Security Council Resolution backed by the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain have all given new life to the Assad Regime.
At the same time, the Saudi monarchy and the Iranian regime are intensifying their competition for control over the region by fanning the flames of religious sectarianism. The Turkish government has in turn intensified its attacks on and repression of the Kurds in Turkey and northern Syria and also plays a role in promoting religious sectarianism in the region. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has praised Hitler’s “presidential system” as a model of “efficiency.”
The Syrian refugee crisis, with over 8 million refugees inside and over 4 million refugees outside Syria has become a much larger version of the Palestinian al-Nakba. The European Union is setting refugee quotas, closing its gates and implementing an agreement with Turkey based on which Turkey would take more refugees in exchange for 3 billion Euros and a possible future membership in the European Union. This is clearly not a solution. Neither Turkey nor any other country in the Middle East region is willing to admit over 12 million refugees and give them the possibility of a decent life.
As Syrian and Iranian socialists, we call on you to join us in taking a stand against this inhumanity and for finding real solutions:
First, we refuse to accept the myth that the Assad regime is the lesser of the two evils and that stabilizing it will end the war in Syria or stop the rise of ISIS and other Jihadists. On the contrary, the Assad regime is responsible for the majority of the deaths which are now estimated at half a million. This regime’s destruction of the democratic forces embodied in the Syrian revolution has created a fertile ground for the rise of ISIS and other Salafist-Jihadist groups.
Secondly, given the fact that both the Assad regime and ISIS are capitalist, racist, misogynist governments, no viable alternative to them can be shaped without tackling the class/ethnic/religious divisions and gender discrimination that are present in the Middle East.
Thirdly, while we insist on upholding a principled position of support for the Kurdish national liberation movement and its struggle for self-determination in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, we think it is also necessary to challenge many of those on the left who separate the struggle for self-determination of the Kurdish people in Syria from the dynamics of the Syrian revolution. It was the 2011 Syrian revolution that made it possible for the autonomous cantons in Rojava to come into existence. Without a Syrian revolution there can be no democratic Rojava. The latest evidence of the coordination and collaboration between the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian regime and the Russian air force is alarming and does not bode well for the Kurds. The liberation and emancipation of the Kurdish people is linked to the liberation and emancipation of the people of the region.
It is time for Syrian and Iranian socialists to work together to challenge class, gender, ethnic and religious prejudices and speak to the struggles of women, workers, oppressed nationalities such as Kurds and Palestinians, oppressed ethnic and religious minorities, and sexual minorities. It is time for us to restate socialism as a concept of human emancipation not only opposed to the regional and global capitalist-imperialist powers but also as an affirmative vision distinguished from the totalitarian regimes that called themselves Communist in the former Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. […]
My proposal for an “Anti-Authoritarian Analysis of Syria’s Uprising and Civil War” has been accepted by the Boston Anarchist Bookfair collective this year. I will be speaking on the matter at the very end of the bookfair, which spans two days–from 3:30-4:30pm on Monday, 24 November.
A (now slightly dated) précis follows:
“The popular uprising in Syria that has demanded the fall of Bashar al-Assad and an end to Ba’athist domination since its beginning in March 2011 poses a number of questions for the international left, particularly anarchists. For one, the Assad regime has long sought to present itself as an Arab state in steadfast resistance to U.S./Israeli designs in the Middle East, as well as a government that is more representative of Arab public opinion, compared with the various Gulf monarchies. Yet Assad’s regime is bourgeois and highly authoritarian, as is clearly evinced by the disproportionate force with which the regime has met its opponents, as reported by opposition sources and international media.
Undoubtedly, many of the initial demonstrations raised legitimate grievances against the Assad dynasty, and the class character of the protest movements only confirms this. Still, one must not ignore the religious and sectarian aspects of the uprising, which have largely pitted the majority Sunni population against the Alawite and Christian minorities whom Ba’athism has protected and privileged. Moreover, the oppositional movement arguably was “hijacked” by Islamization and jihad, as fueled greatly by the influx of foreign fighters and the significant support in terms of funding, arms, and training as provided to rebels by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and the U.S./Israel. Most obviously, this dynamic has been key to the recent emergence of ISIS/Islamic State, and it drives the new war being waged by the NATO-Arab monarch “coalition.”
This talk, then, will examine the history and practice of Syrian Ba’athism, the course of the uprising from 2011 to present, the meteoric rise of ISIS, and the promising anti-authoritarian example being instituted by Kurds in northeastern Syria (Rojava), an anarchistic experiment that is now radically threatened by Islamic State forces.”
This is a new documentary produced by 60 Minutes Australia that simultaneously explores the hardship imposed on Kurds of Western Kurdistan (Rojava) at the hands of the fascist Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) as well as the revolutionary resilience of the Kurdish self-defense forces (YPG), particularly as expressed by the female-led Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). Though the program is nominally made by 60 Minutes, it is in actual fact less than half of that in length; additionally, its given title, “Female State,” is rather problematic, given in the first instance that the Kurds–like the Palestinians–have no State to speak of, and especially in light of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) significant reorientation in recent years from a traditional Lenino-Stalinist political perspective stressing national independence to one that approximates social anarchism through autonomous means, or what the revolutionary Kurds themselves call “democratic confederalism.”
The Kurds of Rojava–located in northeastern Syria, if we prefer to speak of geographical in statist terms–have suffered immensely in recent months at the hands of the Islamic State, which seeks to ethnically cleanse the region of the generally secular, anti-authoritarian local population and so gain direct access to the border with Turkey, thus facilitating the further flow of arms and cash that critics suspect has been abetted by the Islamist AKP government in Ankara. The present reality is that approximately 200,000 Kurds have fled Rojava for Turkey in the past few weeks, with the Kurdish canton of Kobanê radically threatened by Islamic State forces, equipped with tanks, artillery, and other heavy weapons they expropriated from the Iraqi Army which they defeated in Mosul in June, to say nothing of the arms they have stolen from other elements of the anti-Assad opposition or–indeed–received as gifts from Obama’s reactionary Gulf monarch allies.
As Sardar Saadi notes in ROAR Mag, the revolutionary Kurds associated with the YPG/YPJ in many ways echo the inspirational model of anti-authoritarian self-determination provided to the world by the EZLN from Chiapas, Mexico. This 60 Minutes documentary is a self-explanatory testament to the militant courage exhibited by the feminist guerrilleras of the YPJ.
Truly, are not the guerrilleras of Kobanê a clear manifestation of the anti-systemic Weltgeist (“World Mind”) today?
Map of ISIS advance toward Kobanê and Turkish border, September 2014
Notes toward an International Libertarian Eco-Socialism 