Author: Xeyrî Kamyaran
Since November 27th, more has changed in Syrian territory than at any time since the beginning of the Arab Spring, which was actually a “spring of the peoples.” The civil war in Syria has been ongoing since 2011, and various major powers have been fighting to protect their interests throughout the country. The Middle East, and Kurdistan in particular, is one of the centres of the war, where the conflicts are most intense. The Middle East has always been a region where numerous trade routes, such as the famous Silk Road, passed through. Just as empires fought for supremacy thousands of years ago over the slopes of the Zagros-Taurus Mountains, today various powers are fighting to the death for influence and control. Given the current chaotic situation in the region, which is changing hourly and has effects far beyond Syria, we cannot avoid providing some background information.
After the collapse of real socialism with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the situation in the Middle East changed fundamentally. The U.S. intervention in the second Gulf War in 1991 gave concrete expression to the plan to transform the region, culminating in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. After a period in which the U.S. acted as the only world power, other states and powers entered the international arena to assert their influence.
With the U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war and the subsequent alliance between ruler Assad and the Russian Federation, an exchange of blows began after 2011 that reached international proportions. On the one hand, the so-called “Free Syrian Army” was founded in opposition to the Assad regime, which came under the immediate influence of Western powers, especially the U.S. The political opposition movement increasingly developed into an Islamist alliance, which is no longer the dominant force today. With the Turkish occupation operations in Syria that began in 2016, the groups merged into the so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA), which is now directly controlled by Turkey. It includes both Turkmen units, which dream of a Greater Turkey, as well as jihadists, some of whom were recruited from the Islamic State, which was crushed in 2019.
In the turmoil of the Syrian civil war, on the night of July 18-19, what is now known around the world as the Rojava Revolution began. The outbreak of the civil war forced the Assad regime to withdraw troop contingents from the northern parts of the country. In several cities in northern Syria, mostly inhabited by Kurds, the Assad regime was ousted, and self-government was declared. This was preceded by a process of organizing society in secret. Until the revolution, Kurdish parties were banned, and the Kurdish freedom movement had to operate illegally, moving from family to family, discussing and gradually working on the preconditions for revolution. In secret, self-defense committees began to be set up, creating another precondition for the 2012 revolution.
Rojava itself, the smallest part of Kurdistan compared to the four states into which the Kurdish people were divided by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, means something like “West.” Before the revolution, the Syrian regime only cultivated agricultural monocultures in this region, and all products and raw materials from the Kurdish parts of Syria were brought to larger Syrian cities like Aleppo and Homs for further processing. The economic dependence on the central government in Damascus that this fueled was intended to prevent efforts toward independence and autonomy. With the expulsion of the Assad regime after 2012, a situation arose in which the fate of the still young areas of self-government had to be taken into their own hands, both politically and economically.
The Rojava revolution provided the opportunity to put the ideas and political concepts of the mastermind of the Kurdish freedom movement, Abdullah Öcalan, into practice. Abdullah Öcalan, who was kidnapped in 1999 as part of an operation by the CIA, Mossad, and European secret services and taken to the prison island of Imrali in Turkey, took the collapse of real socialism and the reasons for his abduction as an opportunity to delve deeper into the question of what democratic socialism could look like. This should not only benefit the Kurds in the region but also the other peoples of the region.
The analysis was that the concepts of classical Marxism-Leninism and the creation of a socialist Kurdish state would not solve any of the problems facing the Kurdish people. Instead, the Middle East, and Syria as well, is a mosaic of different nationalities, which is why democratization and the construction of democratic socialism must be pursued alongside the other peoples of the region. Otherwise, a Kurdish state would be isolated and surrounded by enemies. As the fate of numerous national liberation movements has shown, the mere takeover of a state was not automatically a guarantee of freedom and equality. Often, this very goal was turned into the opposite, and the former liberators fell into the wake of larger powers, were isolated by economic blockades, or liberalized by being included in the world market, merging both economically and ideologically into the world system.
The Rojava revolution is taking the so-called third way, i.e., not the path of the regional nation-states that want to maintain the existing status quo before the turn of the millennium, and it will not integrate into the system of the hegemonic powers, such as the U.S. The third way consists instead of a broad, cross-ethnic democratization. With the battle for the Kurdish city of Kobane in 2014/2015, the self-defense units were able to stop the Islamic State’s ongoing advance, and the entire world turned its attention to Rojava. With the liberation of other cities, mostly inhabited by Arabs, such as Minbic and the former IS bastion of Raqqa, self-government was expanded to areas far outside the predominantly Kurdish settlement areas, i.e., Rojava. In the period that followed, a system was set up in the parts of Syria now known as the Autonomous Federation of Northern and Eastern Syria, in which lessons were introduced in the respective mother tongue, and religious freedom was guaranteed. Each of the numerous ethnic groups is represented within the self-government in its own political and civil society organizations. To ensure the self-defense of the liberated areas, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were founded, together with the YPJ and YPG units, Arab tribes, and groups that had armed themselves during the civil war and also advocated a democratic Syria, as well as combat units of ethnic minorities.
The system developed by Abdullah Öcalan, practiced in the self-government of northern and eastern Syria, is called Democratic Confederalism. It is based on the three basic principles of women’s liberation, radical democracy, and social ecology. In every social, political, and military institution, women and men are equally represented in leadership positions. The YPJ, the Women’s Defense Units, also gained a reputation as the first and only women’s army in the world through the fight against IS, which led to it being known all over the world. The principle of radical democracy is implemented by allowing neighborhoods and villages to organize themselves into communities and thereby make their own decisions. In addition to the municipalities, there are councils in the various areas of responsibility, which find their model in numerous revolutionary movements of the 20th century. The councils carry out larger tasks that exceed the possibilities of a single municipality and are a direct expression of democratic socialism.
More than 12 years have now passed since the revolution, and some areas have only been liberated since 2019. Many social changes are not achieved overnight through what is understood in many places as a revolution. In reality, the revolution is a continuous process in which people learn to understand the need to take their fate into their own hands and, of course, are creating to do so.
What is the background of the recent war and how did it evolve and develop?
Since the beginning of the revolution, the self-administration has been a thorn in the side of the Turkish state for it is one of the biggest obstacles for the imperialist project of a Neo-Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government under Recep Tayip Erdogan and his AKP has been pursuing this since 2011 and plans to bring parts of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon under its control. The Azerbaijani attack on Artsakh in 2023 occupied another part of Armenia. The ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of first the Armenian and then the Kurdish population which were begun during the foundation times of the Turkish republic is now to be brought to an end. This project goes back to the Misak-i-Milli (Ottoman National Pact), which covers the area in which the Young Turk movement and the founding father of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, actually wanted to build the Turkish state after the First World War. However, it was later destroyed by the Western powers, especially England and France, which led to the compromise of the current borders.
On the basis of the pact, Turkey’s AKP-MHP government sees all the mentioned areas, which were included in this Ottoman National Pact as its rightful property, which it now wants to reclaim. Within these borders, a homogeneous, unified and purely Turkish society based on racial and cultural homogeny is to be achieved. In this way, the Turkish state wants to become the main power in the Middle East.
Since 2016, Turkey has occupied parts of the self-administration in three major military operations: in 2016, 2018, and 2019. For several years, Turkey has been carrying out daily drone attacks on politicians in the self-administration, fighters in the self-defense units, and activists. With the overthrow of the Assad regime, Turkey has managed to pull off a move that will increase its sphere of influence in Syria many times over.
Both the SNA and an organization called Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) were involved in the overthrow of the Syrian regime. HTS emerged from the Islamist organization Al-Qaeda and, after the Islamic State was crushed, absorbed numerous former members. In the Idlib region in western Syria, which was controlled by Turkey from 2020, HTS received military training and prepared for the offensive that began on November 27. In addition to direct military support, the Turkish secret service (MIT) played an extraordinary role in its construction. In addition to Idlib, HTS took control of Cantin Afrin, which was occupied by Turkey in 2018. Last year, the Russian Federation began efforts to achieve reconciliation between Turkey and the Assad regime. Both confirmed their mutual interest in destroying the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. However, one of Assad’s basic conditions for cooperation was that Turkey leave the areas it occupied on Syrian territory, which Turkey rejected.
On November 27, the HTS and SNA offensive in the province of Aleppo began from the Idlib region. After a few days, the Islamist militias managed to take the city of Aleppo and advance further south, while the soldiers of the Assad regime fled without any real resistance. Since there are two districts in the north of the city that are mostly inhabited by Kurds and are part of the Autonomous Administration, the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) created a corridor to Aleppo, thus establishing a land connection to the remaining areas of the Autonomous Administration for the first time. After a short time, the corridor collapsed due to attacks by the Islamist militias. As the SDF announced in a statement, they had known about the planned offensive several months in advance. However, since no one had expected the Syrian regime’s army to collapse so quickly, the corridor could not be maintained due to the rapid advances of the SNA and HTS.
This resulted in a situation in which both the two self-governing districts of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh, as well as the Shehba region north of Aleppo, were surrounded. Hundreds of thousands of people fled to the Shehba region from the Afrin canton after it was occupied by Turkey in 2018. To prevent bloodshed, the self-administration announced on Sunday, December 1, that people would be evacuated to the self-administration areas further east. Over 120,000 people have already arrived in the Autonomous Self-Administration after just a few days, but there are reports of thousands of people being prevented from leaving the Shehba region by the Islamists. There are also reports of kidnappings and extra-legal executions, fueling fears that, as under IS, women could be enslaved and people could be tortured en masse.
Meanwhile, the self-governing districts in Aleppo are holding out despite being surrounded, having their water supplies cut off, and enduring a food blockade. Large parts of the population are involved in the defense, such as youth and women’s organizations, which, alongside the People’s and Women’s Defense Units, YPG, and YPJ, are securing the entrances to the districts against the intrusion of the Islamists.
After taking Aleppo, HTS managed to take the major cities of Hama and Homs in a very short time. After Bashar al-Assad fled the country on December 8, the Syrian regime collapsed completely. At the same time as the Syrian regime’s army withdrew, the Islamic State managed to bring some towns under its control in the centre of the country. Shortly afterwards, the self-defence units of the autonomous self-administration announced that they had taken control of additional areas south of the city of Raqqa and west of the Euphrates River, in the province of Deir ez-Zor, to contain the danger of a resurgence of the Islamic State. There are still numerous IS sleeper cells in large parts of Syria, including within the autonomous self-administration area. There are also prisons in several self-administration cities where IS supporters of numerous nationalities are imprisoned, who are not taken back by their countries of origin. As before the defeat, Turkey continues to support IS and allows it to operate freely within the occupied areas in northern Syria. This is intended to destabilize the self-administration.
The renewed Syrian civil war has numerous consequences that will have a major impact on the entire Middle East. The offensive of the Islamist militias and the fall of the Assad regime not only broke the influence of Iran, which had previously secured a bridge between Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, but also displaced the influence of the Russian Federation, which stood on the side of the Assad regime.
Due to recent events, 3/5 of Syria is now controlled partly directly and partly indirectly by Turkey. Just as with the wars in Palestine and Lebanon, the Middle East is undergoing a large-scale transformation, which has completely changed the status quo of the last decades in just a few months.
The Autonomous Self-Administration of North and East Syria is a thorn in the side of numerous powers in this geopolitical chess game. The Turkish state wants to use the current situation to launch a large-scale blow against the revolution. Since December 7, the Islamist SNA has begun attacking the Minbic region, while Turkey is simultaneously carrying out airstrikes. Likewise, Turkish President Erdogan has once again stressed that he wants to advance at least 30 kilometers north of the autonomous region. The signs are therefore pointing to war. However, 2018 and 2019 have already shown that resistance and international solidarity are capable of standing up to even the most powerful enemies. Anyone who asks themselves what the world we want to live in will look like tomorrow, when the rulers and the powerful usurp every spot on earth and try to wipe everything out, cannot help but ask themselves what they are doing to prevent this from happening.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Balochistan Post or any of its editors.