Col Zone media.
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 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 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
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 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
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 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
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.
Hello, dear James, I hope you're doing well.
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 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.
It is.
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 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.
They have been raised to earth. From the start of this.
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.
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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 with the with the Sirian part of Augustan.
People here. So I'm especially in getting one or not the pewty control. I think that.
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.
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 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 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 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 nineteen eighty four, which is actually forty years ago. Yesterday, you were listening to this on the day it comes out.
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 from fifteen of August nineteen eighty.
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 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 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, 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 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, here's an ad break. The situation in Iraq is different. The Kurtis do An Aotomina's region enjoys a great degree 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 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 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, 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 over Kurdistan, and apple is also the evocative form of the Comanche word for a paternal uncle.
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 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. In doing so, he educated, he trained, and organized the Kurdish people in Rajawa, Kerkistan.
In this sense, his struggle is twofold.
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 Sydian regime, and he managed to run a delicate balance to foil the repressive measures of the Syrian regime.
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
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.
Secondly, he got this nationally and culturally aware people of Rajava to support the struggle in North Kordistan.
Therefore, thousands of Rojava.
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 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, and let's say a philosophical point between Leader Apple and the Rajava people because a neglected and divided people had united around him.
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
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, 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 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
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, 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 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 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 who gets caught in the crossfire. As Nagros explained, this is not new, but the recent change has been notable well.
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 in that period it only had limited number of barracks and bases in.
The Iraqi and the Iraqi territory.
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 goal is to is to annex all these lands to the Turkish territory.
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 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 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 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.
Data is that they use dogs.
They tie explosives to the dogs and send the dogs into the tunnels and they explode the dogs wire remote control.
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.
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 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.
I asked Mohammed to explain how people reacting to the current situation.
You know, you know invted some parts of you could understand that.
Actually the the areas under the control or under the influence of character instead of KDP, and you know that people here have dislikes.
This issue is like the version of Turkey to this area.
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.
So it's kind of an inversion.
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.
That they're live.
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 But things on Earth is telling something else.
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.
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 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
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 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 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, 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. 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.
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 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 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 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.
This is genocide.
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 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.
And this let's say, what now happens to the curse.
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 draw a Jihads buffer result between these.
Areas.
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
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 x DASH members, ex NSA members, x al Qaeda.
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.
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 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
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.
People are.
Frustrate with such such issues, with such situation.
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.
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, you know, loss of the people.
Why you are not depending on.
Your will or the force of your people, why you are became like like a feather, a feather to the to the windsor of.
So forth, which are not you're they're not your friends.
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.
Legacy of this issue.
We have the legacy of struggle in this area from nineteen six.
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, 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.
And now in those areas tens of thousands of Turkish troops, hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, drones.
Brothers have been deploved to the area.
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.
As you may know, as.
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 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.
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 CPT on their website.
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 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 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.
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 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, 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 to another state to drop on children, both in Kurdistan and in Palestine.
There was the problem.
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.
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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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
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.
Revolutionary youth, revolutionary.
People, men and women can come and join the struggle in the mountains of Kurdistan, Curd.
Establish your home.
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