The Revolutionary Construction and Road Workers’ Union (Dev-Yapı-Iş), the All Automotive and Metalworkers’ Union (TOMIS), the Shipbuilding, Maritime Transport, Warehouse and Port Workers’ Union (LIMITER-İŞ), the Construction and Road Workers’ Union (Yapı Yol-Iş), the Construction Workers’ Union (Inşaat-Iş), and the Revolutionary Textile Workers’ Union (DEV-TEKSTIL) issued a joint written statement regarding the attacks carried out by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and Turkey-backed paramilitary groups against North and East Syria.
The statement said: “Armed gangs nurtured and strengthened by imperialism, together with their collaborators, are continuing their attacks against Kurdish and Alawite workers in Syria. The HTS regime, brought to power with the backing of the United States, Israel, and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), is implementing an inhumane policy of massacre with the open or covert support of these same forces. Those who impose brutal exploitation conditions and an unregulated labor regime are advancing along the same path in Syria, directly targeting the political and social gains that the oppressed Kurdish people have achieved over many years at great cost. For imperialist powers and their collaborators seeking a new division of the world, the objective is to impose destruction on working people through a system of exploitation, repression, and war. These forces, which brought HTS to power in Syria as the remnants of the reactionary jihadist al-Qaeda and the ISIS, are carrying out every form of atrocity to keep the region under their control.”
Pressure on workers is pressure on the Kurdish people
In the statement, it was underlined that the genocidal policy implemented by Israel in Gaza is intended to be applied against everyone who stands in opposition to the world they envision. It said, “The world they dream of is clear: a world in which oppressed peoples are rendered unable to breathe and forced into unconditional surrender, and in which workers and laborers are imposed a life that is nothing other than a system of exploitation and death. Today, every attack on democratic rights and freedoms in the country is part of these same attacks. What is now sought to be carried out in Rojava is at the same time intertwined with advancing the strategic line they have determined for the unrestrained exploitation of labor. Pressure on workers is pressure on Kurdish people. The fate of the Kurdish people being massacred across all parts of the Middle East is not separate from our fate.”
We must stand with the resistance of the Kurdish, Alawite, and Druze peoples
In the statement, attention was drawn to the fact that everything being sought in Rojava is being imposed on labor in other forms as well, and the following was stated: “Strike-breaking, hostility toward trade union organization, and even the seizure of wages, the most basic right, are becoming increasingly normalized. Any support given to these aggressive policies will not only turn workers and laborers into accomplices to the bloodshed unfolding across the Middle East but will also lead to the economic and social cost of these wars once again being imposed on us. This is the counterpart, on the labor front, of what is being sought in Rojava. For this reason, standing shoulder to shoulder with the resistance and struggle of the Kurdish, Alawite, and Druze peoples emerges as a historical responsibility of the working class. The internationalist struggle of the working class requires this.”
We will not allow this
The statement also said: “As the vanguard forces of the working class, we have a word to say against the oppression being inflicted in Syria, in Rojava, or anywhere in the world, with the values that constitute the very spirit of our class: we will struggle to make the world a place where not the exploiters and the oppressors, but the flag of labor, freedom, and equality waves. Rojava is here, within us. Those who cannot tolerate Rojava are also enemies of our organized struggle. Those who seek to dismantle Rojava are the same forces that refuse to recognize our right to strike and our right to trade union organization. We will not allow this.”