Film director and screenwriter Önder Çakar spoke about the resistance in Rojava, the destruction caused by the war, and the life Kurds have woven through art, saying that the Rojava Revolution is not limited to Kurds alone. He stressed that Kurdish-Arab-Turkmen divisions would benefit no one in the region and shared his assessment of the process.
Çakar said the war in Rojava has never truly stopped and that the region remains under constant attack. He noted that attacks were first carried out by al-Nusra, followed by ISIS, and that Turkey later became involved in the war. He said cultural and artistic work has continued under extremely harsh conditions.
Çakar said, “There were constant bombings and attacks. We were never able to build cinemas for our children freely and without fear. In the early days of the revolution, we screened Charlie Chaplin films. Since the Amuda Massacre, we have always worked under the fear of attack and massacre.”
Çakar said they also faced major difficulties when they screened the film Kobanê for the public, noting that air strikes prevented open-air screenings and forced them into cramped halls.
Çakar said they have not given up artistic production despite the conditions of war and that they go to areas of resistance to raise morale:
“We did not stop during this war either. Together with many of our friends, we go to places where resistance is taking place with our music, our words, and our poems to try to lift morale. Our cinema collective produces promotional work for some films. Our hearts ache and bleed. When villages are in flames, we do not comb our hair. Our morale is not broken, and we have not turned away from ourselves. We cannot afford to halt our activities. If we breathe, and even if we cannot breathe, we owe revolutionary art to this people with our very bones.”
Çakar said they have built an ideological bond with the Arab people, noting that this is not based on interests but on a shared set of ideas. He said they are striving for a social model grounded in equal citizenship, freedom of belief, and democratic rights.
Çakar said they envision a society that defends humanity against the impositions of capitalism through solidarity, sharing, communes, and a collective way of life, adding that art forms the cultural foundation of this model. He said the 14 years of experience in Rojava, although short in terms of human history, have produced an important accumulation of experience and knowledge.
An attempt was made to provoke Kurdish-Arab conflict
Çakar said efforts were being made to create a ground for ethnic conflict in the region and stressed that they stand firmly against this: “We stand against this with our lives and our full commitment. I am not even Kurdish; I am Turkish. The reason we are here is not because this is Kurdistan, but to experience freedom and to create art. The paradigm of the Democratic Nation can only truly take life in these geographies.”
Çakar referred to a shared history of struggle with Arab friends spanning half a century and said the culture of brotherhood stretching from the Beqaa Valley to the Palestinian camps has grown through art.
Çakar said there are theater groups in cities such as Raqqa and Tabqa, and that Arabic-language plays also took part in the theater festival held in Kobanê in the name of Martyr Mizgin. He said the standing ovation in Kobanê for a theater troupe coming from a city that once served as the “capital” of ISIS was a powerful demonstration of the brotherhood of peoples.
Çakar said Kurdish artists are resisting the attacks, but that artists around the world remain silent, adding that such silence amounts to complicity in massacres. He asked, “There is a great massacre in Rojava. Cultural values are being destroyed. If artists do not defend these, what will they defend?”
Çakar said the ideology behind ISIS’s attack on Charlie Hebdo constitutes a global threat and concluded: “No place is safe. Where fascism and darkness prevail, there can be no security. I call on artists around the world to raise their voices and defend the Rojava Revolution.”
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