The Kurdish people have thwarted a new international conspiracy by resisting and preventing a major genocidal assault in Rojava.
Following the attacks launched on 6 January by HTS mercenaries affiliated with the Syrian interim government, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Kurdish people were persistently accused of defeat and placed in the crosshairs, particularly in Turkey, by both the state and various political and social actors. During this period, while no meaningful criticism or reaction was directed at those who were the actual perpetrators of the attacks, the insistence on constructing a narrative of Kurdish defeat became a subject of intense public debate.
Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Cahit Kırkazak spoke to ANF about the attacks on Rojava and the developments that unfolded in Turkey during this period.
Kurds halted massacre through resistance in Rojava
Cahit Kırkazak said that regional states and international powers are attempting to reshape the Middle East by disregarding the Kurds, adding that the Kurdish people have defended their own lands against the attacks. Kırkazak said: “For the past weeks in Rojava, we have witnessed efforts by regional states and international powers to impose a new status quo in the Middle East by excluding the Kurds, and we have also seen how Kurdish resistance has blocked these efforts. The attempts by Israel and Turkey, both of which claim to shape a new status quo in the Middle East, to assert decisive influence over Syria paved the way, particularly through Turkey’s anti-Kurdish stance in Rojava, for Israel to entrench itself in Damascus on 6 January through the Paris Agreement.
In their competing claims over Damascus, Israel has sought to develop relations with the Druze, who are its neighbors on Syrian territory. Turkey, by contrast, has refused to recognize the Kurds in Syria, has excluded them, and even moved to undermine the agreement that the Kurds reached with the Syrian interim administration on 4 January. Through the Paris Agreement on 6 January, Turkey both handed Damascus over to Israel and opened the door to a serious massacre against the Kurds. However, through their resistance in Rojava and in all areas where they are present, the Kurds halted this massacre. The danger, of course, has not ended.
At the end of three weeks, the Kurds defended their own lands and initiated a process of democratic integration with Syria as a political actor under the arbitration and guarantees of the United States and France. By reaching an agreement with the Kurds, Syria strengthened its position, while Israel secured its borders by concluding both security and intelligence agreements with the administration in Damascus and crossed a significant threshold in its claim to become the new status quo in the Middle East. The United States and the European Union took another step in implementing the scenario they seek to stage in the Middle East through Ahmed al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani).
The only remaining loser was Turkey. In the full view of the world, Turkey’s anti-Kurdish position was once again laid bare. In the minds and emotional world of the Kurdish people, a deep rupture with Turkey took place; and Turkey missed significant opportunities in the contest to become a dominant force in the Middle East, ceding the upper hand to Israel.”
Kurds have never abandoned the struggle for freedom
Kırkazak said that contrary to claims made about the recent agreement in Rojava, it has once again become clear that the will of the Kurdish people cannot be broken. He continued: “I In the specific context of Rojava, this agreement, first and foremost, means that even if all anti-Kurdish forces act together, they have had to accept that the Kurds’ will for freedom cannot be crushed. With the division of Kurdish lands among regional states in the twentieth century, the Kurds were subjected by Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq to repeated attempts at physical and cultural genocide, from Sheikh Said to Mount Ararat, from Dersim to Mahabad, from Halabja to Kobanê. Massacres were carried out, yet the Kurds have never abandoned their struggle for freedom and equality.
The regional states that formed the anti-Kurdish alliance moved, after 2003 in Southern Kurdistan (Başur), from a security-based approach toward the Kurdish freedom struggle to steps aimed at political solutions, which were pursued in Northern Kurdistan (Bakur) through the Peace and Democratic Society Process. The agreement reached on 30 January in Rojava can be read as a paradigmatic shift in the approach toward the freedom struggle of the Kurds of Rojava.
The administration in Damascus has now accepted that, instead of suppressing the freedom struggle of the Kurds of Rojava through security and violence-based policies, it must seek a solution through dialogue and political engagement. This acceptance was achieved despite Turkey’s hostile stance. This should be regarded as an important step and a meaningful gain for both regional security and Kurdish freedom.
In the period ahead, the administration in Damascus must approach the 30 January agreement on a democratic basis and fulfill its commitments. The United States and France, which serve as guarantors of the agreement, must also assume their responsibilities and take the necessary steps to ensure that the 30 January agreement is implemented in practice on a democratic basis. Undoubtedly, for this agreement to be concretely realized, it must be anchored in constitutional and legal guarantees in line with the spirit of the accord.”
Kurds must build the integration framework proposed by Mr. Öcalan
Kırkazak also addressed the repercussions that the agreement and integration process unfolding in Syria would have in Turkey and said the following about its impact on Turkey. He said: “This agreement will inevitably have both political and sociological repercussions in Turkey. Its political impact is unavoidable. When one looks at developments in the Middle East, the region needs a new political design. In this new design, the Kurds will inevitably acquire a status. The political form of this status will be determined by the approach of the regional states. If the regional states abandon their century-long policies of denial and monism, and move toward a democratic social contract that recognizes the collective rights of the Kurds and brings the Kurds within the framework of the law, then the Kurds will build their status in the countries where they live on the basis of democratic integration, along the lines of the democratic society axis proposed by Mr. Öcalan for the Middle East.
However, if the regional states, and Turkey in particular, persist in their policies of denial and monism, then, as Öcalan has stated many times and as the Chair of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, most recently expressed, Turkey will also take its share of the new regional design, and after Iran, it will be Turkey’s turn.
As proposed by Mr. Öcalan, recognizing the collective rights of the Kurds through the method of democratic integration and accepting Kurdish status by bringing the Kurds within the framework of the law would serve the interests of both peoples and states. If the new status quo in the Middle East is imposed through wars and top-down political engineering, this will be to the detriment of the peoples, and no regional state will be able to remain as it is today.
But what is clear is this: in the new century, the Kurds will inevitably attain a collective status. The Kurds are neither helpless nor without alternatives.
The sociological impact on Kurdish people is also unavoidable. Since its founding, the Republic of Turkey has displayed intolerance toward the collective gains of the Kurds and has sought to suppress these gains. This attitude is expressed in the collective memory of the Kurdish people with the saying, ‘Even if a Kurd were to achieve a gain in space, Turkey would oppose it.’
Moreover, the founding will of the Republic of Turkey acted contrary to the promises made to the Kurds during the establishment of the republic, creating a profound crisis of trust toward state authority. This has been articulated by Kurds as a historical memory through the expression ‘bextê Romê tine’ (nothing good comes from Rome). The anti-Kurdish attitudes and rhetoric of Turkish officials regarding Rojava have further reinforced these two sentiments among the Kurds.
In particular, the undermining of the talks on 4 January, the political and logistical support given from 6 January onward to the attacks by HTS mercenaries against the Kurds, and the manner in which media outlets close to the government and state authorities covered the attacks on the Kurds have deepened the fractures in the emotional world of the Kurdish people. In this sense, the sociological repercussions of the attacks on Rojava for Turkey will undoubtedly shape the construction of the future.”
Kurds have waged a struggle for freedom in Syria for years
Kırkazak also addressed the issue of the Syrian interim administration recognizing the Kurdish presence and acknowledging Kurdish rights, stressing that the Kurdish struggle for democracy and freedom in Syria is historical. Kırkazak also said: “The assessment that Syria did not recognize the Kurds and did not accept them as citizens is an incomplete one. As in every country where they live, the Kurdish people’s struggle for democracy and freedom in Syria is historical. After the Kurds were divided into four parts under the Lausanne Treaty, they continued both their political and cultural struggle against Syria’s monist policies.
In 1936, particularly in the Jazira region, they demanded autonomy together with Armenians and Assyrians, who are components of the region. In 1937, they entered resistance, but they did not achieve the desired outcome. The Kurdish struggle for democracy in Syria continued in 1957 with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS). However, in 1962, the Baath regime stripped 120,000 Kurds in the al-Hasakah region, many of whom had moved to the Rojava region from Iraq and Turkey due to repression, of their citizenship. In this context, the struggle in Rojava must be understood as the Kurds’ struggle for freedom, democracy and collective rights. The 30 January agreement represents a new paradigm in the Syrian administration’s approach to the Kurdish struggle for freedom and democracy. This paradigm reflects the choice of political and dialogue-based methods instead of security-centered policies.
From a Kurdish perspective, not everything has been resolved. However, as I stated earlier, the risk remains that the Syrian state may once again undermine alliances from within and fail to honor its promises, as it did after making various pledges during the 1936 autonomy process with the region’s components. The signs of this risk can be seen both in the Syrian state’s historical practices and in the fourteen-month record of Al-Jolani, including the failure to fulfill commitments.
The Turkish state clearly sees the following in the process of the Middle East’s new political design: if the requirements of this process are not met, Turkey will face outcomes like those experienced by Iraq and Syria, and to the process currently unfolding in Iran. Officials openly state that developments in the Middle East were the reason for initiating the Peace and Democratic Society Process. What will spare Turkey from being subjected to such processes is the recognition of the collective rights of the Kurds, securing the Kurds’ status within the framework of the law, and implementing without delay and without deception the democratic integration process proposed by Öcalan. If the Turkish state succeeds in carrying out the democratic integration process without resorting to deception, it will both avoid the processes that regional states have faced and make a significant contribution to the democracy and security of the country and the region.”
The anti-Kurdish alliance came together based on interests
Kırkazak said the anti-Kurdish alliance has come together based on interests, noting that in a region like the Middle East, groups and actors with very different outlooks converge when it comes to hostility toward the Kurds. Kırkazak also said: “States conduct their foreign policy with the pragmatic notion that ‘states have no morality, they have interests.’ When we look at the anti-Kurdish alliance, we see those regional states, lacking any moral compass, act by pooling their interests around hostility toward the Kurds. On the one hand, secular, Sunni and Turkist Turkey; on the other, the secular Arab nationalist Baath regimes in Iraq and Syria; and alongside them, the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran. Although these four dissimilar states have different calculations, interests and claims in the Middle East, we see that for a century they have converged in their hostility toward the Kurds.
It may be understandable that states lack morality, but it is deeply distressing that democratic institutions and organizations, democratic faith communities and leftist movements have failed morally in this process as well. While the positions of the administrations of anti-Kurdish states did not come as a surprise to the Kurds, they caused deep anger and resentment. The attitudes of democratic organizations, democratic faith communities and some leftist movements, however, caused profound disappointment among the Kurds. Although this situation led to feelings of both disappointment and isolation, it also quickly fostered a renewed sense of cohesion. This, in turn, has contributed to the recent acceleration and practical realization of Kurdish unity.
However, the anti-Kurdish stance of segments that present themselves as opposition creates a different kind of danger. Today, the attitudes and rhetoric of certain groups, groups that are being manipulated by specific centers through nationalist sentiments, toward the determination of peoples to live together and toward the will for fraternity among peoples serve neither the interests of the Kurds nor those of the wider society. The real aim of those who manipulate the public through such discourse is to polarize peoples against one another and to open up new opportunities for monist regimes. This must be clearly understood.”
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