Solidarity With Kobane

Following massive protests in London, more than hundred people gathered in Leicester city centre earlier this afternoon to call for an end to imperialist violence. Organized by the local Kurdish community, today’s rally aimed to call attention to the nightmare being inflicted upon Syrian Kurds, most particularly in the town of Kobane, which for some months now has been under threat of eradication by ISIS.

Speakers at today’s event highlighted the nature of ongoing demonstrations in Turkey — whose border runs next to Kobane — where defiant protesters have called upon the Turkish regime to stop supporting ISIS. However the undemocratic Turkish government has ignored their pleas, instead reacting by murdering the very protesters showing solidarity with the people of Kobane.

So Kurds can defend themselves from ISIS, speakers called for the British government to provide advanced weaponry to the people of Kobane so they have a fighting chance of repelling ISIS. There is no doubt that ordinary Kurds should be entitled to arm themselves, so that collectively and democratically they can protect themselves from slaughter at the hands of ISIS. Britain’s ominous role in the Middle East has already proven that they cannot be trusted to provide weapons in a nonsectarian fashion. Any involvement by the British government to supply weapons will only ever promote the needs of the super-rich elites who seek to divide the working-class, so that in the long-run they can more effectively plunder the region for their own benefit.

Evidently the pioneering model of democratic governance (referred to as “Democratic Confederalism”) that has been rapidly growing in recent years within the three Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria known as Rojava (West Kurdistan) is seen as a threat to all imperialist forces. The Turkish government, which is certainly no friend of democracy, is particularly irked by this democratic experiment, as is the British government — whose own limited form of democracy seems to be in terminal decline, with all the mainstream political Party’s now vying to meet the needs of the super-rich.

While there are strict limits to how far Rojava’s laudatory democratic strivings will flourish when confined to operating within a capitalist framework, the Socialist Party believes that despite the urgency of the current situation, external military support should not be sought from self-interested imperialist countries. Instead the democratic aspirations of existing institutions should be extended to also include the creation of a “voluntary socialist confederation of the Middle East [which] would enable all peoples to freely and democratically decide their own fates.”

At present:

“The “Constitution of the Rojava Canton”, aims at establishing a “social contract” to run the autonomous areas, the right to work, social security, health, adequate housing etc. However the economic basis upon which such demands are supposed to be realised and guaranteed remains very evasive. While some occasional references are made to ‘socialism’, in reality, this is seen as something for the future and meanwhile the political organisations running the region plan to work within capitalism.”

This is precisely why efforts should be made to put forward an explicitly socialist program which can work to unite all people across the region, and ultimately the world; which although difficult to implement, is the only way to bring an end to all repression and imperial violence.

Further reading: “PYD responds to Human Rights Watch report” (July 2014).