To all Antifascists and Revolutionaries ! 

Join us at the solidarity protest in Brussels (11/12 : 10:30 at Porte De Namur)

Get active and join the solidarity committees !

Defend Manbij and North-East Syria !
Mobilise against Turkish fascism !

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As we celebrate the fall of the Butcher of Damascus, the dictator Bashar al-Assad, our comrades from the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (DAANES) are fighting for their lives against Turkish-backed mercenaries, supported by the Turkish Air Force.

Manbij, a diverse city of 300.000 inhabitants, is under assault. If it falls, the road to the DAANES is open to a Turkish military offensive. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has referred to DAANES as a « terror state » and has consistently voiced support for the annihilation of its armed forces and Turkish colonisation of the region.

Manbij must hold. There can be no new Turkish invasion of Northern Syria. 

DAANES is one of the only revolutionary democratic and autonomous societies in the world. It is organised in autonomous administrative and military councils, independent worker and women’s unions, direct democratic processes, popular education, and full participation of women and minority groups to all political institutions. 

Their autonomous, antifascist struggle has inspired revolutionary movements and antifascist militants all around the planet, most notably in Myanmar, Greece, Chiapas, and West Papua.

DAANES was first established by beating back both the Assad regime and the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (DAESH), through the combined efforts of Kurdish, Arab, Syriac-Assyrian, Turkmen, Yezidi, and other minority groups’ revolutionary forces, with the support of thousands of internationalist fighters. 

Spanning an area larger than Belgium, and home to a population of 4.6 million, DAANES is far from a Utopia. It faces significant challenges, but its ideals and resilience make it worth defending, and it must be supported. 

As a consequence of imperialist divide-and-rule tactics, authoritarian state violence, eurocentrism, nationalism and sectarian conflicts, there has been a historical lack of support among the different peoples of the region. This must be remedied, especially in the face of Turkish and Zionist state aggression.

Since 2016, it has resisted constant Turkish assaults and bombing campaigns, as well as new DAESH infiltration attempts. Today, more than 80% of the DAANES’s power-grid has been destroyed by the Turkish air force, incapacitating hospitals, schools, and public services. Dams blocking the Euphrates river have also made farming impossible due to droughts. Political figures and journalists are constantly being assassinated by Turkish drones and Daesh sleeper cells. 

The war on the DAANES is a clear part of the NATO imperialist aggression against the peoples of the Middle East. Turkey possesses the second-largest military force in the entire NATO alliance. 50% of Israeli oil transitions through Turkish territory. The US and Turkey have aligned interests and are major « security partners ». The military operations against DAANES are part of the US strategy to reshape and control the Middle East.

It is not a coincidence that the US and other western powers pulled back their troops from Northern Syria in 2019, at the exact moment Turkish forces invaded. It is also not a coincidence that Israel and Turkey are now carrying out perfectly coordinated bombing campaigns.

While often-designated as « US-backed » by mainstream media to undermine its legitimacy and appropriate its democratic and feminist image, the DAANES has been the target of all regional imperialist forces.

The US bases on its soil date back to the international coalition against Daesh, in which almost all regional actors participated, like Iran, the fundamentalist militias and the Assad regime. The US are only there to maintain American control over DAANES oil fields. The US has not prevented Turkey from supporting Daesh, or from bombing and invading the DAANES.

Ironically, when asked why they do not prevent these bombings, the US simply state that their forces coordinate with DAANES for no other reason than fighting DAESH. Meanwhile, the US lists the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation and is offering $12,000,000 for the capture of its leaders.

For some time, the DAANES has tried to move away from the US presence, instigating talks with rival international actors. American support for renewed Turkish assaults arises from this development.

Meanwhile, official statements from the Turkish government and parliament announce the start of Turkish influence over the coming Syrian interim government, and the coming expulsion of Kurdish-led forces from the North. 

While mainstream media are turning a blind eye, Turkish state media are openly celebrating the imminent assaults.

In Belgium, Grey Wolf leaders have called for the extermination of the Syrian Kurds. Erdogan and Turkish Neo-Ottoman fascists publicly dream of the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire. They claim that cities like Aleppo and Afrin are Turkish territory, and Turkish flags have been planted on Aleppo’s citadel. 

Much violence has already occurred. It is clear that every city that falls to the Turkish-backed SNA will be subjected to mass persecutions and possible ethnic cleansing. And not only against the Kurdish population. 

There are roughly 4,000,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey. In recent years, Syrian and other Arab refugees have faced continuous and widespread violence in Turkey. Turkish anti-Syrian lynchings, beatings and systematic state violence have contributed to new forced displacements of Syrian refugees and their arrival in Belgium in recent years. 

Over 90% of Syrian refugees in Turkey say they are exposed to forms of discrimination by the Turkish administration and by civilians, which includes violence, censoring of non-Turkish languages and deportation threats.

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The Turkish regime’s violent patriarchy poses a direct threat to the gender minorities who have conquered military, economic and political autonomy in North East Syria. Women are at the forefront of the DAANES and its Diaspora. They have their own armed forces (YPJ), tribunals and councils, participate in all parts of society, and take a central part in all political and economic processes and institutions. 

If the DAANES falls, they will be subjected to the violent retribution of the Turkish state forces.

This only adds to the widespread violence that Turkey’s Kurdish population has lived through for more than a century. Tens of thousands of Kurds have been killed in the Turkish wars to subjugate the Kurdish people. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. 

Let us not forget that present-day Turkey was founded on the genocide of the Armenians, the Syriac-Assyrian-Aramean peoples and the Pontic Greeks. These three genocides are still denied by the Turkish government and Turkish nationalists, who vandalise monuments and assault commemorations held by these communities, even in Europe. 

Turkish state mercenaries have also participated in the devastation of Lybia and the ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Naghorno-Karabakh, again with Western support.

Turkey has been bombing Northern Iraq for years, and actively participates in the persecution of Middle Eastern refugees on their way to Europe. It uses these refugees as a bargaining chip against the European Union, exploiting their suffering.

The Turkish invasion must be defeated. Syria must be for the Syrian people themselves, in all their ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, standing together against all reactionary, fascist and imperialist forces. 

No more imperialist aggression ! Down with fascism ! No more proxy wars !

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Down with Neo-Ottomanism and Zionism ! NATO out of Syria !

Bijî Berxwedana Rojava ! Long live the Syrian Revolution !
Şehîd Namirin !