The series of occupational and annexational wars, which are part of a regional expansionist strategy, has two main targets: the Medya Defense Area, the liberated zones that have become pillars of the revolutionary Kurdish freedom movement, and Rojava. The war targeting the Medya Defense Areas in South Kurdistan aims to liquidate the most advanced revolutionary parts and achievements of the Kurdish resistance. It is clear that the next step will be the occupation of Rojava.
The colonial reflexes and practices of the collaborationist Turkish ruling classes never change. The practice colonialist domination is encountered in all areas of life in form of a deep-rooted hostility towards the Kurdish nation, a century ago as today. Recently, the historian Dr. ?smet Konak was able to retrieve a document on the colonialist approach of the Turkish state, which is based on denial and rejection, towards the Kurdish nation. The document, which summarizes the historical continuity and reality of Turkish colonialism, also reveals the deep historical background of the approach of Turkish colonialism towards every part of the fragmented Kurdistan. It enables us to understand the known reason for existence of the current colonialist occupational and annexational wars of the Turkish bourgeois state towards Bakûr (North Kurdistan), Başûr (South Kurdistan) and Rojava (West Kurdistan).
The September 19, 1929 telegram document regarding Kurdistana Sor (Red Kurdistan) that Dr. smet Konak recovered after the the century-old secrecy ban was lifted, reveals the unchanging denialist colonial character of the Turkish bourgeois state in all its truth. The telegram sent from the Foreign Ministry of the Kemalist government of the period to the Moscow Embassy is burning with concern about Kurdistana Sor. The fact that the Yazidi Kurdish national community gained a cultural regional autonomy status in the Caucasus hurriedly mobilized the denialist and colonialist Kemalist dictatorship. The telegram in question announced that an autonomous Kurdistan would be established in the Soviet Union and its capital would be Minked. At that time, Kurdistana Sor was a narrowly autonomous administrative unit with the status of an okrug (autonomous administrative unit in the Soviet Union, subservent to its oblast). The colonialist Kemalist regime was afraid that the autonomous Kurdistana Sor would expand its borders by including the Kurds in the city of Ganja. It took action for this purpose and pursued a policy of diminishing the existence of Kurdistana Sor.
The Kurds of the Lachin region in the Soviet Union obtained autonomy in the west of Nagorno-Karabakh on July 16, 1923, as a direct result of the USSR’s program to resolve national issues. Kurdistana Sor was part of the Soviet Socialist Republic Azerbaijan. The capital of the autonomous region was the Lachin district. It was established with the special interest and contribution of Lenin and Narimanov, and included the districts of Kubatli, Kelbajar and Zangilan, in addition to Lachin. According to demographic data from the 1926 census in the Soviet Union 51.442 people lived in the Kurdistana Sor autonomous region. 37.470 of them were Kurds, 13.520 were Azeris and the rest were Armenians.
Kurdistana Sor lasted only 6 years. On April 8, 1929, by a decision taken at the Fifth Congress of the Soviets of Azerbaijan, Kurdistana Sor Uyezd (administrative district, similar to a canton) was abolished along with 13 other autonomous regions. Kurdistana Sor was defined as a new administrative unit, an okrug. The Kurdistana Sor Okrug was established on May 25, 1930. Two months later, however, on July 23, 1930, it was abolished by a joint decision of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. With this joint decision, all okrugs in the Soviet Republic Azerbaijan were lost their status as administrative units. They were replaced by the system of rayons. However, in the new administrative arrangement, the Kurdistan rayon no existed. Thus, Kurdistana Sor lost its historical right to exist as an autonomous structure.
The Kurdish nation’s self-determination, national independence or the state of gaining a national status is the greatest fear of Turkish colonialism. Because Turkish colonialism has built its existence on the rejection and denial of the Kurdish nation. Any kind of “national legal status” that will be embodied with the collective rights of the Kurdish nation for the Republic of Turkey is a matter of life and death for Turkish colonialism.
The Republic of Turkey, which approached Kurdistana Sor in the Soviet Union outside its own colonial state borders as a survival issue, implemented a strategy of suppressing Kurdish rebellions with massacres that amounted to genocide. The Kemalist bourgeoisie, which suppressed the Koçgiri rebellion with a massacre in 1921 before the Kemalist republican regime and the 1924 constitution, unswervingly followed the path of denying the existence of the Kurdish nation and assimilating it throughout the century. Each of the ?eyh Sait, A?rı and Dersim rebellions were suppressed with racist and genocidal massacre practices.
The Kemalist dictatorship’s approach to Kurdistana Sor and the current Turkish bourgeois state’s approach to Rojava or South Kurdistan are the same. Denialist colonialism wants to prevent that the Kurdish nation gain collective cultural, political rights and legal status in their historical homeland or any land where they live as a national community. It sees and codes the Kurdish nation becoming a political entity with its collective rights as an issue of survival since its establishment.
Wherever the Kurdish nation has taken its historical right to exist with the strength of the freedom struggle and collective national status and gains, there it has stood against brutal Turkish colonialism. In every process of the formation of the regional autonomy status of South Kurdistan, it has tried to prevent the Kurdish nation from making achievements by using all its means and power. The colonialist Turkish bourgeois army has demonstrated its will to eliminate the de facto Kurdish autonomy that emerged after the 1990 Gulf War through occupation. But it could not achieve this wish when it was opposed by the USA and the Western imperialist coalition states. Likewise, when Barzanî applied for an independence referendum, the colonialist Turkish bourgeois state stood against the Kurdish nation becoming a state with the same policy.
The ongoing war of the colonialist Turkish bourgeois state against the Medya Defense Areas in South Kurdistan is a new application of the same colonialist logic and strategy. For the denialist colonialist Turkish bourgeois state, the prevention of the most advanced strata of the Kurdish nation and the liquidation of its revolutionary structure are embodied in the Rojava revolution, the de facto autonomy of ?engal, the PKK (Partîya Karkêrên Kurdistan — Worker’s Party of Kurdistan) and the Medya Defense Areas. The colonialist logic operates with the strategy of “prevent the most advanced and revolutionary, limit what you cannot prevent, weaken, take over and make collaborators of what you can limit”. The political lens we will hold over Turkish colonialism from history to the present will present us with a simple picture of this.
Today, Erdoğan is constantly calling for talks with the Syrian state and Assad, whom he called a murderer yesterday, on behalf of the Turkish bourgeois state. These hypocritical bourgeois entreaties have only one goal: to eliminate the Rojava revolution and the most advanced political gains of the Kurdish nation. Erdoğan is offering colonial cooperation to the Damascus regime. He says: “Let’s liquidate the Rojava revolution and the gains of the Kurds together”. Moreover, he is proposing to do this by maintaining the Turkish occupation of territories in North and East Syria .
As is known, the collaborationist Turkish capital oligarchy was eager to become a regional expansionist power by relying on the developing capital accumulation. It followed a neo-Ottomanist policy of regional expansionist. It took on the position of a complete “conjuncture opportunist”. It attempted to benefit from the conditions created by the Arab revolutionary process. In the civil war of the neighboring Syrian peoples with the Damascus regime, it put the political Islamist Al Nusra and other Ikhwanist gangs, the fascist and genocidal DAESH, and the Islamist gangs it transferred from the Caucasus, Central Asia, China (specifically Turkestan) and Libya into the service of the dirty and bloody ambitions of the neo-Ottomanist Turkish colonialism.
By bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Syria, it pursued a strategy to prevent the Kurdish democratic revolutionary movement in Rojava and a possible Kurdish status from the very beginning. Because Turkish colonialism facing a new Kurdish status that it histoically feared. The Turkish bourgeois state could not prevent the Rojava revolution from gaining its right to exist.
Indeed, it did its best to attach the military forces of the Rojava revolution to the Free Syrian Army and the political forces to the SUMDK. When the insidious trap of eliminating the Rojava revolution through cooperation failed, the policy of colonial survival came to the surface in form of the dirtiest hostility against the Kurds. It cooperated with the US, Russia and Daesh to eliminate the Rojava revolution.
The colonialist Turkish bourgeois state, which wants to overthrow the Assad government in Damascus and establish the political Islamist Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) government in its place, occupied a significant part of Syria through proxy wars. In Rojava, it launched a series of occupational attacks and wars that spanned years, directly with the power and support of the colonialist Turkish bourgeois army. It occupied the cantons of Efrîn, Girê Spî and Serêkaniyê in Rojava.
The colonialist Turkish bourgeois state is currently waging new wars of occupation and annexation in order to realize the ideal of the National Pact engraved in its foundation. The series of occupational and annexational wars, which are part of a regional expansionist strategy, has two main targets: the Medya Defense Area, the liberated zones that have become pillars of the revolutionary Kurdish freedom movement, and Rojava. The war targeting the Medya Defense Areas in South Kurdistan aims to liquidate the most advanced revolutionary parts and and achievements of the Kurdish resistance. It is clear that the next step will be the occupation of Rojava.
The entire working-left movement must oppose the unjust occupation and annexation war that the colonialist Turkish bourgeois state is waging against the Medya Defense Areas in South Kurdistan. Working-left forces that claim to be socialist must look back to history and develop the anti-colonialist struggle by leaning on the national liberation program of socialism that brought Kurdistana Sor into being. They must amplify their political agitation and action with the slogans of “Colonialist army, get out of South Kurdistan” and “Death to fascism, freedom to the Kurdish nation”.
*Editorial article of the 177th issue of the ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated July 26.