Statement in solidarity with Rojava against Turkish military invasion
Solidarity with Rojava! Stop the Turkish invasion!
12 October 2019
The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) strongly condemns the invasion of Rojava in North Syria by the Turkish military forces.
The unprovoked attacks by the Turkish military on Rojava will bring more bloodbaths, devastation, death and suffering to the people in the region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is committing ethnic cleansing and crime against humanity in North Syria by ordering the invasion. The Turkish military operation has to be stopped.
The military aggression which has been planned for some time by the autocratic Erdogan regime is aimed at creating a Turkish-occupied so-called “safe zone”, by cleansing the region of Kurdish communities in order to make room to dump at least 3 million Syrian refugees who are now living in Turkey. It is also intended not just to remove the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the Syrian-Turkish border, but also to destroy the radical democratic and egalitarian transformative social experiment of the Rojava Revolution.
The Rojava Revolution has brought new hope to the oppressed people in the Middle East. The radical democratic forces of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party engaging in the process of building a democratic, anti-capitalist, self-emancipatory, feminist and egalitarian society beyond nation-state for the past seven years in the heart of the Middle East, provide an alternative to the oppressive and despotic regimes in the region. Rojava is now the name that represents social justice, human dignity, and the struggle for freedom. The attack on Rojava by the Turkish forces is an attempt to end this inspiring democratic effort for an alternative future.
We also denounce the Donald Trump administration of the United States for its betrayal of the most reliable forces on the ground in defeating the ISIS terrorist forces in the region. More than 11,000 men and women from the Syrian Democratic Forces gave their lives to liberate North and East Syria from ISIS, and over 22,000 more were wounded in this hard-fought campaign. With the Turkish invasion to remove SDF from the region, it will create possibilities for the revival of ISIS and other extremist forces that would threaten the region and even the world.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is also complicit in this Turkish war crime for its failure to prevent and stop its member state from commiting this atrocious act against the people of Rojava.
We call upon the international community to act together to put pressure on Turkey to stop the war in Rojava.
We also urge the Malaysian Government to take resolute action by suspending ties with Turkey until such time as Turkey ceases all its military actions and withdraws its forces from Rojava.
We express our solidarity with the people of Rojava in their resistance against the Turkish invasion, as well as Rojava’s struggle for peace, freedom and social justice.