Statements: Several Opposition Groups in Turkey Condemn Turkish Military Campaign in Northeast Syria

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Nov 3, 2019 Turkey
Statements: Several Opposition Groups in Turkey Condemn Turkish Military Campaign in Northeast Syria

Statements: Several Opposition Groups in Turkey Condemn Turkish Military Campaign in Northeast Syria

By : Jadaliyya Reports

In October 2019, US President Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from certain areas in northern Syria. Turkey has, in turn, launched a military campaign into many of those areas, seeking to dislodge and destroy the Syrian Democratic Forces (a coalition of local political-military organizations—the People’s Protection Units (YPG) primary among them), and perhaps establish a new role for itself in Syria. As part of this campaign, the Turkish government has imposed several measures to silence domestic criticisms of this policy.  Nevertheless, certain opposition groups in Turkey had issued statements critical of the pending (and now ongoing) Turkish military campaign in northeastern Syria. Below are a set of such statements published as of 12 October 2019.

Statement by People's Democratic Party (HDP)


[Originally published in Turkish on Bianet.]

Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Sezai Temelli has made a statement for the press at his party's headquarters in Ankara.

"Turkey must immediately end the war and withdraw from the soil of Syria," Temelli said, calling the offensive "a unilateral attempt for an invasion by the AKP-MHP government."

"The primary aim of this offensive, unlike what the government claims, is not a political entity but to destroy the egalitarian, libertarian and democratic way of life that the Kurds are trying to establish with the other peoples of the region," Temelli remarked.

"This war is not a war in the interests of the peoples of Turkey," Temelli asserted, saying that such a "war" will make problems regarding human rights, hunger, poverty, violence against women and the environment "invisible."

He also called on the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) to "get rid of contradictions." The CHP voted "yes" to authorize a cross-border military operation. CHP Chair Kılıçdaroğlu said that they had "painfully" approved the bill.

Temelli also called on Europe, the US, and the UN to take steps to end the operation.

"We call on everyone to act against the war and form a democratic front against the war," he added.

"Return to a Peaceful Foreign Policy"

In the name of the HDP Central Executive Committee, Temelli called on the government to:

  • Immediately end the operation and pursue a peaceful foreign policy.
  • Remove all its assets, including military assets from Syria.
  • Respect the principle that the peoples of Syria should decide the future of Syria.
  • Support Syria's reconstruction and offer humanitarian aid.
     

Statement by Peace Foundation


[Originally published in Turkish on Bianet.]

The Peace Foundation has indicated that Turkey has entered a difficult and arduous process and stated: The military operation that is being carried out in Syria with political motivations will cause long-term enmity with our neighbors. These feelings of enmity are being spread among the ancient peoples of our region Kurds, Arabs, Turks, and others.

War means death and destruction. Historically, wars have never provided permanent solutions to existing problems. A military operation will multiply Turkey’s problems. In addition, the inability to solve problems peacefully forces Turkey to find partnerships with various countries.

To solve the problem, instead of impinging on Syria’s sovereignty by creating a “safe zone,” Turkey should be in dialogue and negotiations with the parties involved and should choose peace.

Joint Statement by Revolutionary Workers’ Unions Confederation (DISK), Public Workers’ Union Confederation (KESK), Turkish Architects and Engineers’ Chamber Association (TMMOB) and Turkish Doctors’ Association (TTB)


[Originally published in Turkish on Bianet.]

DİSK-KESK-TMMOB-TTB have stated: “Turkey’s involvement in the war in Syria has cost our country so much already. One of the dire examples of this is the massacre that took place four years ago today, on 10 October 2015, at the Labor-Peace-Democracy rally, where we lost 103 people.”

“We are up against the grave danger of becoming the ‘guardians’ of thousands of ISIS members from all over the world who are inadmissible to their countries of origin and who have carried out massacres in which we lost hundreds of our people. ISIS itself has been fed and grown by belligerent politics in the Middle East.”

“It is our responsibility to the citizens of this country and to our members to state the following: for those who can see that such a military adventure will not solve any fundamental problems in our country but will rather exacerbate them, it is not the time to stay silent.”

Joint Statement by Human Rights Association of Turkey (TIHV) & Human Rights Foundation (IHD)


[Originally published in Turkish on Bianet.]

TIHV and IHD have stated: “This intervention will cause new pain for the peoples of Syria, starting with those in the regions where the military operation is being carried out. It will result in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians and a new humanitarian crisis. The peace that Syria needs urgently will be delayed even further.”

“It will also deepen the economic crisis, the effects of which are being felt strongly by workers and the poor. The political regime will take advantage of the war to extend the state of exception that has been drawn out, making it more intense and permanent.”

“The forced removal and/or deportation of millions of Syrians who took refuge in Turkey is against the Geneva Convention regarding the protection of civilians as refugees. For this reason too, the military operation that has been started must be stopped immediately before there are more casualties. Resolutions without war or conflict must be attempted.

Statement by Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (DISP)


[Originally published in Turkish on DSIP website. English translation by Carol Williams, published on Socialist Worker.]

Following the agreement between the Donald Trump US government and the Republican Alliance(the ruling Turkish AKP/MHP government), a military operation has begun in the north of Syria, which has been devastated by eight years of war.

The Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (Dsip) believes that all the relations about Syria should be built on a peaceful basis, in the manner that will pave the way for the Syrian peoples to determine their own destiny.

We should remember how, in the same way, it was peace process policies on the Kurdish question, from the beginning of 2013 to mid-2015, that ended the conflicts and deaths and contributed to the development of peace in Kurdish areas.

On the contrary, it is clear what the change in state and government policies since the summer of 2015 has led to. Once more we stress that as well as the suffering caused by the conflicts, there is a danger of creating sharp divisions among the peoples living in this geography.

In short, we argue that Operation Spring of Peace is no solution and that peaceful policies focusing on dialogue should be implemented in order that Turks, Kurds and all the peoples of the region can establish a common future.

Refugees

Instead, the government leadership advocates the return of refugees to justify the operation, saying that they are aware of the “social, cultural and economic problems” created by refugees.

These and similar statements that claim refugees are the source of problems in society pose a great threat to the safety of millions of people.

Refugees are not the source of problems such as economic crisis, the rising cost of living and unemployment. It is the greedy capitalists and the politicians who protect them. 

Social and economic problems in society cannot be solved by deporting refugees; but they can be solved by implementing policies in favour of workers and the poor like the prohibition of layoffs, increased taxes on bosses, and the abolition of strike bans.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people have the right to flee oppression, persecution and war and to be accepted where they settle. Any attempt to send refugees to places against their will is a violation of human rights.

We call on everyone who advocates for life and wants a better future to support peace and dialogue rather than military options and to stand in solidarity with refugees against racism and forced returns.

Nobody loses in peace.

Only the unity of workers can stop war and racism.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412