Turkey's campaign against the Kurds: how Imperialism betrayed Rojava

Over the last few weeks, the Turkish-backed offensive by Hayat-Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has managed to topple the Assad regime. In the western media this has been generally celebrated. One thing that has not been reported on, however, is the simultaneous Turkish advance into a part of the Kurdish Autonomous Area in North Eastern Syria (AANES), more commonly known as Rojava.

Over the last weeks, Turkey has continued to push into Kurdish territory, taking Tel Rifaat last week and Manbij, the last Kurdish-controlled city west of the Euphrates, in the last few days. Turkish forces alongside allied jihadists bombarded the Qereqozac bridge, which connects the two sides of the river, and likely aimed to take and cross it, though they were repelled. Reports of mass executions and rapes are coming in already. Eight people from one family were killed in a single day in Ain Issa.

Erdogan took his chance to advance Turkish imperialist ambitions by sponsoring HTS’ offensive. He intends to bring northern Syria under his de facto control and use the newly installed jihadist-run regime in Damascus as his puppet. Above all, he wants to crush the Kurdish autonomous area and clear the SDF militias linked to the left-wing PKK from the Turkish border, which have been a thorn in his side for years. He intends to crush Kurdish national aspirations, snuffing out the beacon of an autonomous Kurdish state in Rojava.

Western imperialism had rested on the Kurds as the most capable fighters against ISIS since 2014. It is now clear that a betrayal is being prepared. This confirms once more: small and oppressed nationalities are treated as pawns in the dealings of the imperialist predators. They cannot place any trust in these gangsters.

The only way the Kurdish people can achieve lasting independence and genuine freedom is by fighting to overthrow all the rotten regimes in the region by struggling alongside all the oppressed and exploited peoples for a socialist federation of the Middle East.

Erdogan’s vendetta against the Kurds

All the major powers over the last few years have played a part in turning Syria into rubble. But Erdogan has been particularly brutal. Turkey has invested heavily in jihadist groups, including ISIS and HTS, and supported them as a way to bolster its own interests in the region. For Erdogan it does not matter how barbaric these groups are, only how he can use them. Since the Kurds have been fighting the jihadists in Syria for ten years now, Erdogan sees them as a force that is undermining his plans.

Map showing the division of Syria as of December 2024. Rojava is in yellow / image: Rr016, Wikimedia Commons

Erdogan also sees the Kurds as a fifth column within the Turkish state. Kurdish people, who are spread out between Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, form 15-20 percent of the population in Turkey. Therefore they could be one of the greatest threats to his rule and his dream of a ‘greater Turkey’. Kurdish organisations control several trade unions in Turkey and the HDP, the legal left-wing political party, which at its high point had looked poised to attract many votes from Turkish workers and youth, revealing its potential to break out of its predominantly Kurdish base. The HDP continues to win the majority in elections in the Kurdish regions. He is particularly intent on destroying the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party), who are closely associated with the PYD/YPG (the main Kurdish forces in Syria).

As a result over the past years Erdogan has unashamedly set out to crush the Kurds, whether through indirectly promoting ISIS or making outright military offensives. In 2015, Erdogan bombed and attacked the Kurdish areas of Turkey, in an operation that he said was to attack the PKK but in reality largely targeted civilians. In 2018, whilst the Kurds were still focussing their energies on attacking ISIS, Erdogan made a brutal attack on Kurdish territory west of the Euphrates, besieging and over-running the city of Afrin which was held by the PYD. Thousands were killed in this offensive, entitled ‘Operation Olive Branch’, and over 150,000 were displaced. 

Although Erdogan likes to posture as an anti-imperialist – over the question of Palestine, for example – this is totally false. He, like the rest of the world leaders, are representatives of a rotting, decaying capitalist class, who are continuing to drag the Middle East down into hell. If this Turkish siege on the Kurds is not repelled, it will undoubtedly bring more tragedy.

Unreliable allies

Turkey is an undeniably powerful state. But who is in the corner of the Kurds?

Rojava was established in 2013, as the Syrian revolution degenerated into a civil war with reaction on both sides. The YPG is influenced by the ideas of the PKK and is seen as a progressive, left-wing force. Because of this it had gained a massive echo. Their real support always came, not from this or that powerful faction, but from the poor and oppressed masses, and not just in the Kurdish areas. This revolution could have been spread far and wide if it had been linked to a revolutionary communist programme and a class appeal to the poor and working-class of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran, across which the Kurdish nation is dismembered.

The leadership of the Kurds, however, saw the struggle as having a purely national character and the question of finding military allies as a purely tactical, not a political question. The Americans – who had given enormous financial and military support to the jihadist rebels in Syria, which helped spawn the Frankenstein’s monster of ISIS – needed a point of support to push ISIS back and reestablish a foothold in Syria. They sought to use the YPG for this end.

They offered the Kurdish leadership money, weapons, and support in return for an alliance. However, this came at a price. In return, the Americans intended to use the Kurds, but never planned on giving them any genuine guarantees in return.

From 2014 onwards, the Americans organised the Kurds into the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces). This was supposed to be a joint force that was independent from the PYD/YPG. But in reality it was still always the Kurds on the front lines. Americans who were part of the SDF had no insignias or last names. They operated in almost total secrecy. And yet they made huge demands of the Kurds, calling all the military targets and sending them against ISIS-controlled city after ISIS-controlled city. Overall, between 2015-19, over 11,000 Kurds were killed fighting ISIS, compared to eight Americans. 

The Americans – who had given enormous financial and military support to the jihadist rebels in Syria, which helped spawn the Frankenstein’s monster of ISIS – needed a point of support to push ISIS back and reestablish a foothold in Syria. They sought to use the YPG for this end / Image: @MedeniDuran007X

The Kurds were the most effective fighters against ISIS. They were trying to defend their entire way of life against one of the most barbaric outfits on the face of the Earth. But the leadership of the SDF sacrificed their political independence in return for military support. This is what has paved the way for the disaster they face now.

The Americans never really stood in the Kurds’ corner. They were used as a tool to tip the balance of power in Syria slightly further towards the US as opposed to Russia and Iran, whilst the US also courted Turkey and scandalously funneled money to Islamist groups. Meanwhile, they called all the shots as to what cities the SDF should take, preventing the Kurds from trying to spread the revolution into Syrian government held areas, or into Turkey.

Scandalously the Americans’ response to the Turkish attack on Afrin in 2018 was to advise Mazlum Abdi, the general of the SDF, that Afrin was not a strategic target. The Pentagon stated “we don't consider them as part of our 'Defeat ISIS' operations…and we do not support them." 

First and foremost, the Kurds have paid a big political price for US support. The left-wing Kurdish forces could have been the spearhead of a revolutionary movement in the region. By remaining within the limits of a national movement, and by failing to break with capitalism – conditions sine qua non for American support – their support necessarily remained limited to the Kurdish population. US imperialism is the most reactionary force on the planet. It is justly and universally hated across the Middle East. The poisoned gift of US support only further isolated the cause of the Kurds from the masses of the broader region.

Betrayed by imperialism

Afrin set the tone for what would happen next. Since ISIS was pushed back in 2018, the Americans have been gradually withdrawing their support for the Kurds. For a time, this left the Kurds in a de facto non-aggression pact with the Assad regime against Turkey and the Islamists, but that could never last. The time when the Kurds could balance between these powers and play them off against each other has come to an end.

Turkey has replaced the US and Russia as the major player in the country, arming and supplying HTS. The price that Turkey will extract for its support will be a blind eye turned to its activities. For western imperialism, getting as much loot as they can and the ‘facts on the ground’ are all that count. They will now base themselves increasingly on their Turkish allies to carve out a piece of the cake for themselves. 

Not only the US, but the UK and Europe are now also dancing to Erdogan’s tune when it comes to the Kurds.

Crackdowns on Kurdish groups in the UK over the last weeks demonstrate this. Six Kurds were charged with being members of a terrorist organisation, which demonstrates extreme hypocrisy as western governments are simultaneously discussing removing HTS from the terrorist list. Last month, Germany stopped blocking the sale of 40 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Turkey. This is a harsh lesson in the real attitude of imperialist countries towards the ‘rights’ of small nations. 

It is clear that, over this recent Turkish offensive, Abdi begged the US to intervene on their behalf. Instead, the US brokered a sham ceasefire in which the Kurds were forced to abandon the city of Manbij to Turkish-backed militias. Biden once told the Kurds that “mountains are not your only friends”. This may be true, but he definitely isn’t one of them.

Where next?

Backed into a corner, some parts of the Kurdish leadership are now considering trying to collaborate with the new regime. Moves are already being made towards this by the military; for example the new Syrian flag is being raised on government buildings. However to attempt this would be a huge mistake.

The speed of the collapse of Assad’s regime showed that the old state had rotted from within. It is impossible to say with certainty what will come next. But at present, other armed groups are filling the vacuum of the state and the country is occupied by a host of imperialist powers and warlords.

The forces of HTS stretch down from Idlib to Damascus, there are direct Turkish proxies in the north, Druze militias in the south, Israel in the Golan Heights, Russians in the west, US-linked groups in the south east, and ISIS is now pushing out once more from the desert. Within HTS’ camp, for all their attempts to reinvent themselves as ‘moderates’, there are no few hardline Wahhabists who are no doubt resentful of al-Jolani’s bid for respectability.

This must be denounced for what it is: all-round reaction, the product of imperialism and a capitalist system that has putrefied in the Middle East, in which none of the factions serve the interests of any part of the oppressed masses in Syria. What is going to emerge is not a democratic state within which the Kurds could find a place, but a brutal sectarian carve up.

At its high point, the ‘Rojava dream’ appealed to millions. The SDF (plus PYD/YPG) held a large amount of territory within Syria, while the PKK and HDP held de facto power in a whole series of regions in the Kurdish parts of Turkey, as well as serious pull in Iran and Iraq. In 2015 the masses in Kurdish Turkey even rose up, prepared to fight back the Turkish state’s attacks. But for fear of alienating their allies, especially the Americans, the PKK made a mistake and held back, when they should have combined arming the population of these areas with class struggle methods and a revolutionary appeal to the exploited Kurdish and non-Kurdish masses further afield. Since then the leadership has continued down this path of collaborating with imperialist powers. Now the imperialists are preparing a terrible betrayal.

The freedom of the Kurds can only come through revolutionary struggle to overthrow Erdogan and the Islamists in Syria. This can only be accomplished by the united revolutionary struggle of the Kurdish and non-Kurdish masses / Image: Kurdishstruggle, Flickr

Many opportunities have been lost. Given how rotten the Assad regime was, if the Kurds had advanced a progressive, class-based position to the masses in Syria they could have been the ones to bring down the regime instead of HTS, which would have put them in a much stronger position. The Assad regime was only one weak link in the chain of capitalism in the Middle East, and many of the other regimes are just as rotten. The revolutionary transformation of Syria, led by the Kurds, would have been a beacon to the masses across the region.

Now the Kurds are on the back foot. The only possible way out is to acknowledge the fight for a homeland can not be solved purely through a purely national military struggle. The freedom of the Kurds can only come through revolutionary struggle to overthrow Erdogan and the Islamists in Syria. This can only be accomplished by the united revolutionary struggle of the Kurdish and non-Kurdish masses.

What is needed is to break the Turkish working class and youth away from the ruling class and the state. With inflation and youth unemployment in Turkey sky-high, the ground is ripe for this. Meanwhile, in Syria, the masses may have hated Assad, but they will have little love for the new Islamic regime either. 

Communists absolutely defend the Kurds’ right to self-determination. The struggle of the Kurds against the oppressive states which have carried out so many atrocities against them is a progressive, revolutionary struggle at heart. It can and does resonate and find sympathy with millions of workers and youth fighting against austerity, dictatorship and imperialism across the world.

Even so late in the day, by fighting to build a revolutionary party encompassing Kurds and non-Kurds alike, and using a class-based appeal, connecting all the struggles of the peoples of the region to the slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, they could meet with success. This is the way to defend Rojava and spread the revolution. But this would require a complete break with imperialism, class collaborationism and capitalism.