By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
December 24, 2015
We, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), support the Kurdish people’s just struggle for self-determination and democracy and we condemn the ongoing attacks being carried out by the AKP government against the Kurdish communities of Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi, Gever, Farqin and other cities in North Kurdistan and the violent suppression of all democratic forces in Turkey.
The Erdogan fascist clique is carrying out a brutal campaign of suppression reminiscent of the campaign of terror in the 1980s and 1990s that was meant to crush the struggle of the Kurdish people for national self-determination. It targeted for assassination and neutralization people who were suspected of having links to the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK). Villages were also attacked, displacing a great number of people. These attacks did not stop the Kurdish people from continuing with their just struggle for national self-determination.
The present campaign of suppression is targeting civilians with the objective of displacing them from their communities. At the same time, the Erdogan fascist clique is carrying out a campaign of murder and intimidation against lawyers, journalists, opposition politicians, activists and other progressive forces all over Turkey who are opposed to the atrocities being perpetrated by the regime.
The Kurdish people have shown in their decades-long revolutionary struggle that no amount of intimidation, suppression and counterrevolutionary violence can stop them from establishing democratic self-rule. Their heroic resistance in Kobane, their continuing defense of their democratic self-administration in Rojava against the attacks of the Daesh or ISIS terrorists and now their resistance to the latest state terror serve as inspiration to the people of the world who are also waging various forms of struggle against imperialism and reaction
Turkey, a member of NATO, is a junior partner of US imperialism in the latter’s hegemonic rule over the oil-rich region of the Middle East. Erdogan is happy to play his part under the US scheme because the US is accommodating Turkey’s own expansionist ambitions in the region and its long-standing objective of crushing the PKK-led movement for national self-determination. The defeat or frustration of Turkey’s aims can also lead to a certain weakening of US imperialism’s hold on the region and thus an important contribution to the worldwide struggle against imperialism.
The criminal collaboration of the AKP government and the corrupt Erdogan family with the Daesh or ISIS has been recently dealt with heavy blows with the destruction of the Daesh-Erdogan oil pipeline on wheels by Russian planes and the interdiction on the flow of personnel and arms from Turkey to the Daesh in Syria and the hospitalization of Daesh casualties in Turkey. In both Iraq and Syria, intrusions of Turkish military forces in cahoots with the Daesh against the Kurdish people have also been severely rebuffed and countered.
We call on all member-organizations of ILPS to condemn the latest attacks against the Kurdish people by the Turkish regime and extend their support to the just struggle of the Kurdish people for democratic self-rule. We likewise call on all people of goodwill throughout the world to condemn the Turkish government and support the Kurdish people in their just struggle. # # #
Joma Sison’s photo.
