It Could Happen Here - Resisting Turkish Imperialism in Rojava ft Debbie Bookchin
Episode Date: December 1, 2022We talk with Debbie Bookchin and researcher Meghan Bodette about the revolution in northern Syria, the Kurdish freedom movement, and how to prevent Turkey from carrying out their plans to wipe it out....See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about how to put them back together again.
And today we have a special episode. We're going to be talking about a place where things did, in fact, fall apart.
And people are, you could say, still in the process of putting them back together again and trying to do it in a way that is much more equitable and better than things had been before the collapse. That is Rojava in
northeast Syria. I'm going to introduce kind of that concept in, I'll do it right now. Basically,
if you don't know anything about this, you might check out our podcast, The Women's War,
but it is an autonomous region, not a state in northeast
Syria that is not under the control of the Assad regime or of any other state in the area. It's an
independent community that is based on some pretty radical, its organization is based on some pretty
radical political philosophies, in large part, ones that were sort of initially explored by a man
named Murray Bookchin, who was an American social theorist and anarchist political philosopher.
And some of his ideas were adopted by the leader of a militant group in the region called the PKK.
And the leader of that group was a guy in a Turkish prison named Abdullah Ocalan, who was,
you might say, a Kurdish freedom fighter. Ocalan encountered Bookchin's ideas and started writing his own
books of political theory that were kind of based off of them. And then when 2013, you get the Syrian
civil war reaches its kind of height, ISIS becomes a thing. Suddenly the government's not in this
area that has a large Kurdish population, Northeast Syria, and people who are followers of Ocalan take over and start, as they're fighting
ISIS, instituting this kind of radical feminist egalitarian vision of society, which is currently
under attack by the Turkish government, which is what we're going to be talking about. So I want
to introduce our guests for today. First off, we have James Stout and we have Chris on the call from our Normal Cool Zone team.
And then our guests today are Debbie Bookchin. Debbie is a journalist and author and co-editor of The Next Revolution, Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy.
And then we also have Megan Baudet from the Kurdish Peace Institute where she is the director of
research. Welcome to the show Megan and Debbie. Thank you, it's great to be here.
Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you both for your time. I
think maybe to start us out, Megan, would you be willing to talk a little bit
about why the Turkish government is so aggressive towards this independent region in northeast Syria and kind of what the situation on the ground is now?
Yeah, absolutely. So for some background, essentially since the division of the Middle East into the modern nation states that exist there today after World War I with the agreements by
European powers. The Kurdish people have been divided between four different states, Turkey,
Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And all of those states have had governments that have been ethno-nationalists,
that have been repressive, that have not provided Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities equal citizenship rights to participate in politics and to practice their
culture, to speak their language, in addition to denying many of these rights to many of their
other citizens of different ethnicities and religions as well. And so as a result of this
repression, and the repression in Turkey was some of the strongest
and most systemic, the Kurdish people in these regions have continued to struggle for and demand
self-determination and freedom in different political forms. What happened in Turkey in the
1920s and the 1930s, there were Kurdish revolts against the new Turkish Republic, which was a very autocratic
nation state that denied the existence of all non-Turkish ethnicities. And these revolts were
all violently put down with attacks that not only targeted those who tried to resist these policies
of assimilation, but that also resulted in Turkish
mass violence against Kurdish civilians in these regions. You had forced deportations,
you had ethnic cleansing, you had all kinds of brutal violence against civilians in order to
specifically create this homogenous Turkish ethnic identity in Kurdish regions. And so after this period of time,
there was a period wherein there was less resistance. And I think, you know, the Turkish
government believed that the Kurdish problem had been solved by force. They had successfully been
able to kill or assimilate all of the Kurdish people.
But in the 1970s and the 1980s, sort of concurrent with many national liberation movements colony that was occupied by Turkey. And with the colonialism of Turkey in Kurdistan was supported
by imperialist powers in the rest of the world as well. And they sought to right that as other
national liberation movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America, many places at the time did with
an armed struggle for independence. And in responding to the PKK's formation and armed
struggle, the Turkish state once again, rather than acceding to any Kurdish demands, they responded
with brutal, violent oppression of not only Kurds who were active in the armed struggle,
not only politically active Kurds, but on all forms of Kurdish identity.
After the military coup in Turkey in 1980, the Kurdish language was banned.
Kurds were imprisoned on false charges or no charges at all.
Torture was prevalent.
Show trials were prevalent, any kind of publication
or other public interaction in Kurdish was completely illegal. So there was this full-scale
effort to repress the Kurds and any other progressive segments of society in Turkey that
would have supported them. And as the conflict went on, Turkey did very little to change. By the 1990s, the success of the Kurdish
movement had forced the state to recalibrate, as had developments in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurds
there achieving autonomy. And so you started to have the ability of Kurdish political actors to
work within the system. We saw the development of pro-Kurdish legal political parties at that time, but there was still very severe repression of any and all things Kurdish
as they made their demands, even of those who increasingly attempted to make demands peacefully.
So the conflict went on throughout the 1990s and the 2000s. And to this day, despite a peace process between the
government of Turkey and the PKK and the Kurdish movement between 2012 and 2015, that process
failed when Erdogan's government saw that it was allowing for Kurds to take advantage of expanded democratic space in
Turkey, organize and achieve electoral political success. The government abandoned its commitments
and sadly returned to war. And the conflict has been going on ever since and has included,
again, not only this military component, but this component of crushing all forms of organized Kurdish political and cultural expression. So what we've been seeing in Turkey
over the past nearly a decade now, more than a half decade, is the repression of the pro-Kurdish
political opposition in parliament, the People's Democratic Party, or the HDP. We've seen repression of Kurdish media, attacks on Kurdish journalists.
We've seen any kind of Kurdish activism, not only that that's explicitly political,
but any kind of acknowledgement of the Kurdish language, of Kurdish colors, of Kurdish clothing,
very readily criminalized. And this campaign of attacking and repressing all things Kurdish has, of course,
expanded beyond Turkey's borders. So Turkey opposes North and East Syria because the Syrian
Kurds have created a form of autonomous governance that protects and promotes Kurdish rights,
because they have done so in the framework of the Kurdish freedom movement that has its roots
in Turkey and in Ocalan's ideas, as you explained,
and because they've been able to create a successful alternative to the very sort of nationalist project that the modern Turkish state is based on. You know, I would say that the Turkish
Kurdish conflict, and I don't like to call it that, but that is what most people call it today,
is really a conflict now over two competing visions of regional order, with Turkey's based on the right-wing neoliberal nation-state and the Kurdish movement's vision of a Middle East based
on self-determination, liberation, equality for women, and other values, not only for Kurds, but for all people.
So because North and East Syria represents both Kurdish success in creating an autonomous region,
and it represents these ideas of the Kurdish freedom movement that challenge Turkey's
nationalist project, Turkey has been trying to destroy the autonomous administration of North and East Syria by all possible means for a very long time now.
They've invaded Syrian territory twice to attack the autonomous administration and the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Syria, and then once in 2019, after Trump and Erdogan's phone call that we all infamously remember in Sary-Khanyeh and Tal Abyad in northeastern Syria. So you've had these two
invasions and occupations of north and east Syria's territory that have included not only
the terrible violence of invasion and occupation, but also all kinds of crimes against civilians who remain.
We've seen uptakes in violence and abuse of women, ethnically motivated, religiously motivated, hatred and persecution that's driven virtually all of the non-Arab and non-Muslim people living in these regions to flee their homes.
people living in these regions to flee their homes, attacks on anyone who is perceived as having collaborated with the prior administration, all being carried out by Turkey and Turkish-backed
Syrian militia groups. So we've seen the persecution of the civilians in these areas with the intent of
changing demographics and installing not only a government sympathetic to Turkey and the military
structure sympathetic to Turkey, but also removing the social base for the Autonomous Administration's project.
And then in addition to these all-out attacks on the Autonomous Administration in these regions,
Turkey continues to threaten the territory that North and East Syria does have left,
which is still nearly one-third of Syrian territory concentrated in the Northeast.
There's been an escalating campaign of drone strikes,
targeting leaders in the Autonomous Administration and the SDF,
as well as Syrian civilians.
Turkey is cutting water access to north and east Syria
by restricting the flow of the Euphrates River.
This is an agricultural region.
People depend on that water for all aspects of life and certainly for the
economy. That's caused a great deal of suffering. The entire Turkish-Syrian border is very heavily
militarized. When you drive by it and you see the wall and, you know, very lit up at night with the
barbed wire and everything, and you just look at, you know, these civilian towns, very peaceful on both sides. It's something very disturbing to see. But it's a highly militarized border and it is a completely sealed border. Turkey does not trade with North and East Syria and supports an international economic blockade on the region, including by pressuring its allies to restrict the access of goods to North and East Syria. So there's
economic warfare going on there. There are really every tactic that Turkey is able to use, whether
military, economic, environmental, political, or anything else, in order to crush and destroy
North and East Syria's political project and force the Kurdish people and the other peoples of that
region to flee so that there is no base for such a project again in the future, they're doing
everything they can to achieve that outcome. So the situation is very difficult and it is a direct
result of Turkey's, you know, century-old Kurdish question that it has been unable and unwilling to honestly and in good
faith seek a peaceful solution to. And we'll get to it later, but the international community has
played a very big role in ensuring that that conflict goes on with all of those negative
consequences for northeast Syria. Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the, so obviously,
Syria? Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the, so obviously, Turkey is the second largest military in NATO. And has, you know, one of the things that is such like, so messy about this is that
on paper, and on the ground, in fact, the United States has been supporting the autonomous region
in Northeast Syria, and particularly the the ypg and
the ypj which is you know the the militia essentially um as as partners in the fight
against isis and still to this day right now there's an operation going on in the al-hol camp
which is where a lot of isis prisoners are held um that is like a coalition supported operation
and the same time that the united states is doing, we're selling weapons to the people who are, have essentially declared the folks that our military has been aiding a terrorist organization, which is a peculiar and frustrating situation to say the least.
And actually, the other thing that's happening, Robert, is that, you know, Turkey, while it's threatening a full-scale invasion, they've been doing all of these things that Megan described sort of on this sort of low-intensity warfare scale, a kind of military strategy that uses a whole variety of tactics that are short of, you know, a full-scale invasion,
which still may come. And so, you know, there's these extrajudicial killings of some of the leaders of the SDF,
which is the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the sort of umbrella group of the two militias,
Kurdish militias that you described, and which also includes many Arab fighters and others who have been central in defeating ISIS at the cost, I might
add, of about 13,000 lives, you know, and, you know, and the use of their proxy groups
like the Syrian so-called, you know, SNA, Syrian National Army, which is really, you know, a group of
jihadi militias that Turkey has kind of assembled and now completely is responsive to Turkey and
are the sort of shock troops for when they did go into Afrin and for these other invasions.
You know, economic pressure, as Megan described. But the point is
that this kind of warfare, it produces these sort of ongoing low-level attacks, but it keeps it sort
of off the radar of the bigger political and media machine, and therefore it keeps it from getting
the attention that it really deserves in Western societies. It also has the impact of displacing hundreds of thousands ofava, which, you know, including many civilians,
school children. Turkey doesn't care at all about who gets hit, and they have been very aggressive
without any respect for civilian casualties as well. So, you know, so, I mean, I think it's important to also just note that this democratic project
is in Syria is a deep threat to Turkey because, and that every time Erdogan steps up these military
sort of this aggression, it leads him to rise slightly in the polls, which is something that's
important to him because he has an election coming up next year. So there's that sort of political dimension to it. But the fact is that Rojava is
basically a women's revolution. Women are involved in every aspect of running society there, the
political, the social, the economic. And Turkey is essentially a femicidal state. You know,
it not only reviews women within Turkey as less than human, where husbands can basically get away
with murdering their wives, but, you know, it targets girls with drones, as it did on August
18th, when a Turkish drone bombed a UN-supported education center for young girls in Haseka, in Rojava. So, you know, it's very much,
as Megan said, a war of ideologies as well.
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Again, one of the things that's so frustrating with this so historically the reason why turkey
was it was so important for nato to get turkey as a member is because that's essentially nato's
eastern flank if you're still thinking about that big theoretical conflict between you know russia
and uh and the western democracies that was why you know part of why why initially like turkey
was such a valued partner and then as time has gone gone on, it's primarily one of the big things is we have a massive airbase in Turkey, in Serlik, where a number of U.S. nuclear warheads are kept.
Or cowardice might be a better way to say it on behalf of politicians in the United States and other Western countries to actually engage with the ethnic cleansings and with the human rights abuses that the Turkish government, particularly under Erdogan, has has continued. And one of the things that's really frustrating about this, you know, if you think about the way in which ISIS was discussed by U.S. media, you know, conservatives, by Donald Trump during his
campaign. You know, it was this ultimate boogeyman. Well, a huge chunk of the support for ISIS,
and in fact, even logistics for some of their fighters, came allegedly courtesy of the Turkish
state. And there's some evidence for this. There's certainly evidence of support for wounded fighters
and kind of a lax policy
that allowed a lot of people to come through Turkey and get into northeast Syria to fight.
And, you know, as you noted earlier, 13,000, somewhere around there, fighters, men and women
in the YPG and J, died fighting ISIS. And, you know, and we're not just fighting ISIS kind of with the backing of the
United States, but prior to getting any support, one of the most important things they did,
while ISIS was on the move in Iraq, as well as Syria, they were carrying out an active ethnic
cleansing, a genocidal operation in Mount Sinjar against the Yazidis. And that was only really stopped because
while they were fighting a defensive war in northeast Syria, the YPG sent fighters into Iraq
to stop the genocide. And they were successful in this. You know, you talk to, as I have, a lot of
Yazidi survivors of the genocide, and they'll say the only reason we got out is because of,
you know, the YPG.
And the PKK, by the way.
Well, and that is that it is it is. So we should we could talk a little bit about the PKK.
They are the YPG and J and the SDF, which is kind of the umbrella organization, are not recognized as terrorist organizations by the United States or by most Western democracies.
The PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization.
Turkey's allegations would be that the YPG and J and other, you know,
militias are just PKK affiliates.
The reality is that they are in fact quite closely tied.
And you will, you know, but also it's not the exact,
like when you're in Rojava and you encounter people who are PKK, people will speak about them differently than they will talk about other people who are kind of, you know, they're the folks from the mountains is and has been, and it's way more than we can get into, the PKK made a dramatic shift in its ideology and has done everything possible to try to restart peace negotiations with Turkey. So first of all, you know, there are several, as Megan
mentioned before, there was a peace initiative that went on for a few years that then Erdogan
decided wasn't, you know, beneficial to him. So he stopped it. But the PKK, and as recently as I
think a year or two ago, the leader of the PKK in the mountains right now, Jamil Bayek, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post
saying, we want to have talks. We want to have reconciliation with Turkey. We're not asking for
a separate Kurdish state. All we want is some degree of autonomy. And it's actually to the
enduring shame of the Western media, including the New York Times, that they continue to talk
about them as a separatist organization. But that's another story as well. The fact is that
these ideologies that they both subscribe to, PKK and the YPG, YPJ, regardless of whether,
to what extent they may be related. The political ideology is an ideology
about direct democracy. It's about empowering people at the local level. It's about making
sure that every adult and also the youth have a say in their communities. And it's as grassroots
democratic as anything that you could ever imagine. And so really, you would think that the United States would understand that there's certainly no threat.
Neither the YPG nor the YPJ has ever shown any aggression towards Turkey, which is what makes this idea of a buff, the idea that they need a buffer zone kind of a joke.
this idea that they need a buffer zone, kind of a joke. So really, it's an ideological shift that's so profound and so empowering to local people that it's also something that, frankly, those of us who
are on the left should be much more supportive of, I think, than people have been so far.
Yeah. I mean, the thing that is most remarkable, because I spent a lot, I've spent
more time certainly in Iraq than in Syria. And we should note here that we're talking about Syria
today, and we're talking about Rojava. Turkish aggression against particularly, against the PKK,
but against, you know, Kurds, kind of in an ethnic sense, extends beyond Syria. Turkey has illegally attacked Iraq and in
fact moved troops into Iraqi soil a number of times, escalating within the last year and killed
a substantial number of people in the Kurdish regional government territories. So that is also
occurring here. Although it's worth noting, again, because people mix this up a lot, what's happening
in Kurdish-controlled Iraq is profoundly different from what's happening in Rojava, and they're extremely different political organizations.
And I think it's also worth mentioning that it's not just Kurdish groups have been attacking in Iraq.
There have been a bunch of attacks on the ZD survivors.
Yeah, they've killed a bunch of those people too.
It is – yeah, they're doing the genocide again yeah the i think yeah and it's um it's interesting you know i uh
it's also kind of worth the thing that's was perhaps most surprising to me there was the
degree to which people i would meet who were just like, in many cases, just like kind of,
you know, terrorism police, Asaish guys, or people who were like working traffic checkpoints or
working in the farms. People were really careful to not refer or talk to like what the project was
as a state. And it's not a state, it's an autonomous region. That's one of the terms I
heard the most is the autonomous regions, which is really interesting to me. And it's hard, it's something certainly like mainstream media writing about it
seems to have trouble grasping, as you say. And it's interesting because obviously,
Debbie, in case folks haven't put it together, you are the daughter of Murray Bookchin, who is the
political philosopher whose ideas formed a significant core of sort of what the organizational
structure in Rojava is. Well, I just want to say, first of all, thank you for that. I also just want
to say that I really want to remind everybody that, of course, you know, Abdullah Chalan read
hundreds and hundreds of books, not just my dad's. So, I mean, I appreciate that. But,
you know, they have, he has really especially placed emphasis on the need for any revolutionary
project to have the liberation of women at its core. My dad talked a lot about hierarchy and
patriarchy, but Öcalan, by making women central, has really done something unique, I think, you know, in the history of,
because in the history of sort of revolutionary, you know, movements, because as many women who
have participated in those movements in the past can tell you, it was always sure fight with us,
and we'll deal with the women's issue when the revolution is over. And Jalan turned that upside
down, you know, and he said,
it's got to be a women's revolution or it's not a revolution at all.
And the women in those movements over there really fought for that themselves too. And one of the
things that, you know, was most interesting for me to see was when I would go into meetings there
with women in all kinds of different, you know, military and civilian institutions in different cities across the region that before I would even bring it up as a researcher,
you know, women would say to me that if it weren't for Ocalan's theories, we wouldn't
have the organizations that we have.
We wouldn't have the political power that we have.
And they had this incredible articulation of how they use these ideas, you know, as inspiration for their own work.
And also as almost political cover to do kinds of things that wouldn't be accepted in other places.
Because they can go to men who they work with who might be suspicious, but who, you know, have this public stated claim to this ideology.
And they can say, well, Ocalan's books say
that society can never be free without women's liberation,
that women can have their own separate institutions.
So they've been able to really take these ideas
and expand on them and, you know,
push them and use them with their own practice.
And the way that the ideas came about themselves,
one book that I would
recommend anyone interested in the Kurdish movement, in revolutionary women's movements
anywhere in the world, and really any topic related to any of this to read, is the autobiography of
Sakina Janss, who was the only woman present for the founding of the PKK and was really instrumental in organizing
both the armed and civilian sides of the Kurdish women's movement in Turkey. There are pictures of
her everywhere in Syria. She was assassinated in France in 2013 by Turkish nationalists affiliated
with the state, likely suspected, you know, hoping to disrupt the peace
negotiations that were ongoing at that time. But she's remembered everywhere in northeast Syria for
her role. And you can see in her book, her talking about seeing the inequalities that, as Debbie
mentioned, women in socialist movements and revolutionary movements often face, where they
were asked to, you know, be as committed to the struggle as their male
comrades were, but were still treated in very patriarchal ways by men that they worked with
because of, you know, the patriarchy embedded into these societies. And you see her talking about
organizing women to overcome this. And when you look at the history of the Kurdish movement,
moving into what you
see in Northeast Syria as well, you know, women were really able to do so much in practice that
the theory had to move to catch up to them. And then to take this new incredible theory of, you
know, women's oppression being the basis of all oppression and the form of oppression that, you
know, must be addressed to free all members of society in
all ways, you know, they took this and they continued to expand it. So in a very difficult
place and context to do so, I mean, we know that in war, there's more violence against women,
there's more discrimination, there's more emphasis on traditional gender roles, that this holds true
across different societies and different conflicts. So they have, they face many challenges. They're up against a lot here, certainly, you know,
with all the problems that they're facing in Northeast Syria because of conflict and poverty,
everything that Turkey's doing that we've discussed. So they're up against a lot and it's not easy, but they've really, you know, they've come incredibly far and seeing how, you know, they've taken very high level theoretical ideas and then done so much in practice and how their practice and theory inform each other is really one of the most incredible things to see over there.
most incredible things to see over there. And it's another reason why Turkey wants to destroy them, because Erdogan does not believe that women can be equal to men. He does not see male violence
against women as a problem. And yeah, you know, as we've discussed, Turkey and the Kurdish movement
couldn't be any more different on this question. No, and it's, I think the thing, because, you
know, going over there, I went with the eye as a journalist where, like, I had heard all these things.
And Rojava has kind of become, among some chunks of the left, a cause celeb, in part because of, you know, the achievements of the revolution in that space.
And I wanted to see how legitimate is it.
And part of why, you know, I kind of went in with that attitude is that I had spent so much time in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. And if you remember, when the fighting against
ISIS was at its height, there was a tremendous amount of coverage of the female Peshmerga and
the fact that, you know, the Kurds in northern Iraq, who were the first force in Iraq that
collapsed the least when ISIS was on the advance. It's overstated how well they did. That's why the YPG
needed to rescue the Yazidis at Sinjar as the Kurdish military in northern Iraq just kind of
bounced at that point. But, you know, I had heard about, you know, that this women's rights
situation is great in northern Iraq. It's very egalitarian. There's women fighters. And it is,
it's certainly, and anyone who lives there will tell tell you much safer and easier to be a woman in the KRG, the Kurdish region, like control Kurdish regional government parts of Iraq than it is further south in the country.
But that doesn't mean it's good. It is it is more like certain things are somewhat more tolerated. There's more freedom, but it's still a very traditionalist society.
And for example, I didn't see any female Peshmerga.
They did not make much of a presence on the ground and their their their involvement in the fighting was exaggerated somewhat as part of a conscious PR strategy.
As soon as you cross in to northeast Syria, you see women manning and running checkpoint stations.
You see as you go in, because they're like, you know, you get like passport and stuff like looked at and you get like stamps and whatnot.
When you kind of come into the region, you see a lot of women like running that part of the operation.
You go in to the actual country itself.
the operation, you go in to the actual country itself. And there's, we visited a restaurant that was run by a collective of women who had all lost husbands in the fight. And we ran, we went to a
farm that was all young women who had left their families who were very traditionalist in their
religious attitude and gone independent. And of course you see female military units and female,
we saw mixed male and female, like military policing units and stuff.
And it's one of those things that if you are going there kind of with a critical eye to try and see how extensive the revolution can be, I can't imagine not being convinced of the reality of it because it's just so stark.
Well, also, Robert, you know, first of all, just to, again, you could say a lot about what's going on in Iraqi Kurdistan. But just to very quickly sum it up, I mean, it is a capitalist petrol state run by a clan, the Barzani's, you know, who accrue basically all the wealth to themselves. And you can't even begin to compare it with the
kind of revolutionary project in Syria. So, I mean, I just want to, in case, so people understand,
I mean, I don't want to use, I hate to use the word socialist because it's such a, it's so fraught,
but you could, the closest thing, you know, it's built on a socialist economic model,
except a better one, more like what my father
and what abdullah chalan have in mind which my father called communalism and this democratic
and federalist model is based on cooperatives you know where people really do um have the means
control the means of production as much as possible i mean it's obviously all you know
still in formation it's still growing.
And there's areas like the energy sector where things, you know, are less like that, but are,
I hope, you know, given time, move in that direction. Yeah, I mean, obviously, no, this is
certainly not some kind of perfect utopian, it's still in the middle of a war zone. But as you
pointed out, what you see when you go there is women so active in every aspect.
I would add to what the great examples you gave, the women's houses.
Oh, gosh, yeah.
I wanted to talk about that.
Right?
Where they are literally resolving so many problems for both men and women, you know, at the community level.
And so it's really quite an extraordinary, you know, at the community level. And so it's really quite an extraordinary,
you know, I guess what I want to say about it is that, like, if we all got on board of,
you know, one of that Cretan Elon Musk spaceships and found a colony, you know,
where they were doing this, we'd be cherishing it. We'd be going,
oh my God, you know, look at these people. They're like, they have a cooperative economy
and they have women's councils at every level. Wow. Men can't overrule women on a decision that
comes to say women's bodies. Think here, the Dobbs decision, right? On the Supreme Court.
Women, only women can decide those issues that are related to
women. And there are councils at every level and people sending delegates, you know, meeting in
their little villages and towns and communities and electing delegates to the next level. It is
a true grassroots democracy and it's ecological and it's feminist. It's like if Ursula Le Guin were writing about it
and the dispossessed, we'd all be going, wow. So really, you know, it's something that I think,
especially anybody who considers themselves a feminist, you know, should be supporting.
And certainly, and I hope all of us do, you know, and certainly anybody, you know, I would think who's an anarchist, to me,
it's pretty close to every anarchist's dream, you know. And so I think, yeah, I just wanted to make
that contrast with Iraq, because I think it's really important and really goes to why the
Kurdish project really needs very badly the support of people in the United States, because in so many ways,
the United States kind of calls the shots about what can and cannot happen over there.
If you look at the problems they have, you know, to all of that, because of course,
all of these places are not perfect and have, you know, these serious issues alongside these
serious achievements,
every issue that they have is an issue that any society would have if that society had been through 10 years of war,
were impoverished and blockaded from virtually all economic activity
with the outside world,
if they had had to not only fight the occupation of a group like ISIS,
but then immediately turn
around to fight a state army much larger than them, you know, bent on taking and occupying
their territory, a society where people fear going outside because they don't know if they'll
be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when there'll be a drone strike on a local military
leader going around doing their job, keeping their community safe from ISIS,
or a local political leader going around doing their job trying to build this new system.
So I think when we look at the flaws, they're flaws that are the result of, in large part,
poverty and conflict and all of the compounding crises that the people of North and East Syria have to
face because of what they've gone through. As Debbie mentioned, much at the hands of larger
powers. So much of what happens in Syria is up to what the United States wants, up to what Russia
wants, up to what Turkey wants. All of these countries and regions, you know, with different priorities,
different outlooks,
but it somehow happens
that at the end of the day,
you know, the one thing
they can all agree on
is that it's okay to sell out
the autonomous administration.
It's okay to have consequences for them.
You know, if the Kurdish people suffer,
the Yazidi people suffer,
the people of North and East Syria,
all of these different demographics, if they're the people who are victimizedidi people suffer, the people of North and East Syria, all of these different demographics.
If they're the people who are victimized, you know, because they don't have a state, because they're fighting allowed them to convert what they were doing to this kind of low intensity war, you know, with a terrible ceasefire, you know, with undefined lines and with these drone strikes being allowed in areas where Russia and the United States, both of which have agreements with Turkey, are active,
you know, and both of whom tolerate this. So essentially, every powerful interest in Syria can agree on, you know, ensuring that the autonomous administration comes in last.
And as people in the US, you know, anyone who considers themselves on the left, who considers
themselves a feminist, who cares about
persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, who opposes endless war and militarist foreign policy
that props up autocrats and, you know, props up far-right regimes. Anyone with any of those values
should be very concerned about the situation in northeast Syria right now and should be looking at
what we can do to get our government to stop supporting some of
these very harmful policies against the region, you know, even while it claims to be supporting
their fight against ISIS. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?
Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.
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Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season
digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic
world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished
and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists
in the field,
and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.
Don't get me wrong, though.
I love technology.
I just hate the people in charge
and want them to get back to building things
that actually do things to help real people.
I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough,
so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry
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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,
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Check out betteroffline.com.
On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.
He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.
He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.
And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.
Elian Gonzalez.
Elian Gonzalez.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian Gonzalez.
At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.
His father in Cuba.
Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.
Or his relatives in Miami.
Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.
At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.
Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.
Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,
as part of the My Cultura podcast network,
available on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What can people listening here uh presumably most of you are in the united states or canada
or western europe what can people listening here particularly in the u.s do to have an impact to
help well uh we could talk about that um we could have an entire other podcast episode on that
because there's a lot to be done but you know summarize in a few words, the way that the United States supports Turkey's war on the Kurdish people, all the peoples of the region and the Kurdish national liberation movement is through military cooperation and support, through diplomatic cooperation and support, intelligence sharing, and these pro-war
legal pretexts. So go tell Congress that you don't want them to send weapons to Turkey. There's an
F-16 sale right now that it was really great to see the majority of Congress, including all of
the squad members, people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, all opposed that
sale. So opposing arms sales, very important, something that there's momentum there for,
and that there's momentum among progressives there for, which is very heartening.
Opposing military aid and security assistance to Turkey. I've done research on this. U.S.
security assistance has trained senior Turkish know, I've done research on this. U.S. security assistance
has trained senior Turkish officials, including the country's current defense minister,
and several perpetrators of the violent, repressive 1980 military coup. Obviously,
we should not be training coup plotters and war criminals. That is not something I think most
people listening to this want their tax dollars to go to. So calling for an end to U.S. security assistance to Turkey, very important in addition to ending
those arms sales and challenging the pro-war legal pretexts and designations that allow Turkey to
get this kind of Western support. You know, a wonderful thing that we saw a couple of weeks
back was the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., saying that they oppose the terror designation of the PKK and believe that it should be delisted.
you know, calls from places like Ireland and South Africa, where people know a lot about, you know, what terror designations and, you know, the criminalization of struggles, you know, can
have impacts on conflict resolution. You know, people who've participated in these kinds of
post-conflict processes in some of these places saying, get rid of the designation, it's harmful
for peace, you know, it will be difficult to end this less violently without it.
So that's something where, you know, it seems the international case for it is something that's rather obvious and where presser in the U.S.
on the U.S. designation to remove it would be an important step for facilitating dialogue and a negotiated end to this conflict. So understanding how the U.S. supports Turkey's wars on the Kurdish people
and opposing all of those different policies and programs
is one of the most important things that we can do to say this war is not in our name.
We stand with the people of northeast Syria,
with the people in Turkey suffering from Turkish authoritarianism,
with the people in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yazidis in Shanghaw being bombed by Turkish drones.
When we say that we don't want to support this war, we stand with all of those people.
And I think that that kind of action against arms sales, security assistance, and pro-war
legal pretexts could be a really great base for solidarity, opposing endless war in the
Middle East and standing up for, you know, peacefully ending this conflict. And it would
align us with progressives all around the world and, you know, people who really believe in peace
and in ending these kinds of things. And if I could just add, you know, one element to that would also be really pressing for a diplomatic solution to the whole so-called Kurdish question, because Rojava will remain in danger as long as Erdogan and his party think that they can basically, that they have to be fighting Kurds because,
you know, to them, as Megan said before, Rojava is an extension of their own Kurds and of the PKK.
So what really needs to happen, just as it happened in South Africa, is there has to be
a negotiated settlement. One of the things that would help with this, and there
are movements that people can get involved with if they want, would be freeing Öcalan, who has been
sitting in a Turkish jail for the last 22 years, because he is sort of the Nelson Mandela, really,
of the Kurdish freedom movement, and he should be involved in these negotiations, and was,
even while he was in jail. But really,
you know, a jailed person can't really do that properly. So pressing for a diplomatic solution,
because basically Erdogan uses the PKK and the listing of the PKK as a terrorist organization to basically kill all Kurds everywhere.
And in order to stop that, somehow there has to be a break in this.
And so I think that, you know, people, there are certainly plenty of peace organizations and people who want to work on peace.
a really important demand that they begin, that the United States, and the United States has nothing to lose by pressuring Turkey to engage in negotiations with the PKK. This isn't our war.
The PKK has never done anything to the United States. It would make, as Megan said, for a
lasting peace in the entire Middle East. And so what I would say is, first of all, folks, it would be great if people who
want more information about any of this could contact the organization that I helped co-found,
the Emergency Committee for Rojava, which is at defendrojava.org. And we have scripts to call
congresspersons, resources, and we even have fun monthly meetings that people can come to.
You know, and there's, of course, a labor union or a food co-op or
your kid's nursery school or reading group, women's group, and sort of talk and help.
Because there's a lot of people who surprisingly really don't know much about Rojava. I think
maybe because the Zapatistas are a little closer geographically, that project is a bit better
known, you know. So talking to people and getting people engaged. And for example, if there's
anybody listening from New Jersey, Bob Menendez is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. And he's been pretty hostile towards Erdogan. And keeping on him with phone calls,
Erdogan and keeping on him with phone calls, emails is a great way, you know, for our,
as somebody who worked in Washington for a while when I worked for Bernie Sanders, I know that these guys listen to their constituents, you know, and if they get enough calls, they start to pay
attention to those things that come around. We could even get, you know, somebody to send a
letter around to their colleagues in Congress saying, you know, it's time to start peace
negotiations. Those kinds of things do have impact because, as I said before, unfortunately,
the United States is really at the helm in so many ways of what happens internationally in these geopolitical battles. Well, thank you so much, Debbie. Thank you so much, Megan. I think that's going to do it for us
today. Please continue paying attention to this. Megan, did you have anything else you wanted to
add or let people know? Actually, both of you would let people know
where they can follow you on the internet.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think that that about covers it.
Look, the only solution for peace, democracy,
and self-determination in Turkey
and in the wider Middle East
is a just and democratic negotiated settlement
to the Kurdish question. And I think that just,
as Debbie said, learn about what's going on, reach out to your communities, talk to your local
Kurdish community, if there is one, find the opportunities that there are to engage with people
in Turkey, in Syria, and all of these places, you know, working for peace and standing up for these
ideas. And then no efforts too small, because ending this conflict would benefit everyone in
northeast Syria, everyone in Turkey, and all of us here, you know, knowing that our government was
no longer supporting this terrible, unjust war. So just get out there and do something. To see the work that the think tank where I work
is doing on this issue, you can go to Kurdishpeace.org, where we have research and
analysis on everything related to the Kurdish issue from all different perspectives.
And you can check out our work there. And you can follow me on Twitter,
Megan Beaudet. And the Twitter handle is at five underscores, MJB.
Excellent. My Twitter is simpler. It's just Debbie Bookchin, at Debbie Bookchin. And again,
I just want to say that, you know, people we do at DefendRojava.org, and we are also on Twitter negotiations. Give Rojava political recognition.
That would be another thing people can be demanding. Also that Kurds have a place at
the bargaining table in any discussions about the future of Syria. So we have all those kinds of
ideas, scripts, as I said, model emails, and more at defendrojava.org.
Awesome.
Thank you all for being on.
And yeah, that's going to do it for us here.
It could happen here for the day.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks.
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com.
Thanks for listening.
You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright.
An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.
Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive
straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all
things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment
world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers.
Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and a sazón that only nuestra gente can sprinkle.
Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,
Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look
at the underbelly of tech
brought to you by an industry veteran
with nothing to lose.
Listen to Better Offline
on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
wherever else you get your podcasts from.