It Could Happen Here - What Turkey’s Elections Can Teach Us about Defending Democracy

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

James talks to Meghan Bodette of the Kurdish Peace institute about the recent elections in Turkey, the Van uprising, and aggression against Kurdish people in Europe and in Kurdistan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It's me today and I'm joined by Megan Burdett, who is the Director of Research at the Kurdish Peace Institute. Hi Megan. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thanks for joining us. So what we wanted to talk about today was these local elections that have been happening in Turkey in the last week or so. We're recording in very early April, so they happened, I think, towards the end of March, right? Yeah, March 31st.

Yeah. So can you explain to listeners, first of all, like, I've heard about these Turkish local elections almost constantly for the past several months, because I hear about them from Kurdish migrants leaving Turkey almost every time I'm at the border. I meet people and they tell me. Can you explain sort of the context of these elections, the concerns going into them? concerns going into them? Yeah, of course. So first off, these are the first elections in Turkey following the presidential and parliamentary vote last year that was seen as a huge disappointment for the opposition and also for a couple of separate reasons and a couple of similar reasons for the pro-Kurdish political movement as well. The opposition underperformed last year. They were not able to defeat Erdogan as the polling and the sentiment in the country had suggested that they would. And the pro-Kurdish political movement also underperformed as well. They did not win as many seats or as many votes as they usually do. And a lot of that was attributed to the very complex alliance decisions they made, choosing not to run their own presidential candidate and instead ask their voters to vote for the CHP,

which is the main opposition party that has a history of being very nationalist and violent and exclusionary towards Kurds, though things have changed in these past 20 years. Voters didn't understand that. A lot of voters weren't happy with that. And then there were some local level issues with selections of candidates as well. And then, of course, the climate of very severe political repression. And had the opposition won, there was a lot of hope that it would have started to change things on the Kurdish issue in Turkey. You know, from what I'd been hearing from people, there were prospects of political prisoners being released, of contacts between the state and Abdullah Ocalan being

re-established, which could have been the opening of a new peace process. If you follow this, you know the PKK declared a ceasefire prior to the elections. They initially said that it was following the earthquake in order to not allow the conflict to intervene with humanitarian efforts, but they did very explicitly extend it through the elections. And the discussions around that that I heard in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Northeast Syria, and in Europe made it very clear that that was an opening to hopefully be able to leverage it into a larger peace process were there to be a political change. But that change didn't happen. So for Kurds, the situation did

not improve. Erdogan continued his crackdown and his military aggression against Kurds in Iraq and Syria. And for democracy in Turkey, for the condition of the opposition, for the condition of all the groups oppressed under Erdogan's regime, whether that's women, whether that's workers, whether that's the earthquake victims that have been left behind, things didn't get better. So these elections were an opportunity for people to register their disapproval in a way that I think many might have wished that they could have a year ago. And that disapproval in a way that I think many might have wished that they could have a year ago. And that disapproval was registered for the first time. Erdogan's party, the Justice and Development Party, or the AKP, was not the first place party in Turkey. The main opposition, CHP,

actually overtook them. The pro-Kurdish People's Equality and Democracy Party, or the DEM party, took them. The pro-Kurdish People's Equality and Democracy Party, or the DEM party, which used to be the HDP, so if I call it the HDP, I'm sorry, went actually, their results were much more in line with what they had done in the past. They performed, you know, right on standard. They actually won more municipalities than they did in 2019. And there was a lot of enthusiasm for change among Kurds, among supporters of the opposition, among people who I think had wanted to see things start to move in a more democratic direction last year. So that was a very big deal for that reason. And it also shows the fact that Erdogan is not necessarily as invincible in 2028 as people feared he would be.

Yeah. So talking of invincibility, I think that's a good kind of key into our next topic, which is that the elections weren't exactly like a smooth kind of, I guess, concession by Erdogan and by his party, right? Can you explain to people who aren't familiar with this what happened? by Erdogan and by his party, right? Can you explain to people who aren't familiar with this what happened? Yeah, so to start, before the elections, over 75% of voters who supported successful pro-Kurdish mayoral candidates had their elected representation taken away from them. The government removed and imprisoned elected mayors

and replaced them with regime loyalist trustees who essentially rule these municipalities on direct orders from Erdogan in Ankara. So this was an unfair playing field for the Kurdish political movement to begin with, very unfair playing field for the main opposition as well. Ekrem Imamoglu is the very popular mayor of Istanbul who just won re-election by a very large margin, popular mayor of Istanbul who just won re-election by a very large margin, has a criminal case against him that could have him banned from politics. So this was very difficult. In the Kurdish regions, there were many, many irregularities on election day. One that a lot of people were discussing were these so-called mobile voters, where the government actually sent members of

these security forces, predominantly from Western Turkey, into Kurdish cities to vote in large groups for the ruling AKP. You know, there's a lot of videos taken by local media, local politicians and activists challenging these people, asking them where they're from, and then videos of them all crowding into the airports and back on their buses flying back to Western Turkey the next day. So, you know, they're not even making a pretense of being local voters. That shifted the results in some districts in Chernak, which is a very heavily militarized province where the government bases a lot of its military campaigns, you know, into the occupied regions of Iraq and Syria from the pro-Kurdish political movement alleges that these voters shifted the

outcome. So you had that kind of outright attempts at theft in addition to the context of repression. And then, most brazenly, just one day after the election, the local provincial election board denied a mandate of victory, you know, essentially the document certifying that a candidate has won the elections and will be allowed to assume office, to the pro-Kurdish candidate Abdullah Zeydan in the province of Van, which is a heavily Kurdish province, where the Dem party won all 14 district municipalities and the metropolitan municipality as well. So the local election authority essentially said, no, you can't run. There's been a last minute legal finding that you're unfit to run for office,

as there always is. Right. And then they tried to give the municipality to the candidate from Erdogan's party, the AKP, who got less than half of the number of votes. Right. Yeah. So kind of, yeah, invalidating the results. We're just going to break briefly for an advert here and then we'll be back. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's 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

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Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, 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. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

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as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom and refuge between the chapters. Thank you. writers behind them black lit is here to amplify the voices of black writers and to bring their words to life listen to black lit on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast right we're back so when they tried to invalidate these results right and to install representatives i guess you could call them, who didn't win the popular vote, there was like a significant street response to that, right? Can you talk us through that and then the repression of it and the results of it? Absolutely. in Van, in other Kurdish provinces. And these are people coming out who not 10 years ago saw the military raising their cities to the ground, killing civilians in the streets. This is a very costly endeavor for Kurdish people in these provinces to go protest.

That's why you haven't seen it to such a degree as was seen in the 90s and the early 2000s, since the collapse of the peace process and that violent military campaign in the 90s and the early 2000s, since the collapse of the peace process and that violent military campaign in the cities. But last night, they were out in full force. And very notably, they weren't alone. There were protests in Istanbul and solidarity as well, you know, carried out by Kurds living there, but also by leftist parties, by feminists, by Kurdish religious organizations, by all the segments of civil society that have sort of oriented around the pro-Kurdish political movement. And there was also a pretty significant reaction from the main opposition, CHP, which is not known

for radicalism. You had the CHP party leader, Özgür Ozel, saying that it was illegitimate for the government to deny a candidate a mandate. And then you had Imamoglu in Istanbul also criticizing the decision, saying it was illegitimate and calling on the government to respect the popular will. So at the same time, you had this outcry across the Turkish political spectrum. You had tens of thousands of people out protesting, braving police violence. You know, there were armed pro-government vigilantes caught on video shooting into crowds. There was very, very harrowing videos of beatings and torture of civilians. Journalists were attacked and prevented from covering the protests.

This was a very difficult situation to watch. difficult situation to watch. And a lot of people that I was speaking to were worrying about a return to the level of violence that was seen in 2015 and 2016 were things to escalate. But, you know, sometimes there's good news in Turkey and Kurdistan, not always, but sometimes, you know, in Turkish, you'd say, will win by resisting. And in Kurdish, you'd say, will win by resisting. And in Kurdish, you'd say, resistance is life. And that sort of,

those are very famous protest slogans that proved really accurate last night because today, Turkey's Supreme Electoral Council actually reversed the attempt to give the election to the losing pro-government candidate and gave the Dem Party candidate his mandate back. So they've said that he will be allowed to assume office. And I think they looked

at this huge street protest. They looked at this opposition coming from not only the pro-Kurdish political movement, but many different political forces in Turkey. And the state decided to back down. They decided not to pick this fight now. And, you know, that's not to say that voter suppression in other provinces wasn't an issue. That's not to say that there are still outcomes that are being contested. You know, the government's doing a lot of very unfair things right now to try to take districts from the CHP and from the pro-Kurdish political movement. But what this does show is that when people insist on a democratic outcome and when they are willing to stand up for it in large numbers and face the consequences,

the difficulty of doing that, that even regimes like Erdogan's, these very, you know, autocratic far right governments have a point at which they will back down. And I think that that display of resistance and solidarity, getting a government like that to back down is something that can be very hopeful for people around the world right now. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we've seen like just to the stuff we've covered, obviously the United States, but also in Myanmar, like increasingly it's becoming harder and harder for states to deny people's right to be represented or to be heard. And like, that's a good thing generally for democracy. Yeah. I wanted to ask about, you spoke a little bit about the Turkish

military's incursions into northern Syria and into like Iraqi Kurdistan or the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Can you explain that there's a lot of like, I think Turkey is pretty clearly like telegraphed plants for increased military activity in that region. Can you explain like what's being proposed and what that means? So I think because they have gone into this election and found themselves weakened, this is something that could make Erdogan very dangerous. One thing that the government has always done when it's found itself weak is try to polarize society by attacking the Kurds, both domestically and internationally in Iraqi Kurdistan and in northeast Syria.

Of course, you have the AKP government's loss of its majority in the 2015 elections during the peace process, becoming the reason for the government's abandonment of the peace process itself. Then in 2019, after the local elections where the government lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time, that was very quickly followed with the appointment of state trustees to Kurdish municipalities and then the invasion of northern East Syria following Erdogan's agreement with Donald Trump about that. And so this does look like the kind of context in which he has lashed out against Kurds in Iraq and Syria before. And given these threats that you mentioned that he has been making, the diplomatic traffic between Turkey and Iraq,

Turkey and Iran, Turkey and the US and Europe, they do appear to be preparing for something. Now, I was just on the ground in north and east Syria and in Iraqi Kurdistan, and I heard from many people that they're concerned. The threats that the government has been making appear to suggest that they might try to go for a geographically larger military operation this time. There's a chance that instead of only conducting their typical spring offensive into Iraqi Kurdistan, which usually gets them nowhere, they might also attempt to invade northern Syria as well. Of course, that's very internationally contingent. They would need a green light from the Americans and from the Russians to be able to violate those ceasefires and go in there.

But the threat's very real. It's something that people are very concerned about on the ground, and I think that it's worth paying attention to. And particularly for those of us in countries that are allied with the Turkish government, making noise about, you know, opposing, trying to get onto the agenda so that permission is not given here. They're not incentivized to do this. Yeah, I think that's a very good point because like Kurdish issues are ones that don't come up very much in the press in the United States for the most part. And people and their representatives don't hear about them very very much but this is one of those like maybe right to your your rep things like that that doesn't a lot of shit isn't going to get

changed with an email to your elected officials but especially like certain officials who are on you know foreign relations committees or something as well as as like other forms of political activism could help here right like especially in an election year like that that's a way to stop that now this is something that needs to be made into an issue and one thing i hear time and time again whether i'm speaking to people from the autonomous administration the ypg and the ypj or pro-kurdish politicians in turkey is they know you know the weapons that are being used against them, the tear gas canisters, you know, the drone parts, the bombs, the equipment, the

military training that these personnel get, it all comes from Europe, the United States, NATO countries that are allied with Turkey. There's a lot of leverage and, you know, pushing to end that military support is something that could be done right now that could be very important. And really, you know, this is something where one feels almost when one makes these calls, like one's constantly asking, you know, you should do this for these people because they're being oppressed and your government has a say in it. But we really benefit from this, too. Right. If you look at what the Kurdish people and their allies in Turkey have done in standing up for democracy, in getting the government to reverse this attempt to steal an election, you know, that's one small example of the very powerful democratic tradition that they have. That is something that we can learn from, you know, whether you're in the US or in Europe and many different countries around the world right now, the threat of authoritarianism and the sort of far-right politics of which Erdogan is an example, it's an international threat. And standing with the people who've been able to resist it is something that can benefit us all around the world as well.

Yeah. And it presents a vision for a future in which we all stand united against state violence around the world rather than being isolated and gradually destroyed by various states and violent actors. Talking, I guess, of violent actors, the one more thing I wanted to cover, we're jumping around a little bit, was that I think people will probably have seen, maybe their social media timelines are different than mine, but there was a lot of violence against Kurdish people in Northern Europe recently, right? In Belgium, I think maybe in Germany as well.

Explain a little bit of that. We get into a little bit of Turkish fascist politics as well, but can you explain what was going on there? So this all began when some far-right Turkish nationalists started threatening a Kurdish family after returning from Nelroz or Kurdish New Year celebrations and escalated into, you know, essentially these far-right vigilantes prowling the streets looking for Kurds and Kurdish businesses to attack. And this is not something new at all. The Turkish government has invested a great deal in allowing these structures to operate

in Europe. You have the Grey Wolves, which are a fascist paramilitary, actually the paramilitary wing of the party with which Erdogan is currently allied and with which he has a majority in parliament, the National Action Party or the MHP. You know, this is a group that's been responsible for murders and assassinations and all kinds of attacks on Kurds, other minorities, dissidents, and has been responsible for violence in Europe as well. You have the government encouraging religious fundamentalism through its network of religious institutions in Europe and trying to make that very extreme and very politically instrumentalized vision of religion popular amongst the Turkish community.

And then you have, you know, Turkish intelligence assets able to freely operate and conduct all kinds of attacks on Kurdish dissidents, you know, within the very center of Europe, right? We all remember in 2013, the assassination of Sakina Janss in front of the Kurdish community center in Paris. That murder was never solved. The perpetrator who they caught very conveniently died in prison before he was set to go to trial. Turkish responsibility has never been proven in court, I think, because there are a lot of people who don't want a full investigation of a case like that to come out. And then just, I believe, yesterday or maybe the day before, it came out that a Belgian court found alleged Turkish operatives responsible for planning attacks on two very senior Kurdish diplomats in Belgium who were members of the

Kurdistan National Congress, which is sort of like the de facto foreign ministry of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. You know, these individuals had been spying on the Kurdistan National Congress building. They'd been in contact with Turkish officials. They'd been planning assassinations of very senior politicians. This is a real problem. These groups and the state itself are able to freely attack civilians, plot murders, and do violence and really cause chaos. And that's something that's very dangerous, not only for the Kurdish community, but for really anybody living in their way. community but for really anybody living in their way yeah yeah and there are a lot of people who would rightly want that to stop i think so like what's the current the current situation is a number of people were like beaten was somebody kidnapped did i see or was that i didn't see any further reporting on that than one photo it was very serious i mean there were people were attacked i'm not exactly certain of the extent of kidnappings or other instances like

that, but this was some very serious violence. And we know what these groups are capable of. They have killed people and they have essentially gotten away with it. So it may have died down for now, which is certainly good. And obviously, you know, we saw a lot of calls for restraint, you know, from the Kurdish community, a lot of calls for these European governments essentially to do their job and prevent these groups from, you know, importing their nationalist campaigns against a persecuted minority to a place where, you know, these Kurds have fled to be free from that sort of thing. So it's stopped for now, but it's very much not over you know I when you see the Kurdish community in Europe and spend time with them and look at the security precautions that they have to take just to hold conferences and cultural

festivals yeah it's really quite disheartening yeah yeah especially like you say in northern Europe like they're not in Turkey they left Turkey to avoid that stuff yeah we'll take a second ad break here and then we'll be back to finish up. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's 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 and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. 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. Gonzalez 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. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works

while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life listen to black lit on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast so for the last part uh do you have anything you want to add that we haven't got to yet i think that you know overall looking at the situation in Turkey following these elections, looking at the situation in Europe, we're seeing that the Turkish government continues to be an example of the danger of these kinds of far-right nationalist religious fundamentalist regimes that are on the rise everywhere. These are political trends that

are growing around the world. And Erdogan and his current Turkish government are a very clear example of the danger that that causes not to just the population of a country, but to neighboring countries, to diaspora communities that have left, that have gone elsewhere, but maintain their culture and maintain their interest in political organizing. So these are threats that people are going to be looking at around the world. And I think it's very important to be following the situation in Turkey for that reason. But at the same time, looking at how the Kurdish people and their allies in Turkey, you know, on the left, in movements and feminist movements and all of these sort of groups that have also been victimized by Erdogan's regime.

We're seeing that resistance is possible, that people can stand up for democracy and they can win. And that, look, right, nobody's giving up on their work. You know, the KNK doesn't stop advocating for Kurdish interests in a diplomatic capacity because their members face threats. You know, these people go to work every single day, you know, in Rojava, in northern Syria, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish groups, you know, Kurdish political organizations, Kurdish politicians and activists. They continue building up their project. You know, I said I was just in northern Syria. It's extremely difficult right now. People don't have electricity. People don't have water because Turkey bombed all the infrastructure. But still, they're celebrating now. You know, they're talking about their upcoming local elections that they want to hold

and how to hold them in the best way. You know, they're talking about their new social contract and how they can implement it. They're moving forward constantly, despite the threats that they're facing. And I think that, you know, many of you listening to this are people who are probably looking to improve and change the society that you live in. look at what's going on in Turkey and in Kurdistan, we can see both very clear examples of what it is that people who want change are up against, but also what they can accomplish even under those conditions. Yeah, I think like, one of the things I took from going to Kurdistan was like how invested, like how genuine the solidarity that those people have with other, like oppressed groups. It's like, i spent as much time answering questions about myanmar as i did like asking questions about kurdistan which was surprising

to me but obviously happy to do it but like it would be nice to see some of that solidarity come back from the us right so they're like i mean i guess you can come down to the border and help kurdish people literally any day of the week if you'd like to. We do that all the time. But what concrete actions can people take, especially with regard to like helping the self-administration in North and East Syria, right? Like they're facing constant attacks, their power stations get bombed. All my friends there are always struggling to have power or internet or even like electricity. And they got flooded recently on top of all that. So like, are there concrete actions people can take to help to be in solidarity?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think one thing if you have expertise on anything to do with, you know, power grids that are resilient to these kinds of attacks on alternative clean energy sources, these kinds of attacks on alternative clean energy sources, anything that could possibly help people in a situation like this live, they want expertise. There's a lot of problems that they're facing that they simply, because of the war, don't have the capacity not only to solve, but even to start thinking about how it is that one solves a problem like this, because there just aren't that many societies in the world going through it. So any kind of expertise in addressing energy issues, environmental issues, these kinds of problems, the second and third order effects of the attacks on infrastructure, on oil and gas,

on power facilities, that would be very important. They really do need that. And that's something, you know, you can write to us at the Kurdish Peace Institute. We can connect you with people. If you have contacts on the ground there, you can talk to them. That's one thing. Then at the end of the day, you know, they have these elections coming up. That is a big step for them. They've just put out a new social contract. They're really trying to listen to some of the internal criticisms that they get and really build up the civil, social, political side of their system. You know, there's a belief among many people there that I've talked to that because of the existential nature of these wars that they're fighting, they haven't been able to really pursue the political elements of their revolution to the degree that they want to.

Yeah. And they're trying to do that now. They have this new social contract. It's an incredible document. You can read it. They're going to hold municipal elections on May 30th, I believe is the date that was announced. So any if you know a lot about electoral systems, if you have done election observation before, if you want to help them do that right and get international attention for what it is that they're doing, that's another way that people have been telling me that you can help. And then finally, you know, if you're here listening in the U.S., Erdogan is coming to the White House on May 9th, according to reports from Turkish and international media. There is going to be a demonstration. There will probably be a lot of campaigns around that demonstration as well on things like conditioning and ending arms sales and security assistance, on calls for peace, on calls for the U.S. to

end its support for and enablement of Turkey's occupation of Iraq and Syria, its repression of its Kurdish people at home. And so anything that you can do to join those actions and those campaigns would be very helpful. You know, this is going to be an opportunity to let both Erdogan and the White House hear what the American people think about U.S. support for what the Turkish government is doing. So be there, get involved. That's one way that we can, you know, make our voices heard and try to push for a change in policy. Yeah, I think that's great. I think people should like, if you want an example of I guess the US complicity, like while I was in Kurdistan, there was a bombing that killed 39 S.I.H.,

like internal security forces. And that was like a plane that your tax dollars, if you live in the U.S., develop, right? Like an F-16 with munitions that you probably sold to them. And the U.S. has sold more F-16s since then, right? Yes. Yeah. So that is a thing that we could stop

and that would concretely stop. Like I spoke to a mother who lost her son. He was a little, I think it was like 14, 15, a little football player. Like they had pictures of him all over the house. Right. Like it was really heartbreaking stuff. And I know that this happens a lot in other parts of the world. I'm not saying that's not important too, but yeah, it's, it's always hard to talk

to parents who have lost their kids and you can stop that happening and like if we don't sell them the f-16s that do that then they don't have the ability to do it at least not as much and this is one way that we can connect uh struggles and causes as well because it's all the same companies that are providing equipment to all of these states that are doing this. You know, the targets are the same for these kinds of campaigns. And look, you know, all of these governments, all of these corporations, they know that they're on the same side. We don't always know that we're on the same side, too. And so I think that getting together and pointing out the patterns and standing against, you know, these arms sales and security assistance in the context of Kurdistan, alongside many other contexts where they're also very destructive, is an important way that we can sort of amplify our efforts to do that.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a very good, a very good point. Like, I live in San Diego, almost every single bomb that has fallen on Palestine and many of the ones that have fallen on Kurdistan have, you know, the company that sold that has an office here. And like, those are places where you can apply pressure and places where you can hopefully make a change. Megan, where can people,

you mentioned like emailing you, where can people find you? How can people keep up to date with what's happening in Kurdistan? Yeah, of course. So you can go to Kurdishpeace.org. That's the website of our institute. If you go to our About page, my contact is on there.

You can always reach out to me whether you have a question about Kurdistan, you want to read our research and analysis, you're a journalist or an analyst and you want to submit something yourself, we can help you there. We're also on Twitter at Kurdishpeace.org. And yeah, that's a great way for you to follow in the English language. If you're looking for resources on the ground, you can, if you're in the DMV area, if you're in California, like, you know,

there are active Kurdish communities and, you know, go to a cultural event, go to a demonstration. You'll find both great ways to get connected and really get plugged into solidarity efforts. But also, you know, a wonderful community and a wonderful culture that I think, you know, anyone would be, I've certainly been, you know, very happy to have experienced. Yeah, likewise. Great. Thank you so much, Megan. That was great.

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