Peter Boyle
Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s historic 27 February “Call for Peace and Democratic Society”, followed up with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) unilateral ceasefire and declarations of support from Kurdish organisations all around the world has put the ball firmly in the court of Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan. How the Turkish state responds practically to this generous and forward-looking offer will determine the prospects for peace in the region.
While Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş has hailed Öcalan’s call as “positive and extremely useful”, Erdoğan has responded with strongman bluster, threatening to use the “iron fist” if the PKK’s unilateral ceasefire ends.
A constructive response would be for Erdoğan to match the PKK’s unilateral ceasefire with a ceasefire by the Turkish armed forces, not just in Turkey but across the border where Turkey continues to carry out military interventions.
The Turkish military and its proxy militias in Syria have continued his military assault on Rojava, including on the Tishreen Dam which provides water and electricity for nearly a million people.
People in Kobane and other towns are suffering blackouts and water shortages and the dam is in danger of collapsing.
Attacking critical infrastructure like dams is a war crime under international law.
Under these circumstances the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the people of Rojava have the right to defend themselves.
In addition, Rojava is in the middle of difficult and dangerous negotiations with the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) regime in Damascus. The future of Syria, post Assad dictatorship, will depend on whether a peaceful, just and inclusive arrangement can be agreed by the different forces controlling different parts of Syria.
These are not negotiations that the people of Rojava and their representatives can carry out from a position of weakness.
If the SDF disarms unilaterally, things could go very bad because the truth is that there is still not a single regime or government in any of the states that were given a part of Kurdistan in the unjust colonial carve up of the Middle East in the 20th century. This applies to Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
Nevertheless, the SDF has made it clear that it is willing to integrate its military forces into the army of the new Syrian government but there is much detail to sort out before a lasting arrangement can be made. Sadly, the Turkish state has been making these peace negotiations more difficult.
Rojava’s political leadership has also made it clear that there needs to be guarantees of human rights and women’s rights in a new Syria and in this regard, the Turkish state needs to change its practice — both domestically and abroad.
Here in far away Australia, the Indigenous people of this continent have always stood by the slogan “No justice, no peace”. This is more than heroic sloganeering — it is a statement of reality.
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This is true everywhere in the world. Never in history has there being a lasting peace that is not built on justice.
Because of this crucial connection between peace and justice, there is another critical step for the Erdoğan government to carry out to move the new peace process forward. It should release Abdullah Öcalan so that he can properly play the leadership role he needs to play in negotiating for a lasting peace.
The release of Nelson Mandela was critical to ending the Apartheid era in South Africa in 1990 after he spent 27 long years in prison. Öcalan has spent nearly as many years of imprisonment in Turkey. It is time to set him free and time to move towards a just and peaceful future.
*Peter Boyle is an activist journalist for the Australian magazine Green Left, a co-founder of Rojava Solidarity, and a permanent contributor to Medya News–Sydney.
