Speaker 1: What foreign my policy. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Guys, I don't know. I got like
Speaker 2: trapped into this like pattern of doing introductions a certain way,
Speaker 2: and I don't really I don't really feel good about it.
Speaker 2: But how do you? How does one break their patterns?
Speaker 2: Speaking of patterns, let's talk about Syria.
Speaker 1: Beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I understand what that meant.
Speaker 4: I feel like one of the basketball guys when someone
Speaker 4: lays him up and then he just does a dunk.
Speaker 1: That's what I feel like. I don't know about Green
Speaker 1: Green Bay Packers swish mm.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, yep, go Tom Brady, okay, uh okay, sports sports
Speaker 4: talk aside. I'm wearing my Rwanda football shirt today. We
Speaker 4: were gathered here today and to talk about Turkey strone
Speaker 4: strikes on their stye.
Speaker 1: Y yay, not funny, not funny, yeah, the sday funny.
Speaker 2: We're talking about like Turkish the continued Turkish military operations
Speaker 2: across their border in northeast Syria, the area commonly known
Speaker 2: as ro Java, and also in southern Turkey as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So just to give some numbers around this to
Speaker 4: start off right, and you're twenty twenty two, which there
Speaker 4: wasn't a territorial offensive, so like you're not seeing like
Speaker 4: troops on the ground. Turkey carried out one hundred and
Speaker 4: thirty drone strikes in the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the place is more commonly known as Rojova, and
Speaker 4: they killed at least eight WYPPJ members and sort of
Speaker 4: WIPJ would be the Women's Protection Forces who are a
Speaker 4: unit within the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the armed
Speaker 4: forces of the an E s Autonomous Area Northeast Aria.
Speaker 4: I will come at you really hard with acronyms in this.
Speaker 4: I think if people haven't listened to Roberts series Women's War,
Speaker 4: maybe the Women's War, that would be a good place
Speaker 4: to start, because like we only have half an hour
Speaker 4: of forty five minutes or whatever, and we can't explain
Speaker 4: an extremely complicated conflict which has been going on for
Speaker 4: twelve years in that time. So I think some grounding
Speaker 4: in who is who and what is what you can
Speaker 4: find it there, I guess. But it's that a fair
Speaker 4: summary of who those people are. Robert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, so you had kind of the gist of
Speaker 2: the story is that for a very long time, starting
Speaker 2: in southern Turkey, there's been a Kurdish militant group called
Speaker 2: the PKK. They were way back in the day, originally Maoist.
Speaker 2: They had a bunch of internal power struggles within their
Speaker 2: own organization and then wound up taking a pretty wide
Speaker 2: turn away from Maoism towards a kind of political theory
Speaker 2: heavily influenced by the work of an American anarchist thinker
Speaker 2: named Murray Bukchin. This was largely due to the fact
Speaker 2: that their leader, a guy named abdolah Ajalon, got while
Speaker 2: he was in Turkish prison kind of pilled on a
Speaker 2: lot of these this kind of like fringe American libertarian
Speaker 2: ish sort of political philosophy. Yeah, with this basically the
Speaker 2: gist of it is this this kind of this kind
Speaker 2: of synthetic, this kind of synthesis of a lot of
Speaker 2: Bukchen's ideas with some of the stuff that Agelog had
Speaker 2: been had been thinking about for years, kind of culminated
Speaker 2: in uh political philosophy called libertarian municipalism, which is more
Speaker 2: or less the governing philosophy that these different armed militant
Speaker 2: organizations kind of clustered around the PKK in Northeast Syria
Speaker 2: because the PKK for years were just kind of like
Speaker 2: crossed the border in the northeast Syria when they were
Speaker 2: fighting with the Turk and they had to get away,
Speaker 2: and they had a bunch of inroads with local Kurdish
Speaker 2: organizations in northeast Syria. And when the Asad regime pulled
Speaker 2: out of the area in the early stages of the
Speaker 2: Syrian Civil War, a lot of these groups that were
Speaker 2: affiliated with the p PKK were kind of the best
Speaker 2: organized organizations in the area, and so they took over
Speaker 2: a lot of civil administration and basing a lot of
Speaker 2: their their plans and you know, functional activities around these
Speaker 2: ideas that Ajalon had been you know, writing about for
Speaker 2: years and years, and so you kind of have this
Speaker 2: mix of all these armed organizations that are to some
Speaker 2: extent descended from the PKK, but are now much broader
Speaker 2: than just sort of a Kurdish liberatory organization. These are
Speaker 2: the folks who fought and defeated ISIS in northeast Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's I don't know, there's there's so much to get into,
Speaker 2: but I guess that's kind of the the broad strokes
Speaker 2: and all of these different because there's a bunch of
Speaker 2: different militias. You know, there's there's militias that are kind
Speaker 2: of more traditionalist Arab militias. There's there's Armenian militias in
Speaker 2: the area. There's obviously these Kurdish militias, the YPG and
Speaker 2: the YPG primarily Kurdish militias, but they all fight under
Speaker 2: the banner of the SDF and to the Turks, they're
Speaker 2: all the PKK.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm glad you mentioned all the different militias and stuff,
Speaker 3: because it gets really confusing, like even I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: Syrian and I'm just like, I cannot keep up. I
Speaker 3: talked to my parents about it too, and they're just like,
Speaker 3: that's it's it's complicated. So I think you did a
Speaker 3: good job breaking that down. I also want to mention
Speaker 3: they were the only people fighting ISIS in Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I think it's pretty notable to mention. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got a list of the found in groups
Speaker 4: of the SDF. So this happens in twenty fifteen, right,
Speaker 4: sort of earlier in the fight against ISIS, and some
Speaker 4: of these groups had this sended. Latrin said, not from
Speaker 4: the YPJ or the YPG. And Robbie said this to
Speaker 4: you that they come from the FSA, the Free Syrian Army,
Speaker 4: Like there's specifically the f s A around the Kabani
Speaker 4: area contributing elements. There's a Syriac Military Council, so that's
Speaker 4: a distinct ethnic group. There is the jayash or al
Speaker 4: if I said.
Speaker 3: That, right, uh no, but I can say, if you are.
Speaker 4: Please do magical thank yoush.
Speaker 3: Means army or like army Jish. It's it's annoying because
Speaker 3: the English is spelled jish, but it's just a Jewish.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Revolutionary Army, army of revolutionaries, I guess more accurately,
Speaker 4: who are another mixed ethnicity group. They like Robertsent, include Turkmen, Armenians,
Speaker 4: all kinds of different ethnic groups. So at this point
Speaker 4: there the entity that is the SDF is a majority
Speaker 4: Arab entity. And it's not like an ethnic Kurdish thing,
Speaker 4: and and and the Autonomous Administration is not like a
Speaker 4: kurdishth no state, which I think is something that people
Speaker 4: can sometimes either confuse or conflate. But like that that's
Speaker 4: not the case, right that That's not what this sort
Speaker 4: of democratic confederalism is about, nor is it what's represented
Speaker 4: in terms of the composition of the people that people
Speaker 4: doing the fighting, right, So sometimes these groups will be
Speaker 4: referred to on massos quote unquote the kurd.
Speaker 2: You should by how kind of messy. My explanation was,
Speaker 2: it is hard to walk people through this. Folks eyes
Speaker 2: tend to glaze over, for one thing, when you mention
Speaker 2: a certain number of acronyms. But this leads to a
Speaker 2: situation whereby the US news is just like the Kurds
Speaker 2: defeated Isis in northeast Syria. It was like, no, there was,
Speaker 2: there were a whole lot of other people who did
Speaker 2: a lot of dying.
Speaker 1: When involved, and some Kurds who were not involved.
Speaker 3: So also just so much infighting. I think that it
Speaker 3: gets I don't know, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It is a lot like saying the Americans defeated the
Speaker 2: Nazis and it's like, well, there are.
Speaker 1: Some other people who involved in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I've seen some films from it.
Speaker 4: And let me tell you, yes, I think I think
Speaker 4: Ruben's right, like it collapses two things, right, like the
Speaker 4: heterogeneity of Kurdish people, right, different Kurdish areas, of different
Speaker 4: Kurdish movements, and the heterogeneity of the SDF, so yeah,
Speaker 4: mainstream use sometimes yeah, because it's shocking.
Speaker 2: It is also worth noting like Kurds are not certainly
Speaker 2: not a like a monolithic group. For examine North the
Speaker 2: Assyria is like flat lands lowlands, and there's a big
Speaker 2: difference between the mountain Kurds and the Kurds who live
Speaker 2: in these like lowlands, and traditionally even like a lot
Speaker 2: of like bad blood and stuff between different groups, because
Speaker 2: you know, that's just the way human beings are.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, yeah, it's really easy, I think for when
Speaker 6: we're consuming news, especially news about the part of the
Speaker 6: world that the populace here hasn't been spectacularly well informed
Speaker 6: on to break things down into easy groups, right, Like
Speaker 6: you'll see a lot as well, like Sunni and shi'ah as,
Speaker 6: like the two categories that can exist within like and
Speaker 6: then people get.
Speaker 4: Very confused when there are categories within that when when
Speaker 4: they're where there are Sunni groups fighting each other, and
Speaker 4: the same with like Kurds or Turkmen or whatever, like
Speaker 4: none of these groups are homogeneous. And sometimes yeah, if
Speaker 4: you do, I get it. If you're doing a five
Speaker 4: minute piece for TV, that's what you do. But here
Speaker 4: we are not doing a five minute piece for TV.
Speaker 4: So this is this has not been like Kurdish history.
Speaker 4: One O one, please read some more books about that.
Speaker 4: I'll put some in the sources. But what I want
Speaker 4: to talk about today is some of these bairaktar attacks
Speaker 4: on specifically YPG. Right, so the YPJ would be the
Speaker 4: Women's Defense Forces, So that's a women's militia within the
Speaker 4: SDF that, as Roberts said, it's based heavily. I guess
Speaker 4: on the outlook of Abdulah Oscelin, who's sometimes called Appo.
Speaker 4: Might use that for brevity here. So in one attack
Speaker 4: in April twenty twenty two, three YPGA fighters were killed.
Speaker 4: De la Jaleb, who had participated in the resistance of
Speaker 4: the Sheik Masoud district of Aleppo. In twenty twelve, she
Speaker 4: become a leading YPGA commander and participate in the fight
Speaker 4: against ISIS, playing a leading role in the liberation of
Speaker 4: the city of Mimbic Rahani Kabani. It's worth noting, I guess, sorry,
Speaker 4: I stop every fifteen seconds to explain context that you'll
Speaker 4: hear sometimes place names in people's names. That's because they're
Speaker 4: like Norm de Geer, rather than that this is not
Speaker 4: their legal name necessarily, but it's it's standard practice for
Speaker 4: these people to take like a movement name or a
Speaker 4: nom de gueer, much like Robert and I explained in
Speaker 4: the episodes on Miamma, A lot of people do this
Speaker 4: a lot of places.
Speaker 2: Is that fair, Robert, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of Like oftentimes people just like take a name based
Speaker 2: on their city that they came from, like Kobani or whatever.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's pretty much the norm that most people,
Speaker 2: most fighters will introduce themselves by some sort of nobdaguere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and even some of the I know people who
Speaker 4: are like British or American who have been over there,
Speaker 4: who are over there, and they also have.
Speaker 2: These Yeah, and there's a lot in that. One thing
Speaker 2: you have to keep in mind is that, like a
Speaker 2: lot of these people who are revolutionaries who consider themselves
Speaker 2: revolutionaries have family in regime controlled parts of town or
Speaker 2: parts of Syria or in you know, in Idlip, which
Speaker 2: is largely controlled by these like more Turkish backed Islamist groups.
Speaker 2: And so part of why you do this is like
Speaker 2: I don't want my family like getting caught up in
Speaker 2: this shit, like if they live somewhere else, like I
Speaker 2: don't want to like bring that down on them. It's
Speaker 2: just safer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just like when we did our episodes, right, we
Speaker 4: had Miaok and Andy and Sarah. Another woman, as I said,
Speaker 4: Rohani Kabane joined the YPGA in twenty fourteen. She fought
Speaker 4: against ISIS. She was wounded. She participated after recovering and
Speaker 4: that in the liberation of Rakka and she was the
Speaker 4: co chair of the defense committee in Kabani. And then
Speaker 4: there was the youngest, the youngest woman she just joined.
Speaker 4: I guess or her joined at a young age and
Speaker 4: she was called Kabani and she uh like she joined
Speaker 4: after the fight against ISIS. She she was very young.
Speaker 4: There are pictures I'll include the report. It's very sad
Speaker 4: to see someone, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they look they look like there's a couple of
Speaker 3: them that look like babies. Like it's it's really devastating
Speaker 3: because it's I don't know, their lives are taken from
Speaker 3: them and they joined to it's it's it's it's empowering,
Speaker 3: and then it's devastating because it's just like they fought
Speaker 3: so hard and then they they were assassinated, literally they
Speaker 3: were murdered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's when especially when you consider that so many
Speaker 4: of these, like the women who fought against ISIS right
Speaker 4: like and I think we could probably understand why women
Speaker 4: would would want to do that, like wanted to create
Speaker 4: a place where young girls could grow up and be
Speaker 4: who they wanted to be and then do what they
Speaker 4: wanted to do and.
Speaker 1: Not have to.
Speaker 4: Obviously like kaw Tao. So that's extremely violent misogynist organization
Speaker 4: like ISIS, but also not necessarily have to fight either,
Speaker 4: and you know, could be self realized and whatever way
Speaker 4: they wanted to. And so to see these people having
Speaker 4: achieved their goal largely of I guess I still exists, right,
Speaker 4: and I still continues to kill people. It killed ten
Speaker 4: people yesterday, but that's the eighth of August, because you
Speaker 4: won't hear this today. But to see these people who
Speaker 4: have like successfully at least liberated the territory, and then
Speaker 4: the young women are still dying but not finding ISIS,
Speaker 4: but find Turkey, I can go on and give like
Speaker 4: there are dozens of examples of this report. Another one
Speaker 4: I'll just give in July twenty twenty two, there's a
Speaker 4: YPJ commander called j Kabur and a fighter called barin Botan,
Speaker 4: so one of them had been and then another one
Speaker 4: called another YPG commander called Jian Tall Hidden Tall Hidden.
Speaker 4: So these two women have been involved in the fight
Speaker 4: against isis like from the beginning, having like liberated cities,
Speaker 4: liberated territory. And then they were with this young woman
Speaker 4: who was nineteen years old and had relatively recently joined
Speaker 4: the YPG right and was killed by a drone strike.
Speaker 4: It's like it's particularly galling, I think for me at
Speaker 4: least two so that the YPG Information Office is someone
Speaker 4: that I communicate with, like for work stuff, and it's
Speaker 4: particularly galling to like wake up Brent and see that
Speaker 4: on your phone, like to get a message and look
Speaker 4: at a report, see a picture of a car like
Speaker 4: blown to pieces. At the same time as like the
Speaker 4: Birectori is a drone that Turkey has sold to Ukraine
Speaker 4: in large numbers, right, which has been hugely effective in
Speaker 4: destroying Russian armor. And like it's currently.
Speaker 2: At least was it's it's it seems to not really work.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of stuff has changed obviously, like
Speaker 2: new technology is extremely effective early on before there's countermeasure anyway, whatever,
Speaker 2: we don't need to get nerdy about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's certainly. Like in the first months of
Speaker 4: their war, the war in Ukraine became like a meme.
Speaker 4: You you can buy a stuffed birector on et ceo eBay,
Speaker 4: like like a soft toy, like a Teddy Bear. There
Speaker 4: are songs about it.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not great.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was, and it was one of those things
Speaker 2: where like, obviously I was happy to see effective tools
Speaker 2: being used by the Ukrainians to like defend their home, yes,
Speaker 2: of course, but I'm not ever going to get up
Speaker 2: and stand the Turkish defense industry or yeah, defense like
Speaker 2: industry for the for the record, I feel the same
Speaker 2: way about like the people standing standing you know, different
Speaker 2: US defense contractors making stuff like you know, long range
Speaker 2: missile systems. Like no, I'm not, I'm not really a
Speaker 2: fan of that.
Speaker 1: Like I get it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, you know, when you're being invaded, you use the
Speaker 2: tools available, But that doesn't mean we need to celebrate that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. I think the tools are largely kind of agnostic,
Speaker 4: and anyone who's sort of is making things to kill
Speaker 4: people purely for profit, it's not necessarily a good a
Speaker 4: good thing to do with your life, I guess and like,
Speaker 4: it's just troubling to me to see people like cheering
Speaker 4: this on without like it highlights one like the way
Speaker 4: that people engage with conflict, especially online, especially in the US,
Speaker 4: which yeah, it's not a computer game, it's someone's nineteen
Speaker 4: year old fucking daughter. It's someone's mum or sister or
Speaker 4: brother or uncle or dad or non binary relative.
Speaker 3: The fact that you can buy like a stuffed fucking weapon,
Speaker 3: like little drone thing on ebays. It's it's just so disturbing.
Speaker 3: I really just don't like humans when I think about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand why it happens this way, and I
Speaker 2: understand why if your country is being invaded and you
Speaker 2: can get more support from the international community by leaning
Speaker 2: into this shit, you lean into this shit. But I
Speaker 2: don't like the idea of like some I don't know
Speaker 2: fucking accountant in Iowa watching hundreds of videos of like
Speaker 2: Russian soldiers being killed and then like getting a fucking
Speaker 2: Lockheed Martin tattoo, like the like the like like turning
Speaker 2: turning your support for people you know in a deadly
Speaker 2: military conflict into like fandom, treating it the way you
Speaker 2: treat like a Marvel movie or whatever.
Speaker 1: I find not great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just not like I understand why. Like I
Speaker 4: wouldn't blame anyone in Ukraine for being super excited about
Speaker 4: having bairagtos because it stops people burning their homes and
Speaker 4: killing their children. Yeah, I would want that too.
Speaker 2: No, just like if you're if you're like I have
Speaker 2: a friend who I went like, we were in fucking
Speaker 2: of Divka together, like sheltering with people from Russian shells
Speaker 2: and stuff, who then went on to join the Ukrainian
Speaker 2: military and has been fighting since the expanded invasion. If
Speaker 2: he wants to share videos or watch videos of like,
Speaker 2: you know, dead Russian soldiers from telegram, like that's war.
Speaker 2: It's unpleasant, but I get it. Like again, if you're
Speaker 2: some dude in fucking Wisconsin doing the same thing, I
Speaker 2: find that pretty unsettling, Like yeah, because you don't need to, Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, you don't need to.
Speaker 4: You don't need to dehumanize those people so you can
Speaker 4: kill them because you're not killing them. Yeah, but you
Speaker 4: seem to have engaged in that same dehumanization which is
Speaker 4: necessary for people fighting, because I don't know, maybe you
Speaker 4: think you're helping.
Speaker 2: It's hard to shoot people otherwise, Like Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: reason that's war hard to fucking banonet.
Speaker 4: People, right, there's a reason that bannet training is one
Speaker 4: of these things that's particularly just kind of it has
Speaker 4: to be Ziland. You have to be horrible, you know,
Speaker 4: like it's there's no nice way to stab someone. But
Speaker 4: the yeah, it doesn't mean that you need to tweet
Speaker 4: about it, especially folks who maybe aren't peracptice on the
Speaker 4: ground familiar. That's what this looks like. So I wanted
Speaker 4: to maybe get into a little bit. And there are,
Speaker 4: as I said, dozens of these corone attacks. They're really
Speaker 4: ramped up in early twenty twenty three, along with like
Speaker 4: a kind of a larger air offensive. Right, they continue
Speaker 4: to happen like almost weekly. If people want to, I
Speaker 4: guess keep tabs. YPG Info is the YPJ's kind of
Speaker 4: public facing press website. Roger Information Center is a good
Speaker 4: English language resource. Both of those you can.
Speaker 1: Find on.
Speaker 7: X or if you you can also search of them website.
Speaker 7: Can we just say X, No, we should say wink
Speaker 7: and the ludge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, X is not in fact gonna give it to.
Speaker 3: Us only like I will understand that way that I
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a narrow overlap there, buddy, Yeah, you shut
Speaker 4: the get there. Yeah, you know what is going to
Speaker 4: give it? And by it I mean the money that
Speaker 4: pays our wages to us. What is it, James, It's
Speaker 4: it's combination of products and services.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, I love a good product.
Speaker 4: Me too.
Speaker 2: I don't love services. Actually, I'm very anti service. But
Speaker 2: you know, we'll see, yeah.
Speaker 6: We'll see it.
Speaker 4: Might it might change your opinion, it might be something
Speaker 4: amazing unlikely, probably gold. But yeah, let's hear from the advertisers.
Speaker 4: All right, we're back. We hope you enjoyed those adverts
Speaker 4: as much as we do. So I want to talk
Speaker 4: about in the second half of the episode why Turkey
Speaker 4: is using these drones to bomb people who, like we said,
Speaker 4: have fought and largely defeated the territorial Caliphate of ISIS.
Speaker 4: I did want to bring up one more drone instant actually,
Speaker 4: which is particularly bad. So one of the things that
Speaker 4: you often to see the SDF and specifically the YPG
Speaker 4: and the YPG kind of accused of is having child soldiers,
Speaker 4: are having recruiting people who are under the aged to fight,
Speaker 4: part of a program they've implemented to stop this with
Speaker 4: consultation with the United Nations is building education centers, right.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to comment morally on who should be
Speaker 4: fighting at what age, because I think it's one judgment
Speaker 4: for us to make when we.
Speaker 1: Met isis in the fucking streets?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, I think there's a degree to which
Speaker 2: people are being unreasonable about this. I met a number
Speaker 2: of seventeen year olds. It's generally when people talk about
Speaker 2: child soldiers, they are talking about seventeen year olds. I
Speaker 2: have friends who's in the US Army when they were
Speaker 2: seventeen years old. Like I have friends who were learning
Speaker 2: how to drive a tank for the US military at
Speaker 2: age seventeen. And quite frankly, if you look at where
Speaker 2: like wars in history, sixteen to twenty years old, that's
Speaker 2: most of the people who have fought most of the
Speaker 2: wars in most of history.
Speaker 1: That's like the way that it is.
Speaker 2: It's not pleasant, but like when we are talking like
Speaker 2: I certainly I would be very supportive of laws put
Speaker 2: in place in our country to raise the age at
Speaker 2: which people can join the military so that they are
Speaker 2: not young and not getting taken advantage of to as
Speaker 2: much of a degree. But we are not fighting in
Speaker 2: any conflicts for our survival.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think people that point the finger and like
Speaker 3: talk about child soldiers whatever the shit and they're in
Speaker 3: they are referencing like, yeah, basic teens. They have the
Speaker 3: privilege of doing that. They don't have to even think
Speaker 3: about protecting themselves or their family or whatever. I think
Speaker 3: when you are and in like a situation of violence,
Speaker 3: like Palastine's a great example of that. You see like
Speaker 3: boys like trying to defend their their country, it's like
Speaker 3: the same situation where there's you don't have the privilege
Speaker 3: of waiting until you're fucking twenty one or whatever. It's
Speaker 3: just like you have to you have to like protect yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not the it's not a situation you are
Speaker 2: not being It's not like again, it's not like it
Speaker 2: is often when we talk about child soldiers, like in
Speaker 2: the Liberian Civil War, right where you've got kids being
Speaker 2: pulled in, you know, for the advantage of some warlord.
Speaker 2: Nor is it like in the United States where you
Speaker 2: have seventeen and eight year old eighteen year olds being
Speaker 2: recruited in a predatory way off and by military recruiters
Speaker 2: and sent overseas in conflicts that are not necessary. We
Speaker 2: are talking about like isis is five blocks away, and
Speaker 2: like god knows what they'll do to my mom and
Speaker 2: my sister if they take over, Like I'm going to
Speaker 2: pick up a fucking gun. You know what else? What
Speaker 2: else are you gonna do? That's that's the world. Like
Speaker 2: they're living in a different set of realities than we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and anyone that places judgment on that is just
Speaker 3: ignorant and non understanding of the reality of the world.
Speaker 3: They're just like in their little bubble.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So on August the eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Turkish
Speaker 4: drone targeted one of these un affiliated education centers.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It was two kilometers from the US coalition base and
Speaker 4: targeted group of teenage girls playing volleyball. It's very hard
Speaker 4: to see these education centers as like anywhere in military
Speaker 4: target Right. They're literally designed to divert young people from
Speaker 4: becoming fighters, and to you know, they're set up with
Speaker 4: the consultation United Nations, with the you know, like with
Speaker 4: as much of oversight as one can expect in an area
Speaker 4: which is in the middle of a civil war, and
Speaker 4: to be drone striking schools, it is pretty callous. It's
Speaker 4: also worth noting that, like, it's a contantly gets thrown
Speaker 4: around a lot in discussion about the Middle East. Right,
Speaker 4: it's the only democracy in the Middle East, and it's
Speaker 4: let me tell you, it's not normally referring to this
Speaker 4: part of the world. It's referring to Israel and a
Speaker 4: I don't think that's true Israel project, Yeah it does
Speaker 4: it what fucking definitely? Well, democracy is an extremely nebulous concept, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: So like this is this anaria where people's votes have
Speaker 4: a substantive impact on how their lives lives, certainly more
Speaker 4: so than people who are Arabs in Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Kurds in southern Turkey, Syrians in Syria, like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yepyria, Yeah yeah, yes exactly, people in parts of
Speaker 4: Iran like.
Speaker 2: Iraq, I think people in northern or in the in
Speaker 2: the Baghdad government controlled junks of Iraq for that matter.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, like all over. Right, Like, so, this isn't
Speaker 4: just an attack on like individual women, It's an attack
Speaker 4: on a state which is genuinely at least attempting to
Speaker 4: establish a new form of democracy, right, like a more participatory,
Speaker 4: more horizontally organized democracy. It's an attack on a state
Speaker 4: in the Middle East, which is like anti patriarchal, which
Speaker 4: is something that we don't have here in the United States. Right,
Speaker 4: Like it's it's like we have still failed to have
Speaker 4: a woman being president, Like it's it's an attack on
Speaker 4: these things which most decent human beings should be able
Speaker 4: to get behind. These attacks also don't just affect the
Speaker 4: people who are killed, right, They continue to displace families,
Speaker 4: They contribute to fuel shortages, they create power cuts, they
Speaker 4: suspend schools, they stop aid ach organizations working in the
Speaker 4: area because it's too high risk or they perceive it
Speaker 4: to be too high risk, and they stop the SDF
Speaker 4: continuing their operations against ISIS, right Like ISIS, as I said,
Speaker 4: continue to exist. They have sleeper cells. There was an
Speaker 4: attempted prison break last year. Two of the women from
Speaker 4: the YPG who had fought to stop those ISIS prisoners
Speaker 4: breaking out of their prison were later killed in the
Speaker 4: drone strike. It's very hard to see this as not
Speaker 4: helping that like that ISIS insurgency that they're fighting and
Speaker 4: hindering their operations. And I'm not just saying this based
Speaker 4: on sources that are the Roger Information Center are people
Speaker 4: in their anes, but this is the policy of the
Speaker 4: United States. Right before we started this, I looked up
Speaker 4: some of the Inspector General's reports from Operation Inherent Resolve,
Speaker 4: which is the United States operation to lead a coalition
Speaker 4: which includes SDF against ISIS, and they were talking about
Speaker 4: how the sdf's operations are hindered because they keep getting
Speaker 4: shot by drunts, right, and that there's not much that
Speaker 4: they can do about it, right, Unlike like Ukraine were
Speaker 4: not sending a ton of surface to air missiles or
Speaker 4: like things that you could use to defend yourself against drones, right,
Speaker 4: not that it's very easy to defend yourself against the drone.
Speaker 4: So why is Turkey doing this? I think firstly because,
Speaker 4: as Robert said, it sees SDF and the PKK is
Speaker 4: the same thing, right. And so the PKK mostly operates
Speaker 4: like Roberts in the mountains of southeastern Turkey, and it's
Speaker 4: been fighting this asymmetrical war against the Turkish state since
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four. So Urdigans Urigan is the president of Turkey, right,
Speaker 4: he entered off his in two thousand and three, and
Speaker 4: he's sort of pivoted on Turkish issues and Kurdish issues. Sorry,
Speaker 4: he continues to be Turkish, but he was initially in
Speaker 4: favor of like a negotiated peace with the PKK. In
Speaker 4: his early years included like proposals for linguistic autonomy, the
Speaker 4: right to a Kurdish press, and even like the return
Speaker 4: of Kurdish place names, which is a big deal still. Yeah, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you'll see like Commichlo or al Chemishli, like one being
Speaker 4: Arab the latter being Arabic, that the form of being Kurdish.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean it's just it's a huge deal
Speaker 3: because you're not just killing like people, you're killing a
Speaker 3: culture that's like in like it's not it's still like
Speaker 3: a different word to say extinct, like it's in danger
Speaker 3: of like not being there if it's off for the
Speaker 3: people protecting it, right, And I think it's like a
Speaker 3: classic tactic to stop people from using their language or
Speaker 3: customs or whatever, to just like try to erase them
Speaker 3: and like make them Turk or whatever they want them
Speaker 3: to be. And so the proposal of that I think
Speaker 3: is significant. But then obviously the follow through is a
Speaker 3: different story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the follow through is not there, right, So after
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, he's really pivoted and he's pursued like a
Speaker 4: really violent anti Kurdish policy. And it's worth noting, as
Speaker 4: you said, that for much of a twentieth century Turky
Speaker 4: state denied the existence of Kurdish people together. They called
Speaker 4: them mountain Turks in even in March twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: the Turkish Military of Education released a book in the
Speaker 4: Kurdish minority. It's a province called Diabakir Diabaquir. I guess
Speaker 4: it's Turkish, which it doesn't mention Kurds. It's a Kurlish
Speaker 4: majority province. It doesn't mention the Kurdish language. It claims
Speaker 4: that it's a Turkish dialect that's spoken there. They changed
Speaker 4: the name in August twenty twenty one of seventeenth century
Speaker 4: mosque from the words translating from the Turkish to the
Speaker 4: Kurds Mosque, and they call it the Turks Mosque. In
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three, Turkey dropped its objection so subjection is
Speaker 4: an effective vito right to Finland and Sweden joining NATO
Speaker 4: when the latter pled to devote more attention to the
Speaker 4: PKK and effectively end its decades old tradition as giving
Speaker 4: protection an asylum to Kurdish refugees. So if people aren't familiar.
Speaker 4: Sweden has been a country that's offered asylum to a
Speaker 4: a lot of different groups of people, Like I have
Speaker 4: a lot of friends from various stories I've done all
Speaker 4: over the world who have ended up living in Sweden,
Speaker 4: and Kurdish people are among those people, right who have
Speaker 4: found a home and a safe place in Sweden. So
Speaker 4: encouraging Sweden to not do that gives people one less
Speaker 4: safe place to go, right, Yeah, and this was kind
Speaker 4: of Turkey's like cost of entry for those people into NATO. Now,
Speaker 4: obviously there's a reason that Sweden and Finland want to
Speaker 4: join NATO, right, and that's the Russia is like right
Speaker 4: there and has been doing some invasion recently, and so
Speaker 4: they want that as kind of mutual aid, that mutual defense,
Speaker 4: and so they're being forced to give up this very
Speaker 4: reasonable policy of offering people are silent. Hi, everyone, it's
Speaker 4: me James, and I am back after what I hope
Speaker 4: was a fruitful and enjoyable advertising break for you. It
Speaker 4: is just me, and the reason for that is that
Speaker 4: someone outside is currently severing my telephone cable. Judging by
Speaker 4: what I can hear, and the fact that I no
Speaker 4: longer have the Internet so the second part of this
Speaker 4: episode will be me reading my script by myself without
Speaker 4: the interesting and often entertaining input of my colleagues. So
Speaker 4: sorry about that, but you will just have to make do.
Speaker 4: Turkey's been involved in a Syrian civil war since the beginning. Initially,
Speaker 4: it armed and equipped the Anti Assad FSA, but in
Speaker 4: August twenty sixteen it began a direct occupation of parts
Speaker 4: of northern Syria under Operation Euphrates Shield. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: it facilitated the establishment of the Syrian National Army and
Speaker 4: the Syrian Entering Government.
Speaker 1: Which it finances.
Speaker 4: Turkey has accused of Syrian Democratic forces, to which the
Speaker 4: YPG and YPGA belong, of quote seizing and ethnically cleansing
Speaker 4: territories which don't belong to Kurds. It isn't really any
Speaker 4: credible evidence for this, and the UN has refuted these claims.
Speaker 4: Some people have moved right, like as happens in many conflicts,
Speaker 4: but the SMI saw was like twenty five families. Earligan
Speaker 4: has openly expressed a sentiment that Kurdish people don't belong
Speaker 4: in North and East Syria, saying these areas are not
Speaker 4: suitable for the lifestyle of Kurds because these areas have
Speaker 4: virtually desert deportations of Syrians who have been who have
Speaker 4: sought refuge in Turkey. Right, So, people from Syria who
Speaker 4: have fled the civil war. At three and just over
Speaker 4: three and a half million people are living in Turkey. Right.
Speaker 4: Turkey has declared its intention to move one million of
Speaker 4: these people back to Syria, and it has already begun
Speaker 4: moving these people back to northwest Syria in the area
Speaker 4: as it occupies.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 4: The US State Department, in a press conference on the
Speaker 4: fourth of August deny that this constituted a demographic change.
Speaker 4: But I think that that's very heavily disputed by people
Speaker 4: on the ground. Certainly the YPGA and the YPG would
Speaker 4: do dispute that right, that the Kurdish people who have
Speaker 4: been driven out of some of the areas that Turkey
Speaker 4: occupies are being replaced by these people that are being
Speaker 4: moved back in by Turkey. Turkey was, of course the
Speaker 4: entry point for much of the weaponry and many of
Speaker 4: the people who joined ISIS in Syria. Foreign Policy the
Speaker 4: Publication has estimated that more than thirty thousand people across
Speaker 4: Turkey along the so called Jihadi Highway. Later Turkey clamped
Speaker 4: down on this a bit, but certainly in my coverage
Speaker 4: of the smuggling of weapons and equipment to ISIS, they
Speaker 4: were going through Turkey. Turkey was also directly engaged with
Speaker 4: the defeat of ISIS right Turk Turkey's troops for ISIS
Speaker 4: in parts of northern Syria. Meanwhile, Turkey is also enforced
Speaker 4: an economic blockade of the Autonomous Area of North East Syria.
Speaker 4: And it's even restricted water flowing into the region. Right,
Speaker 4: So at some point weapons and humans have flowed through
Speaker 4: Turkey to ISIS, and at this point water is not
Speaker 4: flowing in sufficient quantities through Turkey to the Autonomous Area
Speaker 4: of North and East Syria. And twenty eighteen, Turkey started
Speaker 4: what's called Operation Olive Branch. It's a military operation in
Speaker 4: which Turkish and Syrian National Army forces to control a
Speaker 4: city of Afrin. The assault included the alleged use of
Speaker 4: chemical gas, shelling of civilian areas, and shooting of fleeing refugees.
Speaker 4: Kurdish shrines, flags, cultural and historical sites were targeted destroyed
Speaker 4: by Turkish military forces. A hospital was bombed. Reporters Without
Speaker 4: Borders noted that reporting on the conflict had been handstrung
Speaker 4: by the Turkish government and more than thirty thousand Kurdish
Speaker 4: people have been displaced and their homes have been taken
Speaker 4: by those relocated refugees who we spoke about. Olive farms
Speaker 4: in the area have been seized and then leased to
Speaker 4: fund the operation of the pro Turkish Syrian National Army.
Speaker 4: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has documented these forces
Speaker 4: threatening to behead Kurds. And The Independent, that's the newspaper,
Speaker 4: has noted that some of the people fighting along I
Speaker 4: had the SNA are themselves former cards of ISIS, and
Speaker 4: it's reporting The Independent reported that and I quote video
Speaker 4: posted it online shows three uniformed jahadi's singing a song
Speaker 4: in praise of their past battles, and it says, quote
Speaker 4: how we were steadfast in Grossny that's in Chezhnia, Dakistan,
Speaker 4: and we took the Tora Bora that's Tora Bora's cave complex,
Speaker 4: formerly the headquarters of Osama bin Laden, and now Afrien
Speaker 4: is calling to us. There's the song they were singing,
Speaker 4: right that, suggesting that they're sort of a fight. There's
Speaker 4: casting this in in a long line of these battles
Speaker 4: that have been fought by these various I guess Islamist groups,
Speaker 4: just to be super clear on Islamist versus Islamic, because
Speaker 4: I don't want people to confuse the two things. One
Speaker 4: is a political outlook, right. Being an Islamist is a
Speaker 4: political outlook in it it focuses on, It uses an
Speaker 4: interpretation of Islam, which is certainly not the mainstream one.
Speaker 4: It's not my place to say whether or not it's
Speaker 4: a correct one, but it's certainly not the one that
Speaker 4: most Muslims in the world agree with. And it's the
Speaker 4: interpretation of that faith that you'll have seen with groups
Speaker 4: like ISIS and al Qaida. Right, But that is not
Speaker 4: to say by any means that all Muslim people agree
Speaker 4: with this, because they don't. There are Muslim people, many thousand,
Speaker 4: hundred of thousands of them who have been targeted killed
Speaker 4: by these people, right, And just wanting to be super
Speaker 4: clear on that distinction. This Hereian Observatory for Human Rights
Speaker 4: has also noted members of the Turkish fascist group the
Speaker 4: Gray Walls, fighting alongside the sna SO standing in the
Speaker 4: United States. It is easy to see this Turkish operation
Speaker 4: as a consequence of Trump's choice to abandon the SDF
Speaker 4: and the people who defeated isis, and to a large
Speaker 4: degree it is, but it also represents a long term
Speaker 4: goal of Verdigan to Turkey, which is tried without success
Speaker 4: to get support for its plans to build a buffer
Speaker 4: zone thirty kilometers is deep on his border with Syria
Speaker 4: and to fill that buffer zone with Syrian refugees who
Speaker 4: increasingly end up in Turkey. In particular, Turkey has objected
Speaker 4: to plans by the United States train and equip a
Speaker 4: thirty thousand person strong border force. This went through several
Speaker 4: different naming iterations that don't really matter. It's a border force.
Speaker 4: Right before the attack, Russian military officials propose handing over
Speaker 4: a free to a SAD as a compromise. So we
Speaker 4: haven't talked about Russia much. Robert talks about this in
Speaker 4: his series. But Russia is in Syria as an ally
Speaker 4: of the Aside regime and it has sort of acted
Speaker 4: as a go between between the SDF and the Side regime,
Speaker 4: and it has proposed in this instance right that the
Speaker 4: SDF withdraw from a Frien which is the area that
Speaker 4: Turkey invaded in operation out of Branch of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: and it said if you guys put out and you
Speaker 4: hand us over to ASAD, the Turks won't invade. They
Speaker 4: were directly take on a SAD like that. The SDF refused.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 4: The authorities are in a very tense relationship with Damascus,
Speaker 4: which is where Sad's government is based. Right, they've both
Speaker 4: received aid from them and been attacked by them after
Speaker 4: they were abandoned by the US and Russia. And they
Speaker 4: knew that Turkey Russia. Russia was aware that Turkey had
Speaker 4: plans to invade, right, and obviously didn't do anything to
Speaker 4: stop it. So they these SDF felt that they were
Speaker 4: abandoned by the US and Russia, with very very good
Speaker 4: reason to feel that way. The A and E s
Speaker 4: scrambled to find new ally to protect them, and they
Speaker 4: found one in the side government. This wasn't like, I
Speaker 4: don't think a choice that they wanted to make, But
Speaker 4: I think the rest of the world didn't leave with
Speaker 4: many options. So I'm quoting here from Muslumabidi, the sdf's
Speaker 4: commander in chief. He wrote an op ed and foreign
Speaker 4: policy it'll be linked in our sources at the end
Speaker 4: of the month. If we have to choose compromise in
Speaker 4: genocide shoes our people, he said. Numerous fighters who for
Speaker 4: ISIS and foreign volunteers have died in a free so
Speaker 4: in that initial operation, right when the SDF opposed Turkish invasion,
Speaker 4: numerous people died. One of them was a Britain named
Speaker 4: Anna Campbell. As she went by Helene Kera coox, I
Speaker 4: might have fucked that pronunciation of not my attempt to
Speaker 4: be disrespectful who I have? She was killed by Turkish
Speaker 4: Michelle and Lafren. Her father, Dirk Campbell, has been campaigning
Speaker 4: ever since Toda his daughter's remains returned. His case remains
Speaker 4: with the courts and has been entirely crowd funded. He
Speaker 4: submitted a claim to the European Court of Human Rights
Speaker 4: after hearing nothing from the Turkish courts, and when he
Speaker 4: did that, the Turkish course picked up the case that
Speaker 4: he'd submitted there. You can also find a link to
Speaker 4: this in the sources, But it's crowdjustice dot com slash
Speaker 4: case slash help Hyphen bring Hyphen Anna Hyphen home. They've
Speaker 4: raised all the money they need her at the moment,
Speaker 4: but doubtless they will need more in the future. So
Speaker 4: where does all this leave the people of North and
Speaker 4: East Syria. Right, these are people who have been impacted
Speaker 4: by the territorial caliphate of the Islamic State and all
Speaker 4: the horrific things that people will be aware happened there.
Speaker 4: They're people who have successfully fought for and achieved their freedom,
Speaker 4: only to be attacked by another state. And they are
Speaker 4: people who have suffered the same earthquake that Turkey suffered.
Speaker 4: In February of this year twenty twenty three, four thousand
Speaker 4: people died in a freed right, which is the city
Speaker 4: which is now occupied by Turkish and SNA troops, and
Speaker 4: Turkey pushed a little bit further east in Operation quote
Speaker 4: unquote Peace Spring, a year after Olive Branch, and currently
Speaker 4: Turkey is cutting water flow to pumping stations it controls
Speaker 4: that feed water to the area. It combines with the
Speaker 4: impact of the earthquake and the ongoing burden of controlling
Speaker 4: one of the largest prisons in Earth, which is the
Speaker 4: ol Whole Prison, which holds the majority of the ISIS
Speaker 4: fighters and their families who were not either killed or
Speaker 4: returned to the states from which they came. And we'll
Speaker 4: have more on that Olhole prison next week. There's infighting
Speaker 4: between militias in the Turkish areas, which obviously impact Turkish
Speaker 4: controlled areas. Obviously that impacts civilians as arbitrary arrests. There's
Speaker 4: the increasing Turkification of areas like a freem right, including
Speaker 4: instruction in the Turkish language. Like Shurin said earlier, one
Speaker 4: of the things that's integral to maintain in national identity
Speaker 4: is education. Right in my experience studying Catalan identity, getting
Speaker 4: education in Catalan was vital to fermenting and continuing Catalan identity.
Speaker 4: Kurdish identity is not national in the same way the
Speaker 4: identity in the A and S I guess is not national.
Speaker 4: But this Turcification, right, the flying of Turkish flags above
Speaker 4: buildings which are not military buildings, right like above hospitals,
Speaker 4: and that kind of thing again is a marginalization of
Speaker 4: the people who already live there, who lived there for
Speaker 4: a long time. SDF guerrilla units like Wrath of Olives
Speaker 4: and a Free Liberation Front are involved in fighting with
Speaker 4: a Syrian national army, and that fighting kills civilians right
Speaker 4: throughout a free and there have been things like car bombs.
Speaker 4: The a Free Liberation Front goes by HRI from the
Speaker 4: Kurdish initials right, and they've carried out some attacks on
Speaker 4: SNA militias in the last few days. You can often
Speaker 4: see videos of those online. It's the sort of thing
Speaker 4: you'd like to see. There are still land mines that
Speaker 4: kill civilians in the area, and there are still ISIS
Speaker 4: sleeper cells bombing and killing people. Last week, the Autonomous
Speaker 4: Administration of North and East Syria responded to turkeys ongoing aggression,
Speaker 4: bashing a statement claiming Turkey's operations are forcing the SDF
Speaker 4: to divert personnel away from countering ISIS and threatening the
Speaker 4: stability of the area. Obviously, this is all after an
Speaker 4: earthquake which killed four thousand people in a free people
Speaker 4: that have access as many hospitals there, for instance lots
Speaker 4: and still have a try able to Turkey to get
Speaker 4: cancer treatment, right and so is. This leaves the people
Speaker 4: of northern Eastyria in a very precarious situation right in
Speaker 4: which there are and they're now left largely without the
Speaker 4: solidarity that they experienced when they were fighting ISIS, right,
Speaker 4: and it's very difficult, just like in so many cases,
Speaker 4: I feel this way about Memar two. To see the
Speaker 4: US and Europe expressing solidarity and solidarity in the form
Speaker 4: of lethal aid, right solidarity in the form of surface
Speaker 4: to webissiles and tanks and rifles and bullet proofests and
Speaker 4: medical aid and all the things that you need to
Speaker 4: sustain a fight to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And they should they should do that.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying for a moment that they shouldn't. Right.
Speaker 4: Ukraine has been invaded by a much bigger and more
Speaker 4: powerful military and it has every right to defend itself,
Speaker 4: and I'm glad that we're helping, but I wish that
Speaker 4: we would help other people too, especially people who we
Speaker 4: have sort of made promises to that we've not kept,
Speaker 4: or people who we've encouraged to believe, in the case
Speaker 4: of Mema right that they have a right to a
Speaker 4: better life, and then when they decide to defend that,
Speaker 4: we don't stand behind them. So yeah, that's my episode.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry for a weird juxtaposition of me doing the
Speaker 4: last part scripted, but somebody outside is drilling through my
Speaker 4: phone cable. So yeah, thank you for joining me.
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