#Fight4Afrin Evaluation

A look back at the struggle to stand in solidarity with Afrin as well as potentials for material solidarity with Rojava as the US and other countries pull out of the region, leaving it open to attack by ISIS and Turkish forces.

Not even a year has passed since the first pictures and news of the Turkish war of aggression on the canton of Afrin reached us in Europe. Late in the afternoon of January 20, 2018, the first shots of the Turkish Warplanes unloading their deadly cargo over Afrin flickered across the screens of televisions, computers, and smartphones. Nothing of what happened then, happened in the Dark. Anyone could see what was happening in Afrin, witnessed how defenseless civilians were torn apart by bombs and a peaceful city was reduced to rubble and ashes.

The world witnessed the Turkish occupation army and its Islamist mercenaries perform their atrocities and warcrimes. But no serious objection, no protest, not even the slightest attempt to stop the killings was heard at that time from the governments of the so-called democratic West. The war against the people of Afrin and their self-defense structures has once again demonstrated that the highly prized values ​​of humanity, peace, freedom and democracy are, without hesitation, showered in the dirt. None of the states that at the time supported this war of aggression, this crime against humanity, can ever purify themselves of this guilt. We know exactly on whose hands the blood of our comrades sticks and will hold them to account.

We have not forgotten the pictures of the tanks in the olive groves of Afrin nor who gave the occupiers the weapons they used to murder our comrades. We know very well the producers of the deadly bombs that the fascist Turkish army was raining on the children of Afrin and we know only too well who gave the permission for the attack and so that the massacres became possible. We have mentioned some of their names, there is no need to reiterate them here. At the beginning, we would like to make one thing clear: we will never forget and we never forgive this.

These days, we see the need to speak again, because today the revolution of Northeastern Syria is once again in imminent danger. The Turkish dictator Erdogan blows in Ankara for the general attack on Rojava and sends thousands of soldiers, artillery, tanks and heavy weapons to the border of Syria. The tens of thousands of Islamist mercenaries trained on Turkish territory and in the occupied territories of northern Syria in recent months are ready to assault the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

For months, the AKP-MHP regime has been working in close coordination with the US, Russia and European countries on a final extermination campaign against the Democratic Northern Syria Federation. With the withdrawal of US troops, the final preparations seem complete. After the fighters of the YPJ / YPG / SDF have brought the self-appointed caliphate of the so-called Islamic State to the brink of complete annihilation in four years of hard fighting and suffering heavy loses, the International Coalition now decided to get rid of his former “allies” and obviously has agreed on giving the liberated territories to their NATO partner Turkey for occupation and plunder. Imperialism once again shows its filthy grimaces and is determined to liquidate this revolution. We are far from indignant or shocked by this decision. Something else was not to be expected of these War criminals. It is getting obvious mow what the Kurdish liberation movement has always made clear, but too often was intentional overheard: the fronts in the Middle East and Worldwide are not between individual states and powers, but rather between revolution and counter-revolution.

Therefore, we think it would be more than appropriate to recall the # fight4afrin campaign during these hours and give it a general rating. To this day, we have deliberately left this little piece of left-radical history in Europe without comment, because we have never considered this chapter as complete. Just as the resistance continues in Afrin and is causing heavy blows to the occupiers week after week, we believe it is necessary to avoid a hasty end to the struggle against the supporters and collaborators of the fascist Turkish state in the backyard of the war.

It is important to reflect and evaluate the past phase, which is why we would like to take a brief assessment of the militant resistance here. As part of the militant resistance against the war of aggression in Afrin between 21.1. and the 15.05.18 a total of 136 successful attacks carried out. These are only those actions that we knew, there will be many more, which took place without a sign back. Of these, 93 were found in Germany, 8 in Greece, 8 in Italy, 8 in France, 4 in Austria, 3 in Switzerland, 3 in Belgium, 2 in Sweden and 2 in the Netherlands, and a single action in Slovakia , in Serbia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark. A total of 20 banks who earning their bloody money by investing in arms production, 24 European defense industry institutions or military cooperation with the Turkish occupation army, 24 European policy institutions and 75 institutions in direct connection or collaboration with the Turkish regime were targeted in our nightly attacks.

From day one, the occupation offensive was not only accompanied by mass protests and civil disobedience actions, but also by nightly attacks by the revenge commandos and autonomous groups. In times when the Western press still kept silent about the atrocities in Afrin, the militant actions forced the issue on the agenda.

The silence was broken and the resistance began to organize. The focus of actions on targets of fascist collaborators changed after the first call of the campaign Fight4Afrin on the 8th of March. From then on, more and more targets of the European defense industry, banks, and specially in Germany, offices and centers of the governing parties were attacked. Through the actions the complicity of the individual institutions was pointed out and addressed by numerous well-researched actions, and also exposed till this day unknown war profiteers. The campaign continued and the range of actions ranged from broken glass, through paint on the walls, to neatly executed arson attacks. To emphasize is the simultaneity of the different forms of action. For example, in actions of civil disobedience such as occupations of party offices as well as spontaneous unannounced and legal demonstrations, visible reference was made to the campaign. The hashtag # fight4afrin spread everywhere where solidarity with the resistance was called.

The simultaneity of the various forms of action made an important contribution to letting the pressure of distancing parts of the campaign from each other, driven by the state agency, go nowhere and to create a smooth transition of the various forms of action. The campaign remained connected and communicable in this form and could not easily be pushed in to a corner. We would like to emphasize that the campaign included in the declarations of actions, in the names of the commandos and elsewhere, an open reference to the fallen of the resistance of Afrin and the armed struggle. For us, this represents a new quality. The re-appropriation of revolutionary memory is a necessary part of a resistant culture, in which the memory of our fallen comrades is always tied to our promise to continue their struggle and realize their dreams. This was expressed through the dedication of militant actions to one or more of our fallen. Our remembrance has not remained a motionless grief over the loss of our friends, but a message to the enemy: this fight will go on forever, no matter how many of us you murder. Our dead are immortal as long as there are still humans on this earth who continue their struggle.

The militant actions gave hope and motivation to many people during this time because they hit a nerve. Through them, the depth of the contradiction between us and the state, fascism and capital has come to light, which could not be pacified or captured. The campaign has shown that we can organize ourselves beyond summits of rulers in such a form, the militant action. And many have relearned the craft of militant action, in which direct action felt their own capacity for action and strength. These are important moments, witch will be recorded into a collective memory of the beginning of a movement. The campaign Fight4Afrin, embedded in the general start, has shown that we not only know what to defend, but also what it takes to win: unite the resistance against the ruler of this world.

But we also have to admit that we could not prevent the occupation of Afrin. We must and want to be measured by it. We’ve lost a battle, but not the revolution!

We do not know what to expect in the coming weeks. The only thing that is clear is that we should be prepared to respond to all eventualities. The fascist regime in Ankara is not going to drop its big-power plans so easily. The war will continue until the Turkish state and its supporters are finally crushed. The AKP-MHP regime is today the most aggressive fascist regime we are confronted with. If the Turkish occupation state and its Islamist killer gangs take action and go to attack against Northeast Syria, then not only the destruction of the revolutionary social project, but also massacre, genocide, ethnic cleansing and the long-term demographic change of the entire region is at stake. Just as in Afrin and the other occupied territories, the Turkish state will do its utmost to drive out the resident population and gradually annex the area to Turkish territory. For what is currently being experienced in Turkey and in the occupied territories in Syria and Iraq, there can be no other name for it than open fascism.

In this respect, those who regard themselves as antifascists should consider the fight against the Turkish state not only as a national issue for the Kurdish people and other ethnic groups in the region, but as a fight against fascism and thus as there duty. Ideological boundaries and differences of opinion should be overlooked in this question. What must be at the center of the coming battles is the common enemy, Turkish fascism and its collaborators and Western supporters. The Middle East revolution has never been able to count on the help of the imperialist powers, but today more than ever the importance of true revolutionary international solidarity becomes clear. As revolutionaries in the imperialist metropolises, we have a responsibility to stand with the struggle in Rojava.

Death to Turkish Fascism