Turkey’s silence in response to calls for assistance in Kobani is consistent with its decade’s long repression of the Kurds. Even the U.S. now pleads with Turkey to help defend Kobani against I.S. The U.S. does so in spite of its history of fuelling Turkish state-terrorism against the minority Kurdish population. For decades the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has fought for autonomy from the Turkish state. More than 35,000 Kurds have died, millions of Kurds have been displaced, thousands tortured, and Kurdish cultural expression repressed. As the political scientist and academic, Noam Chomsky, recently highlighted, Turkey’s murderous and destructive repression of the Kurdish population, particularly in the 1990s, relied crucially on a huge flow of U.S. arms, as Turkish-state terror against the Kurds increased at that time (teleSUR, September 29th, 2014, here). More recently, WikiLeaks cables have shown how Turkey and the U.S. worked together to shut-down a Kurdish television network (Roj TV) promoting Kurdish cultural expression (teleSUR, September 29th, 2014, here). The U.S., EU, NATO and Turkey continue to define and list the PKK as a “terrorist organization.”

The Kurds are an ethnic group, largely Muslim, who span four countries, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The PKK is still reported as being a Marxist organization contending for an independent nation state. Yet, PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan is known to have, adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism” and communalism inspired by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin. Libertarian municipalism calls for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy in which national borders would, over time, become increasingly meaningless. In this way, the Kurdish struggle can be seen as a model for a worldwide movement towards genuine democracy and a co-operative economy, as many have pointed out, akin to the indigenous movement of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (see most recently, for example David Graeber in the Guardian October 8th, 2014, here).

Faced with Turkey’s perverse and intractable silence to the disaster in Kobani, thousands have been displaced from their homes – and have sought refuge. Thousands others have gathered in protest, which have been taking place in cities throughout the world (teleSUR, October 10th, 2014, here). Solidarity actions of this nature must be multiplied until Turkey responds effectively, or support otherwise reaches those defending Kobani and similar centres against I.S.

While we celebrate the women and men fighting I.S. today, it is important not to forget the Kurdish women and men that have been tortured, imprisoned, subject to extra-judicial executions, and those political prisoners that remain in prison charged or convicted of dubious offenses. Today, a young Kurdish women – Zeinab Jalailan – convicted of “enmity against God” for belonging to a pro-Kurdish “opposition” group sits in an Iranian prison, with a deteriorating health condition and potentially losing her eye sight. She was arrested at the age of 24, and soon after sentenced to death in a “trial” that lasted only minutes, and where she had no legal representation. Although this sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, allegations have surfaced suggesting that Zeinab has been tortured and sexually abused in detention. She is reportedly able to speak to her a family for just a few minutes every week, and is being denied medical treatment because she refuses to be subjected to forced virginity testing (Amnesty International USA, July 9th, 2010, here). Zeinab reportedly left her family home in her late teens to ensure that she could receive an education, she was involved in education and social care initiatives in Kurdish communities within Iraq and arrested on her way back to Iran in 2008.

As  Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist for female education, who became the youngest ever Nobel Prize recipient in any category, wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and women are being celebrated for choosing and fighting for freedom in Syria and beyond, let us not forget those political prisoners that are detained today, carrying hopes that we may all be free tomorrow.

Preeti Kaur