Background – Rojava Poeples Tribunal

A) TURKEY’S KURDISH POLICY: COLONIZATION AND GENOCIDE

In order to understand what happened in Rojava in the period from 2018 to the present day, which constitutes the time frame of the tribunal, it is necessary to briefly emphasize the Kurdish politics of the Turkish state. This is because the so-called Kurdish issue has a historical and social background of at least 200 years, but roughly the last century covers the relationship between the Republic of Turkey and the Kurds. In other words, the Kurdish issue is older than the history of modern Turkey and encompasses the history of the current republic.

It should be noted as a fact that the Turkish state has practiced genocide, massacres, displacement and assimilation against all communities other than the Turkish ethnicity and Sunni sect in the historical context that includes its pre-founding period. This policy of genocide against the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek peoples continues today in the form of a policy of denial, and the “genocidal tradition” against the Kurds. Keeping in mind the reality of this tragic history, we will give the background of the policy against the Kurdish people.

With the Treaty of Lausanne, the founding contract of the Turkish state, the geography of Kurdistan was divided into four parts on July 24, 1923. In fact, the Turkish state tried to gain the support of the Kurds during the establishment process, especially between 1919-23 in the post-World War I conditions. We know that the promise of “Autonomy for Kurds” was made, reflected in oral and written documents. In fact, the 1921 Constitution, the first founding charter of modern Turkey, envisions an administrative order based on an autonomy system. However, this process continued until the 1924 Constitution defined an oppressive and authoritarian state structure based on Turkish nationalism.

With the 1924 constitution, the Kurds also developed resistances against the denialist approach of the Turkish state, which gained a systemic character. The acceleration of formations based on Kurdish identity and the Kurds’ initiatives for self-determination gained momentum with the resistances. The time-frame between 1925 and 1938 was an extremely bloody and violent period in which the resistance of the Kurds was suppressed and destroyed. Even official Turkish sources mention the existence of 28 revolts during this period.

Each revolt was followed by massive massacres. It is known that in the Dersim rebellion of 1937-38 alone, approximately 50 thousand Kurds were massacred with the use of chemical gases. The Dersim genocide has been recognized at the level of rhetoric from the first periods of the AKP government.

The policy of extermination, migration and assimilation of the Kurdish people was based on an unofficial text called the Eastern Reform Plan (Şark Islahat Planı) dated September 24, 1925. This text, described by some researchers as the “Kurdish Constitution of the Republic of Turkey”, is still the main source for understanding what is happening today. ‘’The Destruction Plan” (Çöktürme Planı) that was implemented in 2014-15 is the most important sign that an updated version of the Eastern Reform Plan is being implemented.

The first plan stipulates in its very first article that Kurdistan will be governed under a state of emergency regime and that the form of governance will continue until results are achieved. The colonial governate system established under the name of “General Inspectorate” was determined as the administrative structure of this regime. The first regulations that came to the fore were: The local (Kurdish) population could not take part in any serious administrative duties in their own geography; The Kurds would never be settled in the places left vacant after the Armenian-Syriac genocides, on the contrary, prominent Kurdish communities would be exiled to the west; To speak Kurdish in official structures and public spaces would be banned; The gendarmerie stations would be established, especially in the border regions of Kurdistan.

By the mid-1970s, the Kurds were heavily assimilated and the geography as a whole was under military and administrative tyranny. The PKK emerged as a challenge to the policy of destruction, assimilation, and colonization enforced by Turkish state. The great awareness raised by the challenge is that there is no other way of political other than armed resistance in Kurdistan.

From 1984 to the present day, what the Turkish state has done in the North of Kurdistan (the area officially included within the borders of Turkey) can be traced in the reports and annual data prepared by human rights organizations. Examples such as the burning of more than 4 thousand villages and hamlets, the murder and disappearance of tens of thousands of Kurdish people under the name of “unsolved murders”, the torture and imprisonment of millions of people have been the subject of ECHR decisions and Turkey has been found guilty many times. However, it has still not been possible to handle this process as a whole, to confront it and to hold a fair trial.

Another point that should be emphasized from a historical point of view is the systematic quest for peace/negotiations conducted by the PKK and Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan after 1993. In this context, their efforts to provide a basis for a solution by declaring ceasefires at various periods are very important. The negotiation between PKK and Turkey publicly known as the Oslo Process (2009-11) and the negotiation between Mr. Öcalan and Turkey in İmralı Island Prison (2013-15) can be counted as the most recent and important examples. In this period, Mr. Öcalan’s messages of peace were read and accepted in front of millions of people in Amed during the Newroz Celebration at 2013-14-15, and his declaration with the 10- points became official text signed by the Turkey and HDP delegations at the Dolmabahçe Palace in 2015. At that time, the quest for non-conflict and peace was accepted by a significant part of Turkish society.

However, the peace process was ended by the then Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and, in his words, it was put in the refrigerator. Later, during the period of peace negotiations, it was understood that the Turkish state was investing in a new genocide strategy against the Kurds.

Especially in 2015-16, Kurds demanding democratic self-government in nearly 30 towns and cities in Kurdistan were attacked with heavy weapons, sometimes with the use of airplanes, and these places were turned into a wasteland. In Cizre, 200 wounded and civilian youth hiding in the basements of three houses were burned to death. Families could not recognize the charred bodies of their children. In its February 2017 report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the events described by witnesses as an “apocalyptic portrayal”.

In the same time-frame, there was an unresolved civil war in Syria, which started in 2011 and in which almost all global powers were involved. Turkey’s intervention in the war in Syria was the main reason for the aggravation of the balance sheet to the detriment of all peoples.

B) THE SYRIAN WAR AND THE ROJAVA REVOLUTION

An important development for Kurds and other peoples was the liberation of Kurdish cities in Syria from the regime forces on July 19, 2012. The Kurds living in the cities of Northern and Eastern Syria, together with the Arab, Assyrian and Armenian peoples, started a self-governing process as of this date.

ISIS’s capture of Mosul was one of the critical moments of this period. The first goal after capturing Mosul was to commit genocide by attacking the ancient Ezidi community of Shengal on August 3, 2014. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which had undertaken the protection of Shengal, first disarmed the region and then withdrew, leaving the people defenseless. The massacre of thousands of people, the abduction of women and girls, enslavement, forced conversion, and other grave crimes, which today are recognized as the “Ezidi Genocide” by the parliaments of many countries.

The tragedy of Ezidi people was prevented from the fact that 12 HPG guerrillas arrived in Shengal very quickly and withdrew to the mountainous area with the people, and then, together with the YPG forces opened a corridor between Rojava and Shengal and took hundreds of thousands of Yazidis there. Dozens of HPG and YPG militants lost their lives to open and protect this corridor.

In the aftermath of the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds became more visible together with other peoples, created a common living spaces, kept an important geography away from the war, stopped the ISIS atrocities that ravaged the entire region with a tremendous resistance, took an attitude to prevent the extinction of the Ezidi people, and the women-centered character of all these developments led them to gain great respect and sympathy on a global scale.

For this reason, the Kurds’ cooperation with the global Coalition against ISIS and their becoming the focus of global attention have been seen and defined as a major problem for Turkey. Because the Kurdish identity, which the Turkish state made big attempts to suppress, has emerged as a greater power outside the borders of Turkey, and this situation has been determined as a national threat for the Turkish state. The Turkish state, which has so far practiced a policy of oppression against the Kurds within its own borders, has now extended this policy to the Kurds living in Syria. Against the rise of the Kurds as a new alternative in the Middle East, the Turkish state has adopted a new strategy aimed at expanding its policy of extermination.

In line with this strategy, the Turkish state used ISIS and Islamist Salafist groups as its own paramilitary force against the Kurdish people. On May 18, 2015, the bomb attacks were carried out against HDP’s Adana and Mersin provincial offices; On June 5, 2015 another bomb attack against HDP’s Diyarbakir election rally, killing 4 people and injuring hundreds. On 20 July 2015 in Suruç district of Urfa province, 300 young people from different cities gathered with the aim for going to Kobanê to participate in the reconstruction of the town destroyed during the siege, to help remove the rubble of schools and hospitals, to bring toys to children, to build a playground and to deliver humanitarian aid materials. They were attacked by ISIS with a bomb while they were making a press statement in the garden of Amara Cultural Centre. In the attack, 33 people were killed and more than 100 people were injured. After the bombing, Turkish police forces attacked and detained those protesting the attack. In Ankara on October 10, 2015, 103 people were killed in a bomb attack by ISIS against a crowd gathered for a “No to War” rally.

The relationship between the Turkish state and ISIS has been the subject of much national and international debate. In the same context, Turkey’s relationship with Salafist terrorist organizations, which share common roots with ISIS, is officially recognized. Turkey has allowed countless ISIS members from Russia, China, Afghanistan, the US and European countries to cross into Syria through its territory. Turkey’s arms transfers to ISIS and other Salafist organizations is now a definite fact reflected in the case files. After the defeat of ISIS, Turkey was the first country to become a safe zone for it. There are many news and information shared with the public that thousands of ISIS members or their families started to live in Turkey after the loss of territory. ISIS members are free to operate in Turkey, and it is almost routine for those who are brought to trial to be released in a short period of time and escape punishment.

The invasions of Êfrîn, Serekani-Gre Spi and the grave crimes against North-East Syria are a continuation and part of the anti-Kurdish-line of the Turkish state, which has been laid out in its entire historical-political background, and has been carried out within the scope of the ‘’Destruction Plan” that has been put into effect since 2014. Turkey’s main motivation is the assimilation of the Kurds, the demographic transformation of the geography, and it fulfils the requirements of this strategy by using the Kurdish Question as a genocide technique spread over time.

C) TURKEY’s ROJAVA POLICY AS A PROCESS OF OCCUPATION, ANNEXATION AND ETHNIC CLEANSING

1. Êfrîn’s current situation can be understood as the archetype of the Turkish state tradition’s approach towards Kurds. It was a historical city in northwestern Syria, close to the Mediterranean Sea, demographically almost 95% Kurdish. Until 2018, the city was an oasis of peace for refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war. Although not a stone was thrown against Turkey from Êfrîn, the city was subjected to a previous military occupation and subsequently became the main implementation site of the Turkish state’s gradual annexation strategy. Almost all Kurds living in the city have been displaced, and those who remain have been subjected to oppression, violence and rape. In Êfrîn, the Kurdish language has been erased and life has been reorganized in Turkish and Arabic. The historical sites of the city, especially Yazidi and Christian places of worship, have been destroyed and graves have almost disappeared, turning it into an epicentre for Islamist jihadists. Violence and rape against women has become widespread, and the accumulation of free women has been completely erased and replaced with Salafist standards.

The private property and business places were confiscated, the olive trees were marketed in Turkey and from there to Europe. Kurds displaced from Êfrîn have been forced to live in tents in the Shahba region, where they are often subjected to attacks by the Turkish army. People detained in Êfrîn were taken to Turkey, where they were prosecuted and punished. In addition, gang groups kidnapping people and demanding ransoms from their families are frequently the subject of reports on human rights violations.

Similar to the Êfrîn model, the cities of Serekani and Gre Spi were first militarily occupied in October 201, then annexed and cleansed of Kurds. All assets of the local population were confiscated and these areas were made part of the Turkish administrative and educational systems.
In his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2019, Erdoğan revealed his real plan with a map showing all the historical habitats of the Kurdish people in Rojava. He did not even need to hide his intention to occupy and annex the entire Kurdish geography.
Until October 3, 2023, the Turkish state regularly attacked the Rojava with warplanes and drones, extrajudicially executed many civilians and security officers, and defended it. The peoples living in Rojava have been forced to live a life of daily attacks by the Turkish state.
Since October 3, 2023, the Turkish state has launched a heavy attack on Rojava, systematically targeting civilian areas and all infrastructure. Electricity networks, granaries, hospitals, schools, etc. were destroyed in these attacks. The problem of thirst, which was previously caused by the cutting off of water sources, was further exacerbated by targeting existing water reservoirs. It is aimed to turn the geography into an area where the civilian population cannot live.
When we look at the crimes committed by the Turkish state in Rojava geography, it is seen that they are similar to the crimes committed in Gaza today. However, the situation in Rojava is not on the agenda as much as the Gaza case and is not sufficiently reflected in the international public opinion. The operations carried out by the Turkish state in Rojava are considered war crimes and crimes against humanity. This means that a people is systematically subjected to all kinds of inhuman attacks because of its identity, and the lands where it has lived for thousands of years are made uninhabitable. The current process in Rojava is a genocide spread over time.

CONCLUSION

The Tribunal will focus on the Turkish state’s attacks on Rojava between 2018 and 2024, and will present them for scrutiny in a broad and documented format. Already, the reports / documents / data made by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syria, prestigious human rights institutions, many civil society organizations shed some light on the picture.

It is necessary to emphasise the tacit or explicit approval of the global powers, Russia and the USA, for the Turkish state’s attacks in Rojava. Without their approval, it is politically impossible for the Turkish attacks.

The existing international criminal mechanisms did not investigate these attacks and considered them outside their jurisdiction. As an alternative, it is not possible for the UN Security Council to exercise its authority due to the veto option of the two powers that have already approved the Turkish attacks.

All these reasons clearly show that there is a situation of impunity regarding all the Rojava attacks of the Turkish state within the scope of war crimes. The Turkish state actually derives its real power from impunity policy. It acts more daring and aggressive with the knowledge and experience that no matter what it does, it will not be subjected to any international sanctions.

The existence of a self-government project in Rojava, which attracted the attention of the world, triggered Turkey’s classic hatred of Kurds. Thefeore, Turkey has updated and expanded its centuries-old genocidal tradition.

With the Permanent People’s Tribunal, it is possible to reveal all aspects of the war crimes committed by the Republic of Turkey against Rojava, and in the current situation, there does not seem to be any other opportunity to seek justice.