As the sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar explains in Le Monde, “The women’s movement has now turned into a generalised rebelliousness”. What is new is that the participants in the demonstrations, and more broadly, Iranian society as a whole, no longer seem ready to give in to fear, including the fear of death. Faced with a growing protest throughout the country, the regime has responded in its usual way: brutal force. And the forces of repression may be using increasingly violent reprisals, they are unable to prevent the movement from spreading, let alone stop it.
Unlike the 2009 movement, which came from the urban middle class, or the 2019 movement, which was driven by the working class, the uprising has now swept all regions of the country, all ethnic groups and all social classes around a clear slogan: “Death to the dictator!”
Faced with this movement, the regime pursues its twofold strategy: to repress without mercy and to try to instil in the demonstrators the fear of “separatists”. The minorities, and in particular the Kurds, were thus designated as troublemakers, with the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) going so far as to strike again at the exiled Kurdish parties in Iraq. This second part of the regime’s strategy was no more successful than the first. The diversion did not work. On the contrary, the slogan, originally Kurdish, “Woman, Life, Freedom”, is now being taken up in Persian throughout the country.
However, the forces of repression do not hesitate to kill indiscriminately, and examples of exactions abound. For example, the raid launched on the evening of 1st November in Tehran on the residence of Shahrak Ekbatan, where a Bassidji (Islamic paramilitary “volunteer”) had been killed the previous week. Residents testified to shots being fired into their windows, stun grenades being thrown, in what amounted to a commando raid on enemy territory in wartime. The militia launched such raids every night. One of the reasons for the launch of these “hit and run” operations is that the Pasdaran or the Bassidji, aware of the hatred they are the object of, do not want to remain on the spot: they have given up “holding the ground”.
In Tehran, a video verified by AFP shows members of the security forces firing from a metro platform at the crowd on the opposite platform, causing them to scream and fall...
In another example of their brutality, on the 16th in Izeh (Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan), little Kian Pirfalak, aged 9, was killed along with 6 other people, including another child, when the family car was riddled with bullets by plainclothes militiamen of the government. The government tried unsuccessfully to attribute the killing to unidentified “terrorists” (Farda).
This increasing militarisation of the repression and the resulting increase in civilian casualties have only further radicalised the movement by fuelling the anger of the protesters. Moreover, according to a process already observed during the Islamic Revolution, each ceremony of the 40th day of Shiite mourning for a murdered demonstrator (including in Sunni areas) is transformed into a new demonstration against the government. For example, the Norwegian-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported that on the 3rd, the 40th day ceremony of Hadis Najafi, a 22-year-old protester killed by police in September, turned into a demonstration with participants chanting “This year is the year of blood, Seyyed Ali [Khamenei] will be overthrown”. The police blocking the highway leading to the cemetery did not prevent the participants from coming (AFP).
In an attempt to cut short these new protests, the Pasdaran started to launch real raids on hospitals or morgues to steal bodies and bury them in secret places. For example, on the evening of the 18th in a hospital in Bokan, Kurdistan, they shot at the family of a killed demonstrator who refused to hand over the body, injuring at least 5 of its members, before taking away the deceased (Hengaw). In other cases, they blackmail the families to force them to confirm the official version of the death of their victim. Kian’s mother preferred to keep her child’s body at home to prevent the authorities from stealing it before the burial...
The New York Times devoted an article to another consequence of the brutality of the repression: the hundreds of demonstrators partially or totally blinded by the pellets or rubber bullets fired by the security forces. Since the beginning of the demonstrations, ophthalmologists in the three main hospitals in Tehran have counted more than 500, and those in Kurdistan province more than 80. Many arrived with metal or rubber fragments still lodged in their heads. The real numbers are probably much higher, as many of the injured avoid hospital, where they risk arrest and then torture. A London doctor in contact with his Iranian colleagues testified that “security in hospitals is replaced by officers who spy on patients and even interfere with treatment”... A video posted on the 22nd by Hengaw shows people trying to remove pellets from the body of a demonstrator with a knife in the middle of the street.
It is also the battle of information: the government, seeking by all means to prevent the evidence of its repression from leaving the country – and the demonstrators from coordinating themselves – has largely blocked the internet and social networks. Taking journalists as its main targets, it imprisoned dozens of them from the start of the movement. Among the first to be imprisoned were the two women who had revealed the death of Mahsa Jina Amini and covered her funeral in Saqqez. On 3 September, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists counted at least 51 journalists arrested since 16 September. On 4 September, a journalist from Saqqez, Nazila Maroufian, was arrested after publishing an interview with Mahsa Amini’s father entitled “They are lying” (AFP). To protect Iranian journalists, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced on the 4th a protection programme including the provision of internet anonymisation tools like VPNs. On the 8th, the two women journalists who were the first to be imprisoned were charged with “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” and “conspiracy to act against national security”, charges that carry the death penalty (AFP). According to RSF, at that time, nearly half of the journalists detained since mid-September were women. The regime’s anti-journalist threats even extend abroad: on the 11th, London accused Tehran of having threatened the lives of two journalists from the UK-based Persian-language channel Iran International. On the 19th, London police deployed vehicles and armed officers outside the TV station’s offices. The families of some of the journalists, who are still in Iran, have themselves been threatened...
Locking itself into its repressive line, the government put forward certain units considered “more reliable”, over-equipped, as well as the Iraqi Shiite militias of the Hashd al-Shaabi and others from the Lebanese Hezbollah. On the 10th, in a sign of a possible reinforcement of the militarisation of the repression and an attempt at intimidation, the commander of the Iranian army’s ground forces, General Kioumars Heydari, declared that his troops were “waiting for the orders of the Supreme Guide to intervene” (Le Figaro). While on the 13th, human rights organisations abroad reported 15,000 arrests (a figure denied by Tehran), the first death sentence linked to the “riots” was announced. The identity of the convicted person was not specified. According to IHR, at least 20 people were facing capital charges at the time.
The total eviction of the “reformists” from the power structures, set up by the Guide and his entourage to allow Ebrahim Raisi to come to power, by removing any counterweight to the conservatives, facilitated the repressive headlong rush. However, the very brutality of the repression is beginning to cause dissension even among them. After one of the most violent nights since the beginning of the movement, that of 16th-17th, some officials, including clerics and former pasdaran, began to openly question the repression. These statements were met with indifference by the demonstrators: no longer believing in any possibility of reforming the regime, they demand its pure and simple end.
The young Mahsa Jina Amini, whose murder triggered the revolt, was Kurdish (significantly, her first name ‘Jina’ was hardly mentioned at first, as it was specifically Kurdish and therefore illegal). The peripheral regions of the country, and in particular Baluchistan and Kurdistan, suddenly acquired considerable importance. This is where the repression is most ruthless, and the IHR statistics show that the majority of the deaths came from there: out of about 478 deaths (figures of the 19th), 126 occurred in Sistan-Baluchistan, and a total of 116 in the 3 provinces of Iranian Kurdistan: 48 in Kurdistan (capital Sanandaj), 45 in West Azerbaijan and 23 in Kermanshah). The Baluchi and Kurdish communities, although representing only 3% and 12% of the population respectively, each account for a quarter to a third of the victims.
The way in which Le Monde describes the situation in Baluchistan can be applied almost without modification to Iranian Kurdistan: “The sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis, the maintenance of order by personnel from other regions, the confiscation of cross-border smuggling and the ongoing ecological disaster [...] maintain a constant tension [...]”. In Kurdistan (as well as in Baluchistan), the pasdaran units that have been stationed there continuously since the foundation of the Islamic Republic, sent from other provinces, behave like occupying troops. Moreover, from these regions far from the capital, information is more difficult to get out of Iran. For all these reasons, while the regime tries to raise the separatist scarecrow, the repression is even more ruthless than in the rest of the country. Some observers speak of a “massacre”, like what happened in Zahedan, in Baluchistan, when the repressive forces fired on at least 96 dead and more than 300 wounded in a single day, on 30 September, before firing again on the crowd on the 4th in Khach, killing 16 people.
Farda reported on 2 November that in Kurdistan, where the demonstrations following the assassination of Jîna Mahsa Amini started, a massive crowd had gathered on 26 October at the Saqqez cemetery, where she is buried, for the ceremony of the 40th day after her death. Again, the roads were blocked, in vain, as many managed to reach the cemetery on foot. On the 2nd, according to the Hengaw organisation, based in Norway, a series of demonstrations affected the whole of Kurdistan, and in particular the large town of Sanandaj, where an 18 year old demonstrator, Momen Zandkarimi, was killed by fire from the security forces. Again, his body was taken away by his killers to avoid a public funeral. On the evening and night of the 6th, again according to Hengaw, a rally organised in Marivan after the death in Tehran of a Kurdish student from the city, Nasrin Ghadri, 22 years old, who died the day before after being hit on the head by the police, was targeted by gunfire which left 35 people injured (AFP). On the 7th, Hengaw delivered its “Report No. 10”, reporting the death since the beginning of the movement of at least 61 Kurdish citizens and more than 5,000 injured. Of the 61 victims, including 11 minors, 51 were killed by direct fire, 5 died under torture. By this date, Kurdistan of Iran had also seen more than 4,000 arrests...
On the 9th, in solidarity with the dead of Zahedan and on the 40th day of their murder, shops closed in several Kurdish towns – Baneh, Kermanshah, Marivan, Sanandaj and Saqqez. Security forces fired at the demonstrators using live ammunition, tear gas and lead pellets (Hengaw), and arrests took place in Marivan, Sanandaj, Mamasani (HRANA) and other places.
On the 15th and the following 2 days, new protests shook the whole country in commemoration of the 1,500 deaths in the November 2019 protests against fuel price hikes. They were well attended throughout Kurdistan. A video taken in Sanandaj shows protesters burning tyres and chanting slogans against the regime. Shopkeepers closed down in Mahabad, and work stoppages took place in most of Kurdistan province. According to Hengaw, “government forces opened fire in most of the towns where insurgencies took place, such as Sanandaj, Kamyaran and Kermanshah”. At least 3 people were killed in the shooting, 2 in Sanandaj and 1 in Kamyaran. Outside Kurdistan, bazaar shops also closed in Tehran, Kerman (south-east), Shiraz and Yazd (AFP). In Tehran, the police announced 11 arrests in connection with the bazaar strike.
On the 16th, as three new death sentences were announced, bringing the total to five, the protest entered its third month. The night of the 15th to the 16th was marked by violent clashes. The official Irna agency reported that two pasdaran and one basij were killed on the 15th in Bokan and Kamyaran, as well as in Shiraz, while Hengaw reported the killing by security forces of at least 10 people in 24 hours in Bokan, Kamyaran, Sanandaj as well as in Saqqez. The country experienced one of its most massive and violent nights of protest from 16th to 17th November, during which 15 people were killed (Le Monde). On the 17th, in Sanandaj, where demonstrators lit fires and chanted “Death to the dictator”, a police colonel was stabbed to death and another, wounded with a knife the day before, died, according to Irna. On the 18th, in a highly symbolic action, the demonstrators set fire to the house of Ayatollah Khomeini in Khomein, near Tehran, as well as to a wing of the seminary in the holy city of Qom ... On the same day, the funeral of the young Kian was transformed into a new demonstration. In addition, at this date, more than 16,000 people had already been arrested.
According to Hengaw, on the 19th, security forces opened fire on people in Marivan and Divandarreh (Kurdistan), killing at least three civilians. In Javanrud, security forces opened fire on the crowd from the roof of the courthouse, as they had done in November 2019. According to the organisation, repressive forces had then killed at least 25 people in Kurdish towns since the 17th. Radio Free Europe reported at least 13 deaths in 24 hours, including seven in Javanrud, four in Piranshahr, one in Dehgolan and one in Bokan. According to Zhila Mostagar, from Hengaw, “The authorities think that by repressing the demonstrations in Kurdistan, they will send a warning to people living in other parts of the country...”.
On the evening of the 19th Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Oslo-based organisation, reported that the authorities had “cut off the electricity in Mahabad and automatic gunfire is heard”, reporting “possible deaths and injuries of demonstrators”. On the 20th, the day of new strikes by the pasdaran on the Kurdish parties exiled in Iraqi Kurdistan and of a death sentence linked to the demonstrations, Hengaw announced explosions at dawn in several towns in Iranian Kurdistan, including Marivan, Bokan and Saqqez, and the sending of new military forces to the Kurdish regions, in particular to Mahabad. Iran International reported serious events in this city: following the mourning ceremonies for 2 protesters killed in the previous days, the protesters took control of the whole city. Military helicopters brought in pasdaran to take part in the crackdown. The authorities called on residents to attend a speech by the governor, but instead of the governor’s speech, security forces opened fire on the crowd, with no immediate word on the number of victims. Other towns in the province, including Bokan, Khoy, Piranshahr and Oshnavieh, launched demonstrations in support of Mahabad.
The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) issued a statement condemning the indiscriminate crackdown: “On Saturday evening, 19 November, the Iranian regime appears to have imposed martial law in the Kurdish city of Mahabad. Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has reportedly entered Mahabad with heavy weapons and military equipment.... The lives of many people are in danger”. The PDKI called on the international community not to remain silent in the face of the “massacre of the Kurdish people”, noting that silence would only embolden the regime to pursue its repressive line.
The videos that emerged of the crackdown in Mahabad were so chilling that some observers refused to share them. In one of the recordings, the sound of automatic gunfire mingles with shrill screams and sobs. The UN Human Rights Council, meeting in emergency special session, decided on the 24th to launch an international investigation. Javaid Rehman, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, described the situation in Piranshahr, Javanrud and Mahabad as “alarming” (UN News). On the 28th, Iran rejected the UN decision (Reuters). Reacting to this refusal, IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam told AFP: “The authorities of the Islamic Republic know very well that cooperation on their part with the UN fact-finding mission would reveal crimes on a larger scale”.
These massacres, however, failed to stop the protests. A video published by Iran Human Rights (IHR) on the 22nd shows people gathered in the streets of Kermanshah, the provincial capital, chanting “Death to Khamenei”, another shows security forces firing on the crowd in Piranshahr (West Azerbaijan). After the death of a basij militiaman in Marivan on the evening of the 23rd, new reinforcements, armoured units and special forces of the pasdaran were dispatched to Kurdistan on the 25th to officially “prevent the infiltration of terrorist groups affiliated to the separatist groups operating in the northern region of Iraq”.
Nationally, while many anti-government rallies took place at universities, truck drivers stopped work on the 26th, responding to a 10-day strike call by their union. Many steel and car workers also went on strike, followed on the 27th by workers in the household appliances, heavy industries, petrochemicals, oil, gas, sugarcane etc. sectors.
On the 29th, in a supreme show of defiance towards the regime, the Kurds set off fireworks throughout Iranian Kurdistan to celebrate the defeat of the Iranian football team by the USA. On the same day, IHR estimated the death toll of the repression to be at least 448, including 29 women and 60 minors including 9 girls. Out of 16 victims of the repression during the previous week, 12 were in Iranian Kurdistan.
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While inflation continued to beat all records and the AKP continued to fall in the polls, on 13 November, a bomb attack hit Istanbul, killing 6 and injuring 81. The modus operandi used was reminiscent of the attacks perpetrated by ISIS in the years 2016-2018, but the government immediately accused the PKK and above all the Kurds of Syria... A very timely attribution for a president who is always ready to go to war against Rojava in order to win nationalist votes and to divert Turkish citizens from their economic difficulties. So opportune that a good part of the opinion invokes a manipulation or a set-up by the Turkish services which have a sad and long tradition in this matter.
Turkish inflation has just reached its highest figure in 24 years, with 85.5% annual inflation officially announced on 3 November by the TUIK, the Turkish Statistical Institute, with food inflation flirting with 99%. The record is held by transport costs, however, at 117%. Yet even these figures seem to underestimate the reality. The Istanbul Chamber of Commerce estimates average annual inflation at 109% and food at 116%, with figures as high as 124% for bread and wheat. This 32% difference with the TUIK fuels suspicion of the Institute, which has been accused for months of systematically underestimating its statistics under government pressure. This lack of confidence has led academics to create an independent research group, ENAG, which is not afraid to incur the wrath of the government by estimating inflation for the same period at ... 185.3%, 100 points above the official figure!
The general disenchantment caused by the economic difficulties has ended up affecting even the electoral base of the Turkish president, according to Le Monde. With six months to go before the next presidential and legislative elections, scheduled for June 2023, the Metropoll polling institute gives him only 36.3% of voting intentions. Many AKP supporters have told the French daily (anonymously, the regime’s increasingly authoritarian drift justifying precautions...) that they no longer trust the AKP. One woman said: “The AKP doesn’t exist anymore, it’s just Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party”, another former supporter, an ex-military man expelled from the army for “Gülenism” after the 2016 coup attempt “I will never vote for the AKP again”. He is furious about this false accusation, while the judiciary has not launched any prosecution against those close to the government suspected of corruption...
In an attempt to redress the situation, Erdoğan floated the idea of a referendum on constitutional changes on the 2nd before the AKP parliamentary group that would not only guarantee Turkish women the right to wear the Islamic veil, but would also contain clauses that discriminate against members of the LGBT community under the heading of “family protection”. The aim is not so much to actually pass such changes as to divide the opposition. The first to propose an amendment on the veil last month was none other than CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroğlu, in response to AKP accusations that it would ban the veil if it came to power... After Turkey’s exit from the Istanbul Convention in March 2021, the Turkish president is thus pursuing his conservative line towards women, of whom France Info reminds us in a recent article that already, despite legal authorization, they can hardly get an abortion for free in the country, while access to contraception has also become more complicated...
At the same time, a prosecutor launched on the 11th an investigation to slap Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu with ineligibility for “insulting the members of the Election Commission”. This is obviously an attempt to get rid of a too popular opponent. Called an “idiot” without being explicitly named by Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, the Istanbul mayor had ironically replied that the “real idiots” were those who had ordered a new municipal election in Istanbul, which he had won by an even bigger margin than the previous one...
Then, on the 13th, in Istanbul, the Istiklal shopping street was hit by a bomb attack, for which no-one claimed responsibility, killing 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl killed with her father and a 15-year-old girl killed with her mother, and injuring 81. The next evening, Interior Minister Soylu accused the PKK of being behind it and announced the arrest of the alleged bomber and 21, and later some 40, other suspects. He added: “We believe that the order for the attack was given from Kobane”. This attribution led Ankara to reject, in an unprecedented diplomatic statement, the condolences of Washington, accused of “maintaining pockets of terror” on Turkey’s southern border by “supporting the terrorists” in Kobane. Turkish police quickly presented the Syrian nationality of the alleged bomber, Alham Al-Bashir, and her entry into Turkey from Afrin, as evidence of the guilt of the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, the “People’s Defence Units”, and the PKK. The latter denied any involvement in the attack, saying via the ANF agency: “We do not target civilians and reject operations that do”. The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Mazloum Abdî, of which the YPG is an important component, also rejected the accusations of the Turkish authorities and offered his condolences to the victims and the Turkish people.
However, elements of doubt quickly accumulated. Several experts and political observers were sceptical from the start about the Turkish government’s version. First of all, the modus operandi of the attack is rather reminiscent of the one used by ISIS during its attacks in Suruç or Ankara in 2015. Secondly, as early as on the 15th, an independent Turkish news website had reported 2 telephone contacts that al-Bashir had had before the attack with an official of the ultranationalist MHP party, allied to Erdoğan’s AKP. On the French channel LCI, a columnist remarked live: “For the specialists, nothing fits in this story”. He explains: the suspect, who confesses to the facts, is not a Kurd, but an Arab arrested for a time in Syria on charges of espionage... for Ankara... In the American newspaper The National Interest, Robert Ellis notes that the attack rather serves the interests of the Turkish President by providing him with a perfect pretext to launch a new operation against Rojava. Ellis, who recalls that after each military operation against the Kurds in Syria, Erdoğan’s sagging popularity ratings had skyrocketed, clearly suspects a new disinformation operation: he cannot help but link the Istanbul attack to the “Gülenist” coup of July 2016, which allowed Mr Erdoğan to launch a gigantic purge of all his opponents... He goes so far as to write: “Erdogan, after all, did scheme to stage a ‘‘failed coup attempt’’ on 15 and 16 July 2016, in order to lure out and suppress his political and military rivals, in the same way that Adolf Hitler’s Nazis staged an artificial putsch between 30 June and 2 July 1934”. In France, Patrice Franceschi also plainly expresses his doubts in the magazine Marianne: “What we know – and what all the chancelleries know but are afraid to say – is that the Istanbul attack is in no way due to the Kurds, who for years have been careful not to provoke Ankara, which is only waiting for a pretext to attack them in Iraq and especially in Syria. This attack is probably due to a manipulation of the Turkish secret services, the MIT [...]”.
And indeed the elements reported about Alham Al-Bashir by Mazloum Kobani, Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are more than disturbing. The investigation of his services established that this woman comes from an Arab family in the province of Aleppo. Three of her brothers fought in the ranks of ISIS and were killed. The fourth is a commander of a pro-Turkish Islamist militia operating in the canton of Afrin, which she has “confessed” to, according to the Turkish daily Sabah. She is said to have been married three times to ISIS jihadists, all of whom were killed in combat. And she reached Turkey by crossing territories under Turkish occupation that are highly guarded. She has reportedly been in Istanbul for four months. Far from making her a “Kurdish special agent”, as Ankara would have us believe, all this shows us rather a person who can be manipulated at will by the Turkish secret services...
On the 18th, the Turkish media reported the arrest of 17 people linked to the attack, still unclaimed, and the next day, 5 other suspects, including 2 Kurds from Syria, were charged in Bulgaria for helping one of the alleged perpetrators to escape. The 3 others, including a woman, are “Moldovan nationals from the Gagauz (Turkish-speaking Christian) minority”. According to the Sofia prosecutor’s office, the suspects’ guilt had not yet been proven (AFP).
In the aftermath of the attack, the pro-AKP press renewed its calls for the closure of the HDP, whose co-chairman Mithat Sancar, countered by stating that there were “many contradictions” in the Istanbul terrorist attack dossier, noting that “very strong information and allegations point to links with jihadist gangs in Syria”, rather than to Kurdish, PYD or PKK circles, but that this data is “either ignored or manipulated”. The HDP parliamentary group has submitted several questions to the Turkish Ministries of Justice and Interior regarding the links between the bomber and the aforementioned senior MHP official (WKI).
In a completely different matter, five UN Special Rapporteurs, including those on extrajudicial executions, Morris Tidball-Binz, and on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, called on Turkey in a statement on 8 October for the “immediate” and “unconditional” release of Ms. Sebnem Korur Fincanci, President of the Doctors’ Union of Turkey (TTB), arrested and imprisoned on 26 October on charges of “terrorist propaganda” for calling for an investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons by the Turkish army against the Kurdish rebels of the PKK in Iraq. The text states: “We have documented numerous cases where anti-terrorism legislation and other criminal provisions have been used to harass, arrest, detain and convict civil society actors in Turkey, including Dr Fincanci, on spurious grounds”.
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The month of November was dominated in Rojava by the intensification of Turkish military pressure along the entire contact line between the territories administered by the AANES (Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which defend them on the one hand, and the Turkish occupation forces and their Syrian, Islamist, jihadist and/or mercenary auxiliaries in their service on the other.
The Turkish President has unscrupulously used the 13 November attack, which killed 6 people and wounded 81 in Istanbul, as a pretext for a new operation against the AANES that he had wanted to launch for months. Prevented until now from doing so by the disagreement of both the Russians and the Americans, he hopes to unblock the situation in his favour and has increased the pressure on Rojava by means of his drones, his air force and his artillery, by launching on the night of the 19th to the 20th “Operation Sword Claw” on the positions of the YPG and the PKK in Syria and Iraq. His martial posture clearly brings him benefits in terms of popularity at home. In his relations with Washington, he became so emboldened that he refused US condolences after the attack, demanded on the 22nd that the US “cease all support” for the YPG, while launching a drone strike north of Hassakeh on a joint base of Kurdish forces and the US-led anti-ISIS coalition located 50 km south of the Syrian-Turkish border. The US military’s Middle East Command (Centcom) issued a statement the next day saying that the strike had “put US forces at risk”...
Turkey had already been striking regularly since the beginning of the month at SDF positions in northern Syria, but Turkish actions intensified greatly from the night of 19th to 20th. It was then, just a week after the Istanbul attack, that Operation Sword Claw was launched, with nearly 25 air strikes in the provinces of Raqqa, Hasakeh and Aleppo that left at least 18 SDF fighterrs and 12 Damascus soldiers dead. The city of Kobanê was particularly targeted, including entirely civilian targets such as grain silos and a power plant (OSDH). An AFP photographer witnessed the total destruction of the fourth power plant in Taql Bakl, near Al-Malikiyah in the southern province of Hasakeh, which was hit several times. This Turkish strategy is reminiscent of that of the Russian army in Ukraine: making the civilian population suffer by hitting infrastructure in order to put the AANES in difficulty. The bombings also targeted positions where Damascus regime forces are deployed in Raqqa, Hasakeh and Aleppo (OSDH). The death toll from the Turkish strikes then rose to at least 31, with Kurdish autonomous authorities this time speaking of 11 civilian deaths. The number of injured, initially estimated at 40, rose to 70 the next day (AFP).
The Turkish strikes caused panic and anger in Al-Malikiyah, where most shops remained closed on the 20th, with some residents expressing their feeling of having been abandoned by the Americans once again. One protester even chanted in front of an AFP correspondent a slogan quite unusual in this region where SDF and US troops are allied against ISIS: “Death to America!”: “America is the partner of Erdoğan, whose hands are stained with the blood of our martyrs. America could have prevented the killing of our fighters who paid with their blood to protect us!” the woman told the reporter.
The newspaper Le Figaro notes that, while the Turkish army had been impatiently waiting for months to launch a fourth attack against AANES, “put on hold for lack of a green light from Washington and Moscow [...] by all accounts, this new military campaign is a godsend for President Erdogan...”.
On the 21st, retaliatory fire from Syrian territory killed three people, including a child, and wounded six in the Turkish border town of Karkamis. On the Syrian side, thousands of people attended the funerals of the victims of the Turkish raids. On the same day, the Turkish President reiterated his threats of a ground operation, telling journalists: “There is no question of this operation being limited to an air operation only”. According to the SDF, new Turkish airstrikes targeted the area around the city of Kobanê, including a position of the Syrian regime forces.
On 22 November, Turkish forces again intensified bombing and airstrikes, targeting SDF positions in the East near the Iraqi border, in Deir Ezzor and Tirbe Spî, near Qamishli, as well as on SDF anti-terrorist units stationed inside a joint military base with the US in Hasakeh, killing 2 and wounding 3. While the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) criticised the US and Russia for their lack of response to the Turkish attacks, Ankara demanded that Washington stop all support to the “terrorists” of the YPG, the main component of the SDF. In response, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement: “We call for de-escalation in Syria to protect civilians and support the shared goal of defeating the Islamic State”. Reached from Beirut by AFP, SDF commander Mazloum Abdi said: “We will do everything in our power to achieve [de-escalation] through contacts with the parties concerned”, and called on “all parties, including the Russians or the Americans, to respect their commitments” to avoid a new Turkish operation. In particular, he called on the United States to “take a firm stand to at least stop the bombing of civilians”.
Regarding the Turkish drone strike that hit a joint US-SDF base north of Hasakeh, the US command (Centcom), after initially indicating that its forces had “not been endangered” in the raid, on the 23rd retracted this assessment in an email to AFP, indicating that it had “received additional information that US forces and personnel were in danger”. Voice of America (VOA), for its part, published reports that the strikes had hit a point just 300 metres from the US military: “The recent airstrikes in Syria have directly threatened the safety of US personnel working in Syria with local partners to defeat ISIS and maintain custody of more than 10,000 ISIS detainees”, said Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder. Both the Department of Defense and the Department of State have called for immediate de-escalation. Meanwhile, the SDF announced that it was suspending operations against ISIS to focus on its own defence against Turkish attacks and warned that it would be difficult to maintain security in the jihadist prison camps it runs if Turkish operations continue.
On the 25th, Erdoğan called again for the creation of a “security zone” (in reality a Turkish military ocupation zone) 30 km deep all along the Turkish-Syrian border, including the Kobanê region, the last one to escape the control of the Turkish army deployed since 2019 along the border in Syrian territory (AFP). On the 26th, the SDF media centre denounced “barbaric” strikes on “inhabited areas and civilian infrastructure” whose toll, after 6 days of aggression, covers 77 villages, towns and infrastructure throughout northern Syria.
On the same day, while the Kremlin urged Turkey not to “destabilise the situation” in northern Syria, it was a Russian base that was hit by a Turkish strike, where 3 members of the SDF, who had a position in the base, were killed and a Russian soldier injured. The next day, thousands of Kurds living in the hit areas demonstrated against the Turkish strikes, which according to the OSDH killed at least 59 people: 35 Kurdish fighters, 23 Syrian soldiers, as well as a journalist working for a Kurdish news agency (AFP). On the 29th, General Pat Ryder reiterated US concerns, telling reporters that “further fighting, particularly a ground offensive, would seriously undermine hard-won gains in the fight against the EI and destabilise the region”. UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson also called for de-escalation, speaking of a “worrying and dangerous escalation dynamic”.
On the 30th, the Russian army sent troops for the first time to the region of Tal Rifaat, located about 15 km from the Turkish border, and according to the inhabitants established a new roadblock between the area controlled by the Kurds and that held by the pro-Turkish forces. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the Russians have also consolidated their presence at the military airport of Minagh, held by the Syrian regime, very close to this city, as well as near Kobanê (AFP).
It should be noted that due to military strikes systematically targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, which constitute war crimes, Turkey’s harassment of the Syrian Kurds is beginning to have a serious impact on the health situation of the population of Rojava. On 7 November, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Ankara of contributing to the spread of cholera in Northern Syria by reducing the flow of water from the Euphrates River, and Damascus of obstructing the arrival of aid to Kurdish-controlled areas. For the first time since 2009, cholera reappeared in early September in Syria, where about two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of pumping stations and one-third of water towers have been damaged by 11 years of war, according to the UN. “Turkey can, and should, immediately stop exacerbating the water crisis in Syria”, said Adam Coogle, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa for HRW. Save the Children, meanwhile, warned that child malnutrition had recently increased by 150% in the northeast, the areas controlled by the AANES (AFP).
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Throughout November, Iranian strikes on the Iranian Kurdish political parties in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan continued. As if this were not enough, Turkey also intensified the operations it has been carrying out since last spring against the PKK in the mountainous areas of the northern part of the Federal Region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Islamic Republic, whose Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) had already launched missile strikes on Erbil last March, went even further than strikes on its Kurdish opposition in exile by threatening a possible ground intervention in Iraqi Kurdistan. During an unannounced two-day visit to Baghdad, the commander of the Iranian Al-Quds Force, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards, Esmail Ghaani, threatened Iraq on the 18th with a military ground operation in the north of the country if the Iraqi army did not fortify the two countries’ common border against Kurdish opposition groups. Iran demands the disarmament of these groups and the deployment of Iraqi troops to seal the border and prevent any crossings. Without specific evidence, Iran claims that Iranian Kurds in Iraq are smuggling weapons and even fighters into Iranian Kurdistan and thus provoking the current protests. If these demands are not met, Tehran threatens a ground operation, and in any case will continue to bomb the Kurdish opposition parties. All this information was given to the Associated Press by Iraqi and Kurdish officials in Iraq on condition of anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject (AP). Since the areas concerned are under the administration of the Kurdistan Region, and given the current complexity of relations between the latter and the federal government in Baghdad, one understands the tension that Iranian demands and threats can bring to bear on Baghdad as well as on Kurdistan... It should be remembered that the alliance that recently came to power in Baghdad is mostly composed of pro-Iranian parties.
The leaders of the Iranian Kurdish parties in exile in Iraq deny any transfer of arms and fighters, claiming that they are only providing moral support to the demonstrators and treating the wounded who arrive from Iran. Neither the PDKI nor the Komala are in favour of a militarisation of the protest, which they see rather as a trap in which Iran is trying to lure them.
It should be noted that Esmail Ghaani arrived in Baghdad the day after an Iranian air strike on PDKI positions in Koya or Koy-Sandjak (Erbil province), during which 3 people were killed. This strike was far from being the first. Already on 8 September 2018, a major attack on Koya had left 17 people dead and more than 40 injured. One of the deadliest recent attacks was on 28 September, which according to local witnesses used more than 35 missiles and drones and left 9 people dead and at least 25 injured. Simultaneously, Komala was hit by a dozen drones. This month, a new attack hit the PDKI in Koya on the 14th, killing 2 and injuring 10, while “four drone strikes” targeted Communist Party of Iran and Komala establishments in the Zargwez region. In the latter case, the militants were warned just before the strike and were able to evacuate the building, which avoided casualties (AFP). Moreover, Iranian drones regularly fly over the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to monitor the movements of Kurdish opposition groups (Middle-East Eye).
Iran launched new strikes against its opponents in Iraqi Kurdistan on the night of 20th-21st – operations that coincided with the launch of the Turkish operation against the PKK. One PDKI fighter was killed. The Revolutionary Guards claimed responsibility for these strikes the next day, before repeating them on the 22nd. On the 23rd, the Iranian Foreign Ministry affirmed that Iran would continue to act against the “threats” coming from Iraqi Kurdistan, while assuring that “when the Iraqi armed forces are stationed on the common border between Iran and the Kurdistan region and guarantee the security of these borders, we will no longer need to act to defend our territorial integrity”... (AFP) But at the same time, the Pasdaran have deployed tanks, armoured vehicles and additional personnel along the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, including a large force near the Haji Oman border crossing. The Iranian regime has reiterated its threats to invade Iraqi Kurdistan under the pretext of countering Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq... (WKI)
Both Baghdad and Erbil have repeatedly condemned the Iranian strikes, but so far these statements, which can be compared to the condemnations of Turkish strikes on Iraqi territory or in Kurdistan, have had little concrete effect on the situation. The US military command for the Middle East (Centcom) also condemned in a statement “indiscriminate and unlawful attacks” that “endanger civilians, violate Iraqi sovereignty and undermine the security and stability” of the country and the region.
Turkish military activities and strikes also accelerated on the 19th with the launch of Operation Sword Claw. Already on the 3rd, at least one young female PKK member hadbeen killed with her driver by a Turkish drone in a vehicle in the Al-Nasr district of the town of Sinjar. But on the 19th, dozens of Turkish strikes claiming to target the PKK hit several areas in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the districts of Mawat (Suleimaniyeh province), Qandil and Kurtak (WKI) were targeted. On the 23rd, the Turkish Ministry of Defence announced that “471 targets” had been targeted in northern Syria and Iraq and that “254 terrorists” had been “neutralised”.
On the 23rd, Baghdad announced that it was working on a “redeployment of Iraqi border guards” along the border with Iran and Turkey, after repeated bombings by these two countries. Until now, the border areas of Iraqi Kurdistan are held by the Peshmerga military forces of the Autonomous Region, but under the command of the Federal Ministry of Defence. Following a governmental security meeting chaired by the new Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, the authorities decided, according to an official statement, to “put in place a plan to redeploy Iraqi border guards [...] all along the border with Iran and Turkey”. This plan will be designed “in coordination with the Kurdistan Region Government [KRG] and the Ministry of Peshmerga”, the statement said, adding that the chief of staff of the Kurdish forces was present at the meeting (AFP). Iran said on the 28th that it welcomed this decision, while the KRG indicated that these forces would be Peshmerga (Le Figaro).
In terms of relations between the KRG and Baghdad, it should be noted that at the beginning of the month, the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, promised in a press conference to “resolve the problems with the Kurdistan Region”, notably by adopting a new law on oil and gas and the budget of the Kurdistan Region: “Our discussions with the Ministry of Oil are continuing to prepare the draft oil and gas law”, he said, and this draft will be the subject of “preliminary discussions with the Kurdistan Region [...] before it is presented to the Council of Ministers and then sent to parliament” (Rûdaw).
On the 28th, the President of the Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, met in Baghdad with Iraqi leaders, including the Prime minister. The discussions focused on the management of natural resources, but also on border security and the share of the federal budget that should go to the KRG. Prime Minister Al-Sudani also attended a meeting between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders, organised by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), during which the latest attacks by Iran and Turkey on Iraq were discussed. A senior leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Iraq’s Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, also attended the meeting. At the same time, the KDP and PUK announced their readiness to hold bilateral talks to resolve past differences and “normalise” their relations.
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On 4 November, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with the Turkish President for discussions regarding the Alliance membership of Sweden and Finland. According to the state-run Anatolia Agency, Erdoğan told Stoltenberg that the Nordic countries’ actions would determine the pace of their membership. This is certainly not what Stoltenberg wanted to hear, but for now, Erdoğan remains the master of the game, while out of the 30 members of the Atlantic alliance, only Turkey and Hungary have not yet ratified the accession of the 2 new members, which has to be approved unanimously. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavuşoglu repeated that, in particular, Sweden had not fully met the conditions set by Ankara (Al-Monitor).
On the 8th, it was the turn of the Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, to make the trip to Istanbul. But Sweden did not even wait for this date to change its tone regarding the Syrian Kurds, a development facilitated by the arrival in power at the last elections of a new government whose programme is based on an alliance ranging from the centre-right to the extreme right: On the 5th, Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said the country should “distance itself” from the People’s Protection Units (YPG): “We think there are doubts and problems about those who tarnish our relations with Turkey”, he said on Swedish radio. “The link is too strong between these organisations and the PKK, which is recognised by the EU as a terrorist organisation”, added Billstrom (Courrier International).
As Turkey asks Sweden to extradite thirty or so Kurds and Turks on charges of “terrorism”, the entire Kurdish community in Sweden, 150,000 strong, feels it is being held hostage. An exiled journalist testifies: “I have seen the list [...] I know them all. There are ten Kurds, 23 Turks and four different types: political activists of the Kurdish cause; people linked to the Gülen organisation; journalists; members of the Turkish left and some real criminals”. Thirty-eight Kurdish families have also suddenly had their applications for citizenship or residence permits suspended (RFI).
During his visit, Mr Kristersson tried to give pledges to Ankara: standing in front of the press next to Mr Erdogan at the joint conference following their meeting, he promised that his country “will respect all its obligations towards Turkey in the fight against the terrorist threat”. But Mr Erdoğan is waiting for specific gestures: of the extraditions requested by Turkey, Sweden has so far only extradited four, including one for “fraud”, without following up on the more political requests. The Turkish President therefore referred the discussions to yet another “joint meeting at the end of the month in Stockholm” – where, he added, without giving a date, “we hope to have a more positive conclusion”. He even replied to a Swedish journalist’s question: “We still have time, until July”! This is a direct reference to the Turkish parliamentary elections, which clearly shows the extent to which Mr Erdoğan is using this issue to present himself to the electorate as the strong man opposing the West...
Already, he has secured promises to sever ties with the PYD and to resume Swedish arms sales to Turkey. In Stockholm, exiled Turkish journalist Bülent Kenes, a former editorial writer known for his Gülenist sympathies, told AFP of the concern that gripped him when his name was mentioned by Mr Erdoğan, asked about the list of 73 “terrorists” whose extradition he is demanding in Stockholm: “And there was only my name. Not a list with other people. Just my name”, says the 53-year-old former columnist, who left in a hurry a few days after the July 2016 coup attempt. Turkey has continued to publish, often in media close to the government, increasingly long unofficial lists of 33, then 45, then 73 people it wants extradited...
On the 16th, the Swedish parliament adopted by 278 votes (out of 349 seats) a constitutional amendment tightening significantly the anti-terrorism laws. The text, which allows the principle of freedom of association to be limited “when a group claims to be or supports terrorism”, should, according to experts, facilitate the prosecution of PKK members. But Turkey does not intend to relax its pressure: on the 21st, the Swedish ambassador in Ankara was summoned to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to receive a letter of protest against the projection by Kurdish activists of images on the facade of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm... The video in question, originating from the “Swedish Committee for Rojava”, displayed support for the YPG and denounced the links between Turkey and ISIS. According to a Turkish diplomatic source, Ankara has asked that “the perpetrators of these acts be identified and that the necessary measures be taken”.
Will Turkey succeed in exporting to Sweden its particular conception of freedom of expression, in the name of which the slightest expression of a dissenting opinion leads to the accusation of terrorism? On the 30th, after further talks in Bucharest on the sidelines of the Nato heads of diplomacy meeting, Çavuşoğlu said that despite “nice declarations and good determination” from the two Nordic countries, Turkey is still waiting for “concrete measures”: “We have not yet seen concrete measures in areas such as extradition of criminals, freezing of assets of terrorist groups and ending their activities. Yes, there have been positive steps such as legislative changes, but we need to see their implementation”.
Turkish political exiles and Kurdish communities in Sweden will continue to worry. In this tug-of-war between a democracy and a dictator, there is always the fear that the former will give in too much to the latter.
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