Article in other languages: ITA GER FR
When we first arrive in the Middle East, and especially in Rojava, we have to learn everything again from the beginning. We have to admit to ourselves that we have not really understood much of the reality here. Everything we have read, heard, and discussed gives us perhaps an idea, a faint glimpse of Rojava, but when we are here, everything is different.
Why did I come here? I want to become a revolutionary, I want to strengthen my will, and I want to know what war means. I want to understand the suffering, the thousands upon thousands of martyrs. I want to truly understand what it means when, in a city like Kobanê, there is virtually no family that does not have a member in the wider circle who has fallen in the resistance against Islamic fundamentalism. I want to understand the truth of war, to understand very well how the enemy acts. Why states want to wipe out entire religious and ethnic groups, and at the same timeI want the horizon of my hope for change and my striving for freedom to be infinitely expanding.
We went to Kobanê, the city that marked a monumental turning point in the resistance against Islamic State. Right at the start, we visit the Şehîdlik, the martyrs’ cemetery. Row upon row upon row of martyrs lie here. When the Şehîdlik was built, the person in charge is said to have looked at the plans and said, “This is too small.” He knew that many more would fall in defense of the revolution in Kobanê.
We then visited a family in which two of their children were martyrs. Their pictures and memorial plaques with their names hang in the entrance area. The family is very proud of the struggle their children fought. They are one of hundreds and thousands of families who have lost their children, partners, and parents in the resistance and they looked up to with pride. We stand around a coffee table, under its glass top lie objects that the martyrs carried with them: a picture, a knife, a few stones, a watch. Friends walk past us, drink tea, discuss and then move on to the visit another family.
The next day, we continue on our way. The city had been almost completely destroyed by Daesh tanks and bombs, and most of it has been rebuilt, but a small part on the outskirts of the city has been left as it was after the war. It is now a museum you can walk through. We climb the stairs in a house with one side hanging down, demolished by bombs. A friend guides us through the two streets past the ruins. When Kobanê defended itself against ISIS, he fought here with friends. To the one side of this museum, we see the city rebuilt after the war where life goes on. On the other side, it borders Northern Kurdistan, Turkey. Behind the Turkish border, we see green meadows, a few houses, and a huge Turkish flag. We had never seen such a flag at the Turkish border before. This flag, right outside the city gates, in front of the district lying in ruins, is an open threat. Turkey is closely linked to ISIS, having financed them and set them up. Even today, it is politically and economically linked to the Syrian government which is constructed on the basis of the fundamentalist militant group, Al-Nusra. Even in this phase of peace and democracy initiated by Rêber Apo, the Turkish state finances and directs militias to wage war in Syria and specifically use them against the self-administration in North East Syria. The flag is a reminder of the Turkish state’s belligerent policy; it serves no other purpose.
We stop at a tree. We have all seen the Kobanê film and now realize we all know this tree. An IS sniper hid in this tree and spent days targeting and murdering friends who were resisting in this neighborhood. For days, no one knew why their friends were dying until a young friend, Şehid Rencber discovered him. He was going in and out of the neighborhood to bring ammunition to his friends and to carry wounded friends out of the combat zone. Without him, his friends would not have been able to continue resisting. Later in the fighting, he himself was martyred.
We continue on, and with every step and every stop, it becomes clearer to us what war means. The images we have seen in the news come to life, the films we have seen become reality before our eyes. We arrive at the mala hevalan, the house of friends. When Kobanê was almost completely taken, the house of friends was the last place still being defended. It was the place of retreat. The friend we are with defended this house and he says he knew that if this house falls, Kobane falls. It was fired upon and bombed from three sides, and Daesh drove cars loaded with explosives and suicide bombers into the lowest floor. It was impossible to withstand these attacks; the situation was completely hopeless, the friend says. And yet they continued to fight, the friends from Rojava, the guerrillas from the mountains, the youth who wereconfronted with the reality of needing to take up arms in the war waged in their city. They would have all died to prevent this house, this city, from falling. I look at the friend and try to understand what it is like to have hope in such a situation. There was no possibility of giving up. The friends fell around him; stopping would have been betrayal. We kept that with us on our journey. We also struggle with each other. We try to overcome our personalities influenced by growing up in the capitalist metropolies of Europe and create communality when we are separated from each other by individualism. But if we were to stop fighting against this individualist separation, stop becoming revolutionaries, it would mean leaving behind those who gave their lives for a free life.
I am an internationalist from a land that has not seen such a war in generations. The closer we get to the reality of war, the more we can see, hear, and touch it, the more it hurts that we do not understand and that such a strong line has been drawn between us. We have never felt such pain, never put up such resistance. It takes effort and a sincere will to understand. The fact that we do not understand does not mean that we cannot understand. The friend says he is happy that we are coming closer and want to understand the history of the Kurdish people. If we want to, we are a part of this revolution.