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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 33 September 5, 2016
(editorial)
US, Turkish, Syrian hands off Kurds!
It’s in the interests of working people around the world to support
the Kurdish people’s struggle for self-determination. We urge our
readers to join or initiate meetings and protests to speak out against
the U.S.-Turkish offensive in northern Syria, Ankara’s war against the
Kurds in Turkey and the Syrian government’s attacks on Kurdish forces in
Hasakah.
The Kurds have a long history of struggle against discrimination and
national oppression in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. When French and
British rulers divided the Middle East after the first imperialist world
slaughter, setting new national borders in the process, one of their
goals was to divide and weaken the Kurdish people. Kurds remain the
largest nationality on earth without their own homeland.
An independent Kurdish republic came into existence in northern Iran
after a revolutionary uprising established a workers and peasants
government in neighboring Azerbaijan in December 1945. Both were crushed
a year later by the Iranian monarchy, with the complicity of the
Stalinist regime in Moscow, dealing a heavy blow to the Kurdish people
and working class throughout the region.
A new rise in the Kurdish national struggle has been one of the
unintended consequences of Washington’s endless wars in the Mideast
since the first U.S. war in Iraq in 1991. In the aftermath of that
slaughter, “the Kurdish people have come to the center stage in world
politics as never before,” said Socialist Workers Party National
Secretary Jack Barnes at the time, “not primarily as victims, but as
courageous and determined fighters for national rights.” (See the
article “Opening Guns of World War III: Washington’s Assault on Iraq,”
published in issue no. 7 of the magazine New International.)
Today there are some 5 million Kurds in the autonomous Kurdish region in
northern Iraq, and another 2 million in areas under Kurdish control in
Syria. These conquests give impetus to their aspirations for national
independence, especially in Turkey, home to 15 million Kurds. Despite
all their conflicting interests and alliances, the capitalist rulers of
the United States, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq all oppose an
independent Kurdistan.
Washington has alternately posed as a defender of the Kurds — doling out
aid with an eyedropper — and blocked moves toward Kurdish sovereignty,
depending on its shifting relations and alliances with the different
capitalist rulers in the region. Just look at Vice President Joe Biden’s
arrogant demand Aug. 24 — and Ankara’s delight with it — that Kurdish
militia fighters in Syria, Washington’s supposed allies, “must go back
across the river … period,” and give up territory liberated from Islamic
State west of the Euphrates.
Get all U.S. troops, warplanes and drones out of the Middle East now!
Related articles:
US-Turkish war moves in Syria seek to block Kurds
Endless Mideast wars: catastrophe for working people
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