While it is understandable why the international left should offer the
maximum solidarity to the Kurdish struggle centered in Kobane, a Jacobin
article by Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır offered in that spirit and
titled “The False Friends of Kobanê” does require some scrutiny.
Published originally in Infobrief Türkei, it vehemently opposes outside
intervention, particularly from Turkey. The article reflects a fairly
widespread belief on the Turkish left that there was nothing of value in
the Syrian uprising since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was backing it.
If it wasn’t enough that Erdoğan was intervening, he was implicitly
intervening on behalf of the worst elements:
Given that IS militants have reportedly been crossing the
Turkish-Syrian border with ease, and in the context of Turkey’s
longstanding hostility to Kurdish interests, it was clear that such a
plan would amount to the fox guarding the henhouse.
And as is so often the case with pro-Kobane material, there is a sharp
distinction between the pure as the driven snow PYD—the Kurdish
militia—and the sneaky Syrian rebels who apparently conspired to draw
imperialism into the fray from the beginning:
The PYD had previously made known that its activities were independent
of the wider Syrian opposition. When the latter began conferring with
Turkey and, with Western support, took up arms against the Syrian
government and started calling for foreign military intervention, the
PYD spoke out against such outside intervention and stressed that a
democratic Syria could only be the collective project of all Syrians.
If you click the link to “calling” above, you will be directed to an
article in Jadaliyya.com by As`ad Abukhalil—the “Angry Arab”—that was
written in 2012. My friendly advice to Errol Babacan and Murat Çakır, if
they ever stumble across this article, and to Bhaskar Sunkara who surely
will, is to avoid referencing the Angry Arab if they want to be taken
seriously as analysts rather than cheap propagandists. The Angry Arab’s
article is a long diatribe describing the war in Syria as an
American-Israeli cabal and is just one brick in the edifice he has been
constructing for the past four years to demonize the FSA. There are far
better Baathist propagandists than him, like Nir Rosen or Joshua Landis.
That is, if you want to be taken seriously.
full:
http://louisproyect.org/2015/01/08/a-response-to-a-jacobin-article-on-kobane/
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