NEWS CENTER
My name is Sirwan and I’m French. The first thing people are probably going to ask is how did a French person end up in the struggle of a Kurdish guerrilla movement like the Apoist Movement? It is a good question but quite a long story. To make it short, everything started 7 years ago in Rojava. I joined the Rojava revolution for a very simple purpose – humanity. I can say I quickly got attached to this revolution and its values which can’t b found in any other revolution in the world.
All the principles of our revolution mostly come from one person, Rêber Apo. His ideas form the foundation of a party that is actually fighting for freedom, women’s liberation, ecology and a real democratic system for the people and handing over power to the people themselves and not to some politician who at the end of the day will finish by being corrupt in one way or another. Fighting for the freedom of people may be scary for some people because it means going to war without individual or any material gain, yet still no one can truly describe the beauty of this act, of this sacrifice. Most of the population of the world today think only of themselves, about possessions, getting a nice car, a big house and having fun. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad in the fact to want to upgrade one’s situation or to have fun, but it is not representative of life itself. Life does not mean to think only of oneself, otherwise the human race would probably have ended a long time ago. People have 2 choices in life today, a very simple choice, to sit and passively watch what’s going on (society running straight into a brick wall), or make a stand and actually do something to improve the world for all.
Anyway, I worked voluntarily for a few years in the Rojava revolution. I could have said, “that’s enough for me, I’m going back to my home and live my life for myself”. Well… It was not enough for me. After having been part of this revolution, it was almost impossible to go back to society, which actually meant going back to slavery. Yes, I said the word slavery, and I’m from France. Most people in the Middle East dream about settling themselves in Europe, dream about better conditions but the reality is everything except that, it is more a nightmare than anything else. Living in Europe is to be a simple human constantly stuck in the rat race of feeding themselves and paying their credit. Credit is the new weapon of the master of Europe. Most European citizens pay their whole life for a car, for a house which they buy with credit and in debt, they have to work until they are 65 years old and when they finally retire, their health condition has already deteriorated. In this way capitalism keeps you caught in this cycle.
You may ask who we are and what are our goals are exactly. We are the Apoist Movement, the Kurdish guerrilla, fighting for a better world for 50 years. The three central pillars of our ideology are women, ecology and democracy.
Our leader Rêber Apo, was captured in 1999 on the basis of a conspiracy against him and our organisation. This conspiracy was mainly plotted by Turkey, America, Russia, and Greece, and Rêber Apo paid the heavy price to be jailed on an island without any contact with the outside world, not even with his family or even his lawyer, but he keeps struggling and resisting under these conditions.
Let me explain right now our 3 main pillars and let’s begin with the topic of women’s liberation.
A few thousand years ago, human beings were living in a different societal model which was a matriarchal society. People were living in clans before and each of the members had a specific role in the clan. For example, men were the ones who would go hunting animals, providing food for the clan and protecting the clan from any danger from the outside. Women have had an essential role in leading the clan, but why? Probably because women have better emotional intelligence than men, which gives them a better sense of justice, sharing and teaching their knowledge to the people. Women also have a better ability for science, they were the experts for collecting medicine from nature. Because of these abilities’ women would be elected by the people for leading the clan. Later on, man took power from woman by force with the help of the shaman and over the course of time reduced womens role in society to slavery. Mythology reflects this fight between woman and man, patriarchal against matriarchal society.
Let’s remember one thing, women were the first ever educators. Through a connection with nature, they were the first to interact with it and acquire knowledge of the world around us creating the foundation for all sciences. Let’s ask ourselves one thing, what would the world be without women? Nothing, life would be sadness and nothing else.
Women are not a tool of reproduction, or a slave. Without women’s freedom, society cannot be free. Society would never even know the meaning of freedom. That is the reality.
In our organisation, the Apoist Movement, women fight on the front line, have equal power in decision-making, they lead the resistance in the mountains, or in prisons like Ş. Sakine Cansız, Şirin Elemhuli and comrade Zeynep Celaliyan. We are fighting for women’s freedom and society. Without freedom of women no one will be free.
On the topic of ecology, nature is something we cannot live without, it is that simple. A long time ago people were just taking what they needed from nature for living. Today however we take from nature without regard to limits or excess. Capitalism and power see nature as something to be dominated and exploited, rather than the intricate web it is.
In the Apoist Movement, we respect nature and protect it. We understand human society to be an integral part of the natural systems around us and we search for ways to build our communities in cooperation with nature. We will fiercely defend the world from those who would exploit it.
On the subject of democracy, the system we propose is vastly different from liberal, election-based democracy. Ours is a system based on communal life, on mutual aid, with representatives for every canton, every tribe, every ethnicity and power is organised in a bottom-up rather than top-down structure. We are against the nation state system which tries to homogenize the rich diversity of human life into “one nation, one language.” In Democratic Confederalism all religions, all beliefs and all ethnicity are welcome. People take decisions together. In Rojava this system has been very successful with Arabic, Kurdish, Syriac and Turkmen people all living in peace and finding solutions together for any social or political problems which might arise.
The nation state system instead leads inevitably to the most horrific expressions of tribalism, causing people to view those different from them as hostile, unusual or, in the worst cases, less human. The consequence of this being the innumerable genocides and crimes against humanity conducted in the name of defending the state.
We aim to build a society free from such artificial concepts. To organize society in a natural way whilst celebrating, promoting and defending the diversity of humanity. We believe in humanity before everything else.
Finally, my message for the people of Rojhilat, the Middle East and all the countries of the world is this, are you content to watch the world be ravaged by those who reduce all beauty in this world to the profit line or are you prepared to understand you are a part of this world too and its defence is the duty of us all? The mountains are waiting for you.
