Yvo Fitzherbert - Suruç massacre: today we mourn, tomorrow we rebuild
The bombing of the Amara Cultural Center was meant to
inspire fear and keep people from acting in solidarity with Kobane. We must not
let ISIS succeed.
The bomb attack that took place at midday on Monday, July
20, at the Amara Cultural Center in Suruç will go down in history as a
tragedy. Suruç is a border-town within 15 kilometers of Kobane, and has
been the center for relief operations and the logistical hub of all support
activity.
To many, Amara was a place of sanctuary and refuge for
refugees fleeing the conflict in Kobane for many months. It acted as the base
of coordination for the relief effort at the dozens of refugee camps scattered
across the city, and as a center for international solidarity and delegations
visiting the area.
Throughout the conflict, which began last September,
journalists and activists have come to offer their support, and Amara was their
home. I spent many weeks at the cultural center over numerous trips to the
border, and it was a place which brought everyone together.
In addition to being a hub for people coming from outside,
the center also acted as a refuge for children. Many workshops were arranged
for the kids, and in the central room a children’s art exhibition was
permanently on display. Cay was continuously drank as people sat in the middle
of the room and discussed the political developments across the border in
Rojava.
A specific target
The bomb specifically targeted a solidarity group called the
Socialist Federation of Youth Associations (SGDF). Its young members had come
to lend a hand in the rebuilding effort, and planned to cross into Kobane where
they would take part in the building of a children’s playground. The victims of
the massacre were predominately from Istanbul, and many were students.
SDLP are the youth wing of the socialist ESP (Party of the
Oppressed), the party which formed an alliance with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’
Democracy Party (HDP) before the elections. The HDP’s co-president is Figen
Yüksekdağ, a founding member of the ESP. From the traditional Turkish left, the
ESP’s alliance with the HDP and the Kurdish movement in general represents the
advances made in creating solidarity across pre-existing ethnic divides between
Turks and Kurds.
The HDP consciously sought out alliances with the Turkish
left, and in this sense, the deliberate targeting of SGDF is a direct attack on
the recent convergence of the Kurdish and Turkish left. The slogan with which
SGDF led the delegation says it all: “The values of Kobane are the values of
the Gezi Resistance.”
The delegation that the SGDF were involved with was an
attempt to extend solidarity for the people of Rojava beyond ethnic
affiliations. Many of the victims of the massacre came from Alevi backgrounds,
whilst another young man came from the traditional nationalist stronghold of
Trabzon on the Black Sea.
Amara, moreover, was the base for activists from across the
world, a sort of embassy for international allies of Kobane and Rojava more
generally. For journalists, Amara was the first introduction to life on the
border. Interviews were arranged through the center, and it was also where
journalists were arranged to be smuggled into Kobane.
For these reasons, we can see the attack on the SGDF
delegation as an attack on the international solidarity which has been built
around Kobane’s resistance. The center itself is intrinsically linked to the
struggle across the border in Kobane, and the attack is a clear attempt by the
Islamic State to dissuade such international solidarity from taking place. We
must not allow ourselves to be scared into submission.
Suicide bombers and Turkey’s ties to ISIS
Over the last two months, we have witnessed an increase in
ISIS revenge suicide bombings on the Kurds, seemingly in direct response to the recent defeats the
Kurdish liberation forces (YPG/YPG) have inflicted upon ISIS in northern Syria.
In Diyarbakir during an election rally for the pro-Kurdish
HDP, a Turkish citizen who had previously
fought for the Islamic State in Syria detonated a bomb, killing four.
A few weeks later, ISIS jihadists entered Kobane from the Turkish border-gate
and proceeded to massacre over 200 citizens — their second-biggest
massacre in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human
Rights.
In all three of these attacks, Turkey has either been
complicit or utterly negligent. As evidence of
Turkey’s involvement with ISIS steadily grows, it has become increasingly
apparent that the Turkish government is not on the side of its own Kurdish
citizens, and would much rather support the Islamic State in order to weaken
the Kurdish experiment in democratic autonomy in northern Syria.
This situation points towards an increasing spillover of the
Syrian civil war into southern Turkey. While the Syrian Kurds continuously
battle the Islamic State (making major gains over the last two months), the
fear is that ISIS, with the implicit support of the Turkish government, will
continue to carry out suicide attacks against the Kurds inside Turkey.
Following the tragedy that took place in Suruç, many Kurds blame the Turkish
government and its security forces for not doing enough, and are demanding retribution
from the PKK.
Need for international solidarity
Both the massacre in Kobane in late June and this latest
bomb attack in Suruç are an attempt by the Islamic State to keep Kobane in
a desperate, war-torn, destroyed state. Local authorities have begun to rebuild
the city — and the attacks are clearly intended to inspire fear and keep people
from acting in solidarity with Kobane.
As international allies of the Rojava revolutionaries, we
have a duty to fulfill the aims of the SGDF delegation: to help rebuild the
city of Kobane. The international solidarity towards Kobane has done an
extraordinary amount of good for the Kurdish resistance in the canton. It has
given fighters and citizens hope. The Amara Cultural Center represented this
strong desire for international solidarity. It welcomed international visitors
and sought to internationalize the conflict beyond those immediately affected
by the war. We must not let ISIS have their way and be cowed into inaction out
of fear of further terror. One survivor of Monday’s attack, Merve Kanak, posted this message on
her Facebook page:
They killed the people we sang with on the bus. They
killed the people we danced with. They killed the people we talked with, those
we were surprised to see there, those we worked together with. They killed the
people we had breakfast with in the garden of Amara, the people we smiled with,
we ate watermelon with. They killed the people we discussed politics and theories
with. They killed the people who had different political ideologies, but who
were united by the reality of the revolution. We were all good people. We all
came there to realize a dream. We had toys with us, three bags each, do you
understand?
Our hearts are heavy today. Tomorrow, we will rebuild.
Yvo Fitzherbert is a freelance
journalist based in Istanbul. He writes for a number of different publications,
with a particular focus on Kurdish politics. Follow him on Twitter at @yvofitz.
