The armed forces of Turkey have carried out bombings in the Kurdish region of Afrin in Syria, and have invaded Kurdish territory. The attacks against the people of Syrian Kurdistan  / Rojava (Democratic Federation of Northern Syria), which began on Saturday in Afrin and with the passing of hours has spread to the civilian population of other nearby cities.
The Kurdish militia reported that at least 18 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by the Turkish attack. This further aggravates the sufferings of the Syrian and Syrian Kurdish people, after five years of civil war, hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees.
Turkey intervenes attempting to crush the Kurdish forces in Syria because it considers them potential enemies of its State since within Turkey 15 million Kurds are oppressed who claim their rights and are also brutally repressed by the Turkish State under the dictatorial regime of Erdogan. There are currently some 17,000 Kurds in Turkish prisons suffering from torture and violations of their basic human rights, including 600 minors imprisoned with their mothers.
The Kurds are an oppressed nationality, of about 30 million, with their own language and culture, spread across several countries. Half live in Turkey and the rest in northern Syria, Iraq and Iran. During the Syrian civil war they, have conquered a partial autonomy in that border area with Turkey. Although the United States supposedly supports them, to use them in their intervention in Syria, now, in the face of the attack, they only asked Turkey (which is their NATO ally) to “moderate” their offensive. Imperialism is complicit in this criminal aggression by Erdogan on the Kurdish people.
So are Putin and Russia, who intervene in Syria to support the genocidal dictator Bashar al-Assad, and who now look the other way.
This new Turkish attack is part of the intervention of different imperialist and regional power armies, to crush the Syrian popular resistance begun in 2011, although they have contradictions among themselves. All these interventions have contributed, directly or indirectly, to strengthening the Syrian dictatorship which was about to fall two years ago.
We call for international solidarity with the Kurdish people, criminally attacked in Syria by Erdogan and his armed forces. We demand an end to Turkey’s interventions in Afrin and in northern Syria. For the bombardments and the invasion to halt. At the same time, we must demand the military interventions of Russia, Iran, the United States, Europe and the regional powers be withdrawn from Syria. We call for the unity of action to hold rallies and repudiation actions in front of Turkish embassies or consulates around the world.
Stop Turkish intervention against the Kurdish people in Syria!
Russia, USA and NATO out of Syria now!
Down with Bashar al-Assad!
Unconditional solidarity with the Kurdish people! For their right to national self-determination!
International Workers Unity (IWU-FI)
23 January 2018
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