On October 6, the Trump administration announced it was pulling US troops out of northern Syria, essentially giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a green light to invade Rojava, carry out ethnic cleansing, and forcibly resettle the area. We are calling for people around the world to engage in protest and/or disruption at Turkish consulates, US government offices, arms manufacturers, and businesses connected with the Turkish government, such as Turkish Airlines.
Since 2012, the autonomous region of Rojava has hosted an inspiring multi-ethnic experiment in self-determination and women’s autonomy, all while fighting the Islamic State (ISIS). After years of struggle, despite sustaining massive casualties, fighters from Rojava participated in liberating all of the territory that ISIS had occupied and freeing those who had been held captive in ISIS strongholds.
In an attempt to justify permitting Turkey to invade Syria, Trump has tweeted that US taxpayers should not have to pay to keep ISIS fighters detained. In fact, the US has not paid a cent to detain captured ISIS fighters; that has been completely organized by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The reality is that the Turkish invasion of Kurdish territory will create the conditions for ISIS to reemerge and resume operations in Syria and around the world. For years, Turkey has permitted weapons, recruits, and resources to reach ISIS through its borders.
Both ISIS and the Turkish invasion pose an existential threat to all the ethnic and religious groups indigenous to the region, including Arabs, Christians (Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Syriacs), Turkmens, Chechens, Alevites, and Yazidis. Many of these groups have gained a voice in their own lives for the first time, yet now face massacre at the hands of the Turkish military and the jihadists.
