British state helps Erdoğan regime repress the Kurds

On 26 November, the North London Kurdish Community Centre was raided by the Met Police. Using batons and riot gear, they broke up a peaceful event – held not in the street, but in the Kurds’ own building.

This happened only a few days after Tory defence minister Grant Shapps met with the Turkish defence minister, Yaşar Güler, to discuss ‘joint security’.

It seems that the Tories are not content with simply using the Met to harass and intimidate pro-Palestine protestors. They now also want to hire them out as private security contractors for the Turkish state.

What an irony: the British state has fallen so far in the ranking of global imperialist powers that is has gone from being the key broker of the Treaty of Lausanne – the treaty that broke up Kurdistan in the first place, 100 years ago, and created the modern border of Turkiye – to meekly doing the bidding of Tayyip Erdoğan and his gang of murderers.

The farce of ‘democracy’ under capitalism has been clearly exposed in recent months. The constant creeping criminalisation of the Kurdish community, including NADEK (the Kurdish Cultural Assembly), is another clear sign that so-called ‘free and democratic’ Britain is not on the side of the oppressed and exploited anywhere.

Cynical repression

The Met used ‘anti-terror’ laws to carry out this raid – likely using the pre-existing proscription of the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party), a key Kurdish political organisation, as an excuse.

In fact, this raid should be seen as part of a general crackdown carried out by the Turkish state against the PKK and other Kurdish political and cultural organisations. Recently, the Erdoğan regime has frozen the assets of 82 organisations related to the PKK, and has carried out a wave of arrests in Turkiye.

The PKK has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK since the early 2000s, largely as a result of Britain’s close diplomatic relations with Turkiye. In 2022, a man was arrested in London – and will soon face terror charges – for simply waving the flag of the party.

But it is obvious to any genuine democrat that this repression was not carried out due to any serious concern about terrorism on the part of the Kurds. Even the European courts ruled that the PKK was proscribed without due process. The national aspirations of the Kurdish people are clearly worth less than pennies to the imperialists.

The US was happy to use the Kurds as cannon fodder in the fight against ISIS. And indeed, when this was going on, the UK played its part, effectively ignoring the fact that Kurdish organisations had been proscribed for a time.

But as soon as ISIS had been dealt with, the western imperialists threw the Kurds under the bus. And the same is true for all ‘democracy-loving’ European nations: from Sweden to Germany.

Imperialist hypocrisy

What is the reality of the situation of the Kurds? It is Turkiye that is the aggressor in the war against the Kurdish people, not the reverse. Just like in Palestine, the imperialists turn the facts upside down, painting aggressor as victim and victim as aggressor.

Since the division of Kurdistan between Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkiye in 1923, the Kurdish people have been subject to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and political repression.

Kurdish people cannot even use their own names or speak their own language. Massacres have been carried out – the Anfal genocide in Iraq and the Dersim massacre in Turkiye, to name just a few.

Erdoğan’s government in Turkiye describes ‘national unity’ of the Turkish people as one of its highest priorities. But beneath these nice platitudes about unity, the real intention is to continue the brutal repression of national minorities.

In 2018, having finally been given the go-ahead from Washington, Turkiye carried out a brutal bombing campaign and invasion of Northern Syria, targeted against the Kurds.

In 2022, Turkiye’s diplomatic hand was strengthened by the desire of the US to allow Sweden and Finland to enter NATO. As a result, the Erdoğan regime could carry out more of the same with impunity.

Turkish troops have been pushing into Rojava, the Kurdish breakaway region, killing, relocating, and repressing the Kurds. Turkiye also put pressure on European countries to further proscribe Kurdish groups, deport asylum-seekers, and so on. European governments scrambled to comply.

It is precisely due to the political and cultural repression of the Kurdish people that there is such a huge diaspora of Kurds across the world, including in North London.

The community centre there serves as a gathering place for Kurds and for left-wing political groups of all kinds. This recent raid is therefore a transparent political move by the British state to curry favour with Erdoğan.

The hypocrisy of the Tories – and the rest of the imperialist gangsters – stinks. Erdoğan’s repressive regime is deemed a ‘valued partner’ of British imperialism, while the Kurds are branded terrorists, both within their own lands and outside them.

From their complicity in the ongoing slaughter in Palestine, and previously in Yemen; to the historic and ongoing atrocities in Kurdistan: no cause is too bloody or reactionary for ‘our own’ ruling class.

Class struggle

The Kurdish people, like everyone else, should have the democratic right to assembly, to have their own political parties, and so on. But under capitalism, ‘democratic’ and ‘human’ rights are simply a convenient facade, behind which lies the dictatorship of the bosses, bankers, and imperialists.

These laws and rights don’t stand separately from society, but are a part of the class struggle. The minute free speech, freedom of assembly, or any other rights, threaten the establishment, they will do away with them.

The same is true for the rights of oppressed nations to decide their own destiny – a basic democratic right that is conveniently ignored by every major imperialist power when it suits their interests.

If we are to have these freedoms, in Britain or anywhere else, they must be fought for and defended by the working class.

In response to the cynical games of our ruling class, we must organise, mobilise, and fight on the basis of revolutionary internationalism.

As long as they enjoy a cosy relationship with Turkiye, their NATO partner, the British state will not allow freedom of expression and organisation for Kurds.

A century ago, the prospect of a Kurdish nation state was jettisoned by the British in exchange for access to oil-rich areas. Similarly today, the imperialists use the Kurds as small change in order to secure lucrative arms deals with Turkiye and NATO concessions.

Genuine freedom and democracy can therefore only be won through international class struggle – for socialism and against imperialism.