Dilan Babat - Gökçe Akgöl

 

ANKARA - Fatma Edemen, who survived the Suruç Massacre with injuries, said that the Rojava Revolution is a women’s revolution, and expressed that the resistance in Kobanê becomes hope for all peoples.

 

ISIS, which killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq and Syria with the support of regional and global powers, encountered great resistance from the peoples of the region, especially the Kurdish people, in Kobanê in the autumn of 2014. The resistance put forward by those, who defended their lands in Kobanê against the heavy weapons of ISIS, becomes hope for all peoples, especially the Middle East. The resistance was also a response to the rhetoric that ‘’Kobanê has fallen, it will fall’’. Kobanê, the city where ISIS suffered its first defeat in the region, became the name of international solidarity and resistance as a symbol of a free, equal and common life. With the hope and resistance coming from Rojava, November 1 World Kobanê Day was declared.

 

Participation took place in the city of hope and resistance from many places, especially young people. One of the areas where participation took place is the Turkish metropolises. Around 300 young people, members of the Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF), had been attacked by ISIS in the Suruç district, where they went to contribute to the build process of Kobanê, and 33 young people were killed. We talked to Fatma Edemen, who survived the Suruç Massacre with injuries and was then a student of the journalism department of Ankara University’s Faculty of Communication, about the youth’s approach to the Kobanê Resistance and its build process.

 

‘It was an exciting and hopeful process until the moment of the massacre’

 

Fatma, who currently lives in Poland, pointed out that her hopes that ‘’something could change’’ with the June 7 elections increased, and expressed that they had discussed the idea of starting the rebuild campaign of Kobanê for a long time at that time. ‘’It was a very exciting and hopeful process for us until the moment of the massacre. It was something that started six-seven months before that process, and even almost a year ago. Because youth organizations make camp during the summer months. These camps were mostly held at the seaside, and even more intensely in İzmir. But now we were in such a process that we were both witnessing such a change and a powerful process, as well as such a war right next to us, that we were somehow witnessing the inhumane massacres of ISIS. At least, the SGDF said, ‘We are not in a position to do seaside camp for another year, we need to do something different this year’. We planned something like this right from such a place, while the discussions about rebuilding Kobanê continued and  it has already been liberated,’’ Fatma said.

 

‘We see Rojava as a women’s revolution’

 

Noting that their main goal was to ‘’do whatever is done’’ in the week they went, ‘’to collect and bring whatever aid can be obtained from the Turkish front,’’ Fatma said that young women played a major role in the organization of this campaign. Fatma pointed out that the contributions of SGDF members Polen, Ezgi, Büşra and Aydan, who lost their lifes in the Suruç Massacre especially during the organization and the spread of the campaign, were huge and continued as follows, ‘’It was a process in which not only our friends who lost their lives, but also our friends who were injured there and continue their lives now or went through very different processes afterward, were at the forefront. I think the biggest impact on this is that we also see Rojava as a women's revolution. Because when we say women’s revolution, we are not only talking about women’s fight against ISIS, women were also establishing another social system. Of course, this was a very different and hopeful process for young urban women living in Turkey. When we finally arrived in Suruç, we realized that they would not pass us as a group, but we were still excited for a delegation to go to the other side and the rest would do something with refugees, at least in tent cities in Suruç’’.

 

‘It was necessary to fight against ISIS’

 

Fatma pointed out that women’s participation in the Rojava revolution is very important and that those who will be most affected by the war are women and children. ‘’Especially after what happened in Shengal in 2014, after seeing a process which Yazidi women were not only killed and massacred, but enslaved, it was necessary to fight together against ISIS. At that time, we said that this is not just a matter of Rojava, of the peoples of Syria. If ISIS is not stopped there, it will probably affect people, who do not care about it today, in western Turkey. After the process that started with Suruç and Ankara, we also experienced a period that extended to the Reina Massacre in 2017, when ISIS entered Turkey, carried out various attacks, and lost a lot of our people. Although it is criminalized to go out on the streets as a very democratic right of people and to demand this demand in their country where they are citizens, there is no more democratic right than this. Rojava’s success means that the Kurds in other regions are also encouraged and strengthened. It also means that they start to demand their rights very strongly. The state carried out the attack with the fear of this,’’ she said.