/95/ The Fall of Rojava? ft. Dani Ellis / Alexander Norton

Rojava offered the hope that a progressive, multiethnic politics might be salvaged from the ashes of Syria’s civil war. Now the Turkish assault on northern Syria looks set to crush the Kurds and a radical experiment in the region.  We talk to two British volunteers in Rojava about the prospects that the political structures set up there might be saved.  Dani Ellis (@lapinesque): engineer; civil defence volunteer, International Commune (@communeint)  Alexander Norton: deputy features editor, Morning Star; revolutionary volunteer, International Freedom Battalion Running order (05:27) - Dani interview  (41:39) - Alexander interview (01:27:51) - Final discussion Readings & Links: Internationalist Commune Rojava Information Center America abandons the Kurds, Tom Stevenson, LRB Russia and Turkey reach deal on Syrian border, Financial Times European leftists are rejecting the Kurds over their reliance on the US. It is just another disgusting betrayal, Slavoj Zizek, The Independent "Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava", Rosa Burç & Kerem Schamberger, Jacobin Glossary: YPG: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (People's Defence Corps); PYD’s armed wing in Syria  YPJ: Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (Women's Protection Units); all-female militia PYD: Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (Democratic Union Party); Syrian Kurdish affiliate of the PKK SDF: Syrian Democratic Forces; alliance composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian/Syriac militias, led by the YPG PKK: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party); Kurdish party in Turkey founded in 1978 by Abdullah Öcalan. Started armed insurgency in 1984, thousands of fighters in northern Iraq and Turkey IFB: International Freedom Battalion; armed group of foreign leftists fighting for the YPG in support of the Rojava Revolution  MLKP: Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, Turkey TEV-DEM: Movement for a Democratic Society; umbrella organisation in northern Syria, aims at organising Syrian society within the democratic confederalist system