Simultaneously with the offensive launched by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria to topple the regime, Turkey and its affiliated Syrian National Army (SMO) launched an offensive in Northern and Eastern Syria. In Efrîn, Serêkanîyê and Girê Spî, which Turkey and the paramilitary structures it supports, came to the fore with rape, kidnapping and rights violations. The body of Anna Campbell, who died as a result of the bombing of Turkish warplanes during the attacks on Efrîn in 2018, has not been given to her family for 7 years.

 

Dirk Campbell, the father of Anna Campbell, a British citizen who joined the YPJ against ISIS attacks, applied to Hatay Governorate and the Turkish administration in Afrin to receive his daughter's body. After receiving no results, Dirk applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). 

 

"We had to go to the local Turkish administration, which is governing Afrin is now Turkish occupied area, and that's called the Hatay Governorship. We submitted the case to them that there was a breach of human rights. They didn't reply. Then we went to the European Court of Human Rights saying 'We haven't had any response from the Hatay governorship. So can you please now consider the case, the case being Turkish authorities, Turkish Government's breach of my human rights in not admitting a; to the death of my daughter and b; to the fact that they should have allowed her body to be recovered, and they failed to do that   

 

A while they were considering the case, the Hatay governorship suddenly decided it was going to look at the case, after all. So the European Court of Human Rights said, 'We can't consider the case because you haven't completed all the necessary measures, because Hatay governorships now willing to look at it.' So that's where we are now. It looks like it'll take up to three years from now before I get any kind of ruling from Hatay governorship, they probably dismiss the case. At which point it then goes to the ECHR, once more, but it's very long drawn up. People might think it was pointless. It's not going to bring Anna back, it's not going to do anything. But it's really all I can do," Campbell said.  

 

'WOMEN ARE THE ONES LEADING ROJAVA'

 

Stating that she had travelled to Rojava twice after the loss of her daughter, Campbell described her observations there as follows: "I met a lot of very interesting people, and I got a sense of the ground up structure, the administration. It was like everybody was empowered. They weren't kind of waiting to be told what to do. They felt like they had responsibility and they had a sense of purpose, particularly the women. I thought that the women were the ones who were leading the project, the Rojava project. That is certainly the case in the YPJ and the YPG the men tend to defer to the women. So that was all very interesting, I thought." 

 

Campbell stated that unlike Assad and the Federated Kurdistan Region, the government in North and East Syria is not controlled by a single family and there is no centralised power structure. Campbell said: "People in Rojava, I didn't see anyone who was depressed or afraid. They all seemed very positive, very hopeful. You can't destroy their dignity, because even if someone's house gets blown up, they'll start rebuilding it the next day, even though they know it probably get blown up again in a week's time. That's just an amazing quality that I noticed that."

 

TURKEY'S APPROACH TOWARDS THE KURDS

 

Campbell likened Turkey's policy of "repression and marginalizing" against the Kurds to what the British did to the Scots and the Gellers in the past, describing this policy as "immoral".

 

"The Kurds are saying, 'We've got our own language, our own history and our own culture, and you're not letting us be autonomous in any sense. You want to assimilate us.' That's clearly wrong, that's clearly immoral, but I should say that the British were doing that to our ethnic minorities not very long ago. And it's only in the last 100 years, that we've come to regard that as a bad idea. For hundreds and hundreds of years before that, we were saying, 'We should crack down on the Welsh, we should crack down on the Scots. We shouldn't let them speak their own language, because they'll only want to come and cause trouble.' So, this is Erdogan view of the Kurds," he said.

 

Campbell pointed out that Turkey uses the PKK as an excuse for its attacks in Rojava and said: "But because he regards the Rojava Kurds as essentially the same as the PKK, which is true. They speak Kurmanci Kurdish. Their leader is Abdullah Öcalan. They're putting in place Öcalan’s ideas. There isn't really anything to choose between them and the Kurds who live in Turkey. But he (Erdoğan) sees that as a threat, even though the Syrian Kurds have said, 'Look, we're not interested in your national integrity. We're not interested in invading you or supporting the PKK, we trying to set up our own autonomous region here, and can you please stop trying to prevent us from doing that?' But Erdoğan takes no notice." 

 

TURKEY'S AIM IN THE ATTACKS

 

Campbell said: "And we don't know what Erdoğan’s future is. I mean, he's an autocrat. He's like Putin. He's an empire builder. He wants to restore Turkey's pre-first World War borders. He wants to expand southwards into Syria and join up with. Essentially, he wants to pretend that there was no Armenian Genocide and expand eastwards to join up with Turkish speaking people to the east of Armenia (Azerbaijan)."

 

'ÖCALAN'S IDEAS ARE THE BEST SOLUTION'

 

The Middle East is a place where different nations and languages live together, and if it does not have an inclusive power structure, wars will continue said Campbell and added: "I really do think Öcalan’s ideas are the best solution in that situation where you don't have nation states at all. The idea of a nation state is an import from Europe. It never existed before the Europeans invented it. It's been imported into places where it just doesn't apply. It's just a bad idea. Öcalan’s idea that we don't imprison ourselves with this idea of nationhood. You can have local governments. You can have borders, if you like. But what people should be doing is a decentralizing themselves and not regarding themselves as having to conform to that model. If that idea were to be expanded from Rojava into other areas, I think it would diffuse a lot of the attention and violence that goes on." 

 

Finally, Campbell stated that there is an extremist religion problem and said the following: "If I criticize you and your response is to shoot me, then you're seriously screwed up person. We need to be able to criticize each other and question each other without feeling like we're being assaulted. Our response should not be to eliminate the person who's questioning us or criticizing us."

 

MA / Hîvda Çelebi