Joint article by Young Struggle and Zora
The fascist massacre of 23rd December 2022, which martyred three Kurdish activists, bears the signature of the Turkish fascist state. We have to take to the streets with even more determination and fight against Turkish fascism.
On 23rd December 2022, a 69-year-old Frenchman carried out a fascist attack on the Kurdish cultural centre “Ahmet Kaya” and two adjacent shops that have Kurdish owners who sympathise with the Kurdish freedom movement or even are activists. The Kurdish artist Mîr Perwer (M. Şirin Aydın), the representative of the Kurdish Women’s Movement in Europe Evîn Goyî (Emine Kara) and the Kurdish activist Abdurrahman Kızıl were killed. In addition, there are several injured and severely injured. The attack happened when a meeting for the planing of the protest for the 10th anniversary of the massacre in Paris on 9th January 2013, when the three Kurdish activists Sara (Sakine Cansız), Rojbîn (Fidan Doğan) and Ronahî (Leyla Şaylemez) were murdered by the Turkish secret service (MIT) was supposed to take place. However, this was postponed at short notice, which is why there were significantly fewer people at the “Ahmet Kaya” cultural centre. This means the perpetrator planned the attack of the centre at a time when many people from the Kurdish freedom movement and revolutionary forces of Turkey and Kurdistan would have been present there.
According to witnesses, the man was dropped off by a car in front of the Kurdish cultural centre and immediately started shooting with a pistol. The activists present in the Kurdish cultural centre started to fight back against the perpetrator. One woman continued to fight the perpetrator after she had already been shot. According to further reports, Mîr Perwer threw himself in front of Evîn Goyî in order to protect the leading women’s revolutionary of the Kurdish freedom movement from the deadly shots. Both lost their lives in the terrorist attack.
After the shooting in the cultural centre, the perpetrator went to the adjacent barber shop, where he was finally overpowered by youths present there. He was held by activists until the first police officers arrived on the scene 40 minutes after the first emergency call. So far, it has been revealed that the perpetrator is a 69-year-old French pensioner who was released from prison only a few days ago in December. He had attacked a refugee camp, which is why he was in custody for attempted murder. After he was released from prison, he apparently was able to obtain a weapon and carry out the attack without any problems. The question is how this was possible without the knowledge of French authorities, since he was officially supposed to be under surveillance. The authorities’ theory of it being a single perpetrator does not add up with the witnesses´ recounts of the attack. Who drove him to the crime scene and who gave him the gun? Others must have known about the attack or even helped organise it. It is also astonishing that the French state is said to have been unaware of the attack, although the premises of the Kurdish liberation movement are under constant surveillance.
The Turkish fascist state is the main Culprit of the Massacre
The attack on 23rd December 2022 took place almost 10 years after the assassination of the three Kurdish activists Sara, Rojbîn and Ronahî by the Turkish secret service (MIT) on 9th January 2013. The investigation of this assassination was subsequently protracted by the French state until the assassin died in custody. The fascist Turkish state is also responsible for the murder of the three Kurdish activists in this second attack in Paris. It is very unlikely that the French assassin carried out the attack by chance at the time when a big meeting concerning the first Paris massacre of 2013 should have taken place in the Kurdish cultural centre. The Turkish state repeatedly uses mercenaries to assassinate leading revolutionary activists. The targeted assassination of leading “Jineology” activist Nagihan Akarsel in Sulaymaniyah (Southern Kurdistan) in early October of this year as one of many such assasinations comes to mind. The Turkish state also used a mercenary in the attack on the HDP (Democratic People´s Party) office in Izmir on 17th June 2021, in which Deniz Poyraz was murdered, in order not to get its own hands dirty. If the Turkish state did not hire the assassin itself, it still paved the way for the attack.
The Kurdish state is not only waging war against the Kurdish people through massacres and state terror. It also intensifies its warfare against the Kurdish liberation movement in Rojava and the liberated “Medya” territories in Southern Kurdistan. Especially after the orchestrated attack in Taksim, Istanbul on 13th November 2022 and the subsequent airstrikes on Rojava, the oppression of the Kurdish people has only intensified further.
However, the Turkish state is not only targeting the Kurdish people through direct terror, it is also spreading mass hatred to justify its war. Especially in light of the 2023 elections, Erdogan is trying to distract people from the economic crisis and homogenously draw them toward his side through war and hatred against the Kurdish people. Through this agitation Kurdish people are portrayed as terrorists across the globe. This propaganda is taken over by the bourgeois media in France, Germany and the rest of Europe. Be it through the persecution of Kurdish activists or the classification of the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) as a “terrorist organisation”. This creates the basis and at the same time the justification for such fascist attacks. When people from Syria and Iraq fled to Europe to escape the terror of fascist ISIS, bourgeois media and racist politicians wrote of a “flood of refugees”, “knife immigration” and that it was terrorists immigrating.
Turkish State and Imperialism: One hand washes the Other
One day before the fascist attack, police searched houses of the Kurdish liberation movement in the German cities of Hannover and Nürnberg. Activist Tahir Köcer was arrested under German criminal law §129a/b (membership or support of a terrorist organisation). Simultaneously to the Paris massacre on 23rd December,in Turkey premises of the progressive HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) were raided and members were arrested in around 6 cities. All these events show a coordinated action of the Turkish state and its NATO allies, including the German, French and British states. In this context, the fascist massacre in Paris fits into the usual action against the Kurdish liberation movement. The attempt to release the assassin from detention to a psychiatric hospital also shows a clear attempted tactic down playing and covering up of the events.
In response to the massacre in Paris, thousands of people took to the streets to protest for a full investigation and justice for the massacre. They also took their anger to the streets given the happening of two massacres against Kurdish activists taking place in Paris within a span of 10 years. The first massacre has still not been solved almost 10 years later. If the French state had investigated the first massacre, the second massacre could have been prevented. Instead, three more people lost their lives in the said “security” of the European Union.
Our Liberation lies in the Unified Struggle against Fascism and Imperialism!
During the protests in Paris, there were provocations by Turkish fascists and attacks by the police. Additionally, on 26th December, a Turkish fascist attempted to murder a Kurdish hairdresser for playing a Kurdish song in the northern French city of Roubaix. In the wake of Erdogan’s agitation and the massacre in Paris, the likelihood of further massacres and attacks is increasing and the fascists will feel emboldened.
We must lead a determined struggle for the full investigation of the massacre in Paris. But we also know that we cannot rely on imperialist states, like France, because they support Turkey in the persecution and oppression of the Kurdish people. They did not fully investigate the first massacre in Paris in 2013 and they will not do it voluntarily this time. Preventing further massacres also means fighting even more resolutely against Turkish fascism. We have to defend the revolution in Rojava with a new and determined consciousness and protest the air strikes and a possible field offensive of the Turkish state. Our resistance must also be directed against the imperialist states that enable and support the massacres and wars of the Turkish fascist state.
We know that no matter how many massacres fascism committs in this world, we will not give up our struggle for a better world. We will continue the struggle for revolution even more resolutely and continue the way of our martyrs!