Solidarity with Rojava

Local non-profit offers support to revolutionary movement in Northern Syrian

In Northern Syria, there is a place called Rojava, and its people are building a heaven while fighting ISIS. Two Tulsans—Peter Von Gotcher and Dean Franklin Grove II—have recently formed a local non-profit to raise awareness of this unique region whose people are resisting violent religious extremism in favor of a Western-influenced vision of pluralistic harmony. 

“In order to combat [radical Islam] you have to have an alternative ideology,” Grove told me.  “[What Rojava is doing] is a meshing of Eastern and Western thought in all ways.” 

What Rojava is doing is, in a word, revolutionary. 

The story of Rojava is a complex, decades-long affair. The area is under the control of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which serve as the armed forces of the Kurdish Supreme Committee (PYD). When the Syrian Civil War created a power vacuum in the region, Syrian Kurds, an ethnicity long persecuted by both Syria and their Northern neighbor of Turkey, established Rojava as a Western Kurdistan. Shirking the Assad regime’s conservativism, they adopted a model of Democratic Confederalism. This political concept was extolled by jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan and developed during his prison correspondence with American Anarchist author Murray Bookchin. 

Von Gotcher and Grove, longtime activists in Oklahoma, began paying attention to Rojava during the Arab Spring. Now, taking a cue from other groups in New York and Toronto, they’ve formed Rojava Solidarity Oklahoma to draw local attention to the far-flung region, and to recruit other activists who can provide tech support, construction work, education, medical assistance and even defense support. Although Grove and Von Gotcher hope to travel to Rojava, they plan to stay where they can have the biggest impact, which, for now, is Oklahoma. 

Likened by some to Libertarian Socialism, the Rojavan model places a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability, feminism, and ethnic equality—apart from the Kurds, Rojava is occupied by Arabs, Chechens, Armenians, Turkmen, and Assyrians, along with the varied ethnicities of its visitors and fighters. This progressive philosophy has attracted global media coverage to the region. Oklahoma congressman Steve Russell, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran who recently spoke out in favor of welcoming refugees to the U.S., was photographed in 2014 alongside the YPG flag with Joshua Bell, an American who fought against ISIS with the YPG.

Not only is it mandatory that every male official have a female counterpart; the women of Rojava have their own armed forces in the Women’s Protections Units (YPJ). 

The YPJ were instrumental in the Siege of Kobanî, which reclaimed the city from ISIS, a group whose recruitment tactics include sex slavery. The symbolism wasn’t lost on Rojava’s leaders, who issued this statement: “The battle for Kobanî was not only a fight between the YPG and [ISIS]… it was a battle between all human values and the enemies of humanity.”

ISIS and other forces in the area have wreaked havoc on Rojava’s medical infrastructure. Grove sees connections to cheap medical supplies in India as a way to help. “The plan so far is to ship [medical supplies] to groups in Germany,” he said. “Once there, they will transfer the supplies to the Kobane Reconstruction Board or the Kurdish Red Crescent, the two main groups they are working with to build mobile clinics.” The mobile clinics are indispensable assets in a place where untreated spider bites can be as deadly as IEDs.

Apart from logistical support, Von Gotcher and Grove say simple displays of solidarity mean worlds to the Rojavan fighters, who monitor worldwide press on their efforts. 

Rojava Solidarity Oklahoma has one such display planned for January 22nd at the Yeti, billed “Refugees Welcome Here,” with performances from the Danner Party and local rappers Surron The Seventh and Verse. Tulsa women’s self-defense school, Warrior Sisters, will have an information table at the show. 

According to Von Gotcher, the show is a display of solidarity for both Rojava and refugees in general, as well as an attempt to raise political awareness and support for the YPG. 

The balderdash nature of the Syrian Civil War, along with Turkey’s racially charged negative view of Rojava, has cast an odd light over the U.S.’s position on the egalitarian stronghold. Turkey is warning the U.S. and Russia (who share a common enemy in ISIS) not to arm YPG fighters, as they fear the YPG will cross the Euphrates and establish a Kurdish state. The U.S. has armed the YPG, overtly and through front groups like the Syrian Arab Coalition. It was U.S. airstrikes that paved the way for the YPG’s Siege of Kobanî, but U.S. officials have said they will not recognize any separate state in Syria set up by the Kurds. Part of Turkey’s animosity towards the YPG stems from their perceived association with Abdullah Öcalan’s PKK. 

“It’s not a perfect revolution,” Grove said, referencing the “cult of personality” surrounding Öcalan. Both Turkey and the U.S. list the PKK, which Öcalan governs through his lawyers from prison, as a terrorist organization. Before his incarceration (and behind-bars conversion from Marxist-Leninism to Democratic Confederalism), Öcalan led his forces against Turkey in hopes of establishing a separate Kurdish state.

“I think that by nature many of the PKK have an affinity for the YPG and their cause, and will fight there,” Grove said. “But at the end of the day the YPG doesn't see itself as fighting for Kurdish nationalism. Öcalan is the ideological leader of the PKK and his ideas guided the YPG, but the YPG is simply the people's protection forces.”

The YPG has also recently come under fire from Amnesty International for alleged forced displacement of Arabs in Northern Syria. The YPG issued a statement claiming the authors of the Amnesty report were informed by “political parties hostile to the YPG and the Self-Administration in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava).” 

But according to Grove, “the increasing amount of Sunni Arabs and other groups [in the YPG] pretty much negates the claims made by Amnesty International.”

Regardless of international criticisms, and the U.S.’s murky associations with the YPG, Rojava Solidarity Oklahoma will continue to raise awareness.  Whether in Oklahoma or in Northern Syria, they hope through logistical support, donations, or actual combat, they can help Rojava bring the fight to ISIS.

For more from Mitch, read his article on local right-wing groups protesting CAIR.