Radikal, Turkey
Sept 19 2013
At the Zero Point of the ‘Rojava’…
by Cengiz Candar
[Translated from Turkish]
Nusaybin -Former Diyarbakir Chamber of Industry and Trade Chairman
Mehmet Kaya began on the telephone by saying: “Now I am talking in my
identity as a pharmacist.” He continued: “The Rojava [Kurdish term for
‘west,’ used in reference to northern Syria] is falling apart from
lack of drugs. We have launched a campaign on a regional scale. We
have collected four truckloads of medicines and medical supplies. But
we are unable to get them to the other side of the border. If you
could just make this knowna¦”
I answered him saying: “Tomorrow I will be in Nusaybin. I will better
understand the situation there, and will write about it.” The
following day (that is, yesterday), while going down from Mardin
towards the “Silk Road,” the towns of the Rojava that have gone into
the de facto administration of the Kurds were lined up before my eyes
like beads on a string of prayer-beads, and presented a very clear
image. On the right, just across from Senyurt was Derbesiye
[Al-Darbasiyah], while diagonally to the left was Amudah. As for
Al-Qamishli, the largest town in the north of Syria, it is just next
to Nusaybin.
While travelling on the Silk Road towards Nusaybin, the right side of
the road was lined with barbed wire, and there were control towers at
regular intervalsa¦ The Deputy Mayor of Nusaybin, at the wheel, said
“if there should be an accident, and if a car should roll over to the
right, even if nothing might happen otherwise, the mines would
detonate and blow it to bits” and pointed to the minefields just
through the barbed wire, which fill the strip of land between it and
the railroad that comprises the Turkish-Syrian border.
All along the road between Diyarbakir and Nusaybin, he explained to me
how the entire region is focusing on nothing but the Rojava. He has
relatives in Al-Qamishli, just like a good many Nusaybin residents.
Indeed, at the moment, at least 10,000 Syrian citizens have taken
refuge with their relatives in Nusaybin -as Mayor Ayse Gokkan related,
pregnant women, the very aged, and children.
In Nusaybin, with its population of 85,000 people, I spoke with Ayse
Gokkan in the garden of the Mitanni Culture Centre, where the Second
Symposium on Nusaybin in the History of Mesopotamia was being held,
practically next to Al-Qamishli, whose population in normal times has
risen to 350,000. I say: “We are at the absolute zero point between
Turkey and Syria, aren’t we?” She points to just a bit away; the place
where we see the sandbags is considered the border.
Essentially, there is no border or anything of the sort. The Cagcag
River passes through both Nusaybin and Al-Qamishli. And on both sides
of the “virtual” border live Kurds, Assyrians, and Arabs. Epidemic
diseases, and communities that are intimately intertwined, in fact
show no respect for the border on either side of what has essentially
throughout history been the same town (the historical town of
Nusaybin).
Doctor Ramazan Kaya, who is from Nusaybin, tells me about the diseases
caused by the conditions in Syria that are spreading into Turkish
territory from Al-Qamishli and being seen once again in Turkey
-particularly in Mardin province:
“Although cases of measles had not been seen in our region for the
past 10 years, now there are cases numbering in the hundreds being
diagnosed. Cases of malaria had likewise not been seen in the past
decade, but in 2012, over 300 cases of malaria were diagnosed in
Mardin. And cases of Aleppo boil and polio, which had appeared to have
been eliminated, have also begun to be seena¦”
He speaks of reports drawn up regarding what needs to be done, but it
is clearly understood and seen in Nusaybin that the developments in
Syria, by quickly crossing over the Turkish-Syrian border, have been
“infecting” Turkey in every sense.
Mayor Ayse Gokkan, from Suruc (she comes from a village just across
from Kobani [Ayn al-Arab] in the Rojava), who was elected with an
overwhelming majority of almost 90 per cent of the votes in Nusaybin,
complains of the “indifference” of the state in Turkey, which in her
view is strange, and which she sees as excessive. At any rate, as a
result of the pressure created by the public in Nusaybin, which had
come to the point of explosion, and of her own unrelenting contacts,
there has been, for the first time in a month (and the third time
overall), a transit of “aid for the Rojava.”
She said: “We will be in Senyurt in the evening, until morning. Come
and see; we are going to send across 400 tons of food and medical
aida¦”
We were going to leave the “Symposium on Nusaybin in the History of
Mesopotamia” and go to the Senyurt border gate near Kiziltepe, in
order to witness the crossing of dozens of trucks. Indeed, all day
long, Nusaybin was abuzz with excitement on this issue.
Well, then, why, when it was possible to send the aid across to
Al-Qamishli, which is only a stone’s throw away from Nusaybin, did we
have to go 45 minutes further, to the vicinity of Kiziltepe?
Because there are still officials of the Damascus regime at two points
in Al-Qamishli, at the border crossing and at the airport, and they
are keeping the border closed. Al-Qamishli is de facto governed by the
Heyeta Bilind, that is, the “High [Kurdish] Council,” in which the PYD
[Democratic Union Party] predominates. Ayse Gokkan said that “we can
meet at the barbed wire and talk with the High Council whenever we
want,” and thus explained how “unified” the Kurdish struggle on both
sides of the border has become.
For quite a long time, Al-Qamishli has reportedly been open to
crossing in both directions, but Nusaybin has been closed. The
Nusaybin Mayor expressed her astonishment, saying: “We cannot
understand why Turkey closed this crossing for so long.” But now
Nusaybin is open but Al-Qamishli is closed.
Ayse Gokkan explained the reason for this as follows: “Since (PYD
leader) Salih Muslim began to come to Turkey, the Syrians then closed
Al-Qamishli.” As for Turkey’s continually dragging its feet in terms
of opening the Senyurt crossing, she said: “There is only the PYD as
an interlocutor in Derbesiye, on the Syrian side across from Senyurt.”
Kobani and Afrin, the other crossing points into Syria, are also under
the sole control of the PYD, while the Akcakale-Til Abyad and
Karkamis-Jarablus crossings are under the control of the Free Syrian
Army, or in the description of the people of Nusaybin, “the gangs.”
What is meant by “the gangs” is Al-Qa’idah and the other Salafist
organizations in Syria.
The area between Al-Qamishli and Serekaniye, that is, between Nusaybin
and Ceylanpinar, is under the control of the Kurds -essentially the
PYD -and is an area of merciless conflict between “the gangs” and the
PYD/Kurds.
A little later, we would set out for Senyurt, in order to witness the
dispatch to the Rojava Kurds of the 400 tons of food and medical
assistance that the Kurds of Turkey had collected. Just then, a
Turkish journalist working as a cameraman for a foreign television
company approached me in the garden of the Mitanni Culture Centre and
felt the need to provide me with some information:
“At this time yesterday evening, we were in Ceylanpinar. I saw with my
own eyes that six or seven buses, absolutely filled with people,
crossed over rapidly to the other side, to Serekaniye.”
The “Syrian photograph” that can be taken from Nusaybin is that
“Turkish Kurds are providing food and medicine support to the Kurds of
Syria, while someone else in Turkey is, across the same border,
providing military assistance to the militant Islamist groups in
Syria.”
Before setting off on the road from Nusaybin to Kiziltepe, I looked
one more time at the poster on the wall of the Mitanni Culture Centre.
The advertisement for the symposium was, from the top to the bottom,
written in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, and the language of Jesus,
Aramaic (Assyrian). The symposium was a serious academic activity
dealing with the “School of Nisibis,” which came about in the fourth
century A. D. and according to some historians was the world’s first
university.
The “School of Nisibis” is evidence of the extraordinary historical
role of the Assyrians and Eastern Christians in this region. So let us
come to the Christians today, who have reportedly fallen to below four
per cent of the total population of the Middle East, which is the
cradle of religions. Yet at the beginning of the First World War, this
percentage was 20 per cent. The possibility exists that, one or two
generations later, there will be no Christians left in the Middle
East.
Certainly it was, first of all, [the Armenian Genocide of] 1915 that
brought the 20-per cent proportion down so drastically. And most
recently, there have been the civil war in Lebanon, the negative
developments in the Palestine area, the war in Iraq, the attacks
against the Copts in Egypt, and naturally, the current state of
affairs in Syria.
A very striking article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs,
entitled “The Christian Exodus,” concludes as follows: “… The
disappearance of the region’s Christians would also be a disaster for
Muslims. They would confront the task of establishing honourable
societies following these tyrannies. And this would be even more
difficult with the disappearance of the Christians living in their
midsta¦ The Muslims would thus have done away with pluralism, which
is the foundation of genuine democratic social lifea¦”
It is evident that it is the Kurds who in our day best understand this
reality. Particularly those in Turkey, those in the Rojava, and those
in the “South” [Iraqi Kurdistan].
Can we, I wonder, speak of an “alliance between Kurds and non-Muslims”
blossoming in the Middle East, and of this being the greatest
guarantee of “democracy” in the region in the future?
Nusaybin, at least, leads a person to ask this question at the “zero
point” of the Rojavaa.
From: Baghdasarian