Tell WMU to remove the Turkish flag flying in the center of campus.

At 4pm on October 9th, the Turkish occupation army and its Islamist allies began their long-prepared war of aggression against the liberated areas of northern Syria.

At four o’clock sharp in the afternoon, bombs rained down on people in towns and villages on the border. Jihadist militias began their advance under the leadership of the Turkish army and tried to penetrate into the border area. Turkey is talking about a “military operation” aimed at “securing the border” and establishing a so-called “peace corridor”, but the fact is that the Turkish army and the Islamist mercenaries under its command are concerned with nothing less than the occupation of the mostly Kurdish populated entire area along the Turkish-Syrian border. The regime in Ankara speaks of the “fight against terrorism” and emphasizes that their war of aggression is not about the war on the civilian population, but indiscriminate bombing of civilian settlements, looting and mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of people, arbitrary executions and the brutal abduction of hundreds of civilians speak a different language. The further the war against northern Syria progresses, the more it becomes clear, what Erdogan is really about, namely ethnic cleansing through the violent expulsion of millions of people and the long-term demographic change of the entire region.

In the north of Syria, in the shadow of the Syrian civil war, a revolutionary and democratic social project has thrived in the past seven years that has been a thorn in the side of the region’s powers and imperialist states from the very beginning. The societies of Northeastern Syria established their own self-government and created an oasis of peace, based on the equal coexistence of all groups of the local population, the liberation of women, an ecological economy and radical democracy. The Democratic Federation of Northeast Syria has become a living example of a peaceful and democratic future for the Middle East, beyond local despotism and foreign rule. Finally, the defense forces of the peoples of northeastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, succeeded in smashing the last remnants of the Turkish-based IS caliphate.

Today, Islamist militias, most of them fighters of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, are advancing again with the Turkish occupation offensive in northern Syria and spreading fear and terror. The states of the International Coalition, above all the United States of America, have paved the way for the Turkish war of aggression with their coordinated withdrawal of troops. They gave away their former allies to destruction and sacrificed the peoples of northeastern Syria to their filthy interests. The states of the world have agreed to close their eyes while the Turkish occupation army and its jihadists are committing a genocide with NATO weapons.

Boycotting Turkey is not merely an attempt to economically disrupt a billion-dollar business empire that profits from massacre, authoritarianism and intimidation. It is also an ethical stance against the exploitation, terrorization and annihilation of the Kurdish people and other communities, targeted by the nationalist state mentality of Turkey. Boycotting Turkey means saying NO to the normalization and white-washing of dictatorship and genocidal politics.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000006765423/turkey-syria-kurdish-execution.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/17/kurds-watch-homes-burn-afar-picture-ethnic-cleansing-emerges/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/world/middleeast/turkey-invasion-syria-kurds.html

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/14/turkish-backed-forces-freeing-islamic-state-prisoners-syria/

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/13/middleeast/syria-turkey-kurdish-politician-intl/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-border/displaced-by-war-kurdish-families-stuck-at-syria-iraq-border-point-idUSKBN1X0211

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/08/erdogan-wants-redraw-middle-east-ethnic-map-kurds-arabs-turkey-syria/