The revolution is a path; when people step onto this path, they open the doors to an unknown world. We have come onto this path by the love of fire and earth. We started walking on this path by cutting all of our links to private property, like a newborn who is very enthusiastic and happy to enter into life. We started to walk on this path at midnight, guided by the moonlight. After the friends that brought us here gave us a warning, we started to walk. After passing great mountains, wild rivers, the intoxicating smell of fields of wheat, we finally came to Rojava. Our trip had taken 14 hours, without bread, without water, without cigarettes. A trip undertaken in the company of people that we had never seen before… Due to the darkness of the night, we were not even capable of seeing the faces of these friends. It’s strange, since maybe we will be fighting side by side with some of them in the same positions. Maybe we will draw our last breath in the arms of the other without even getting to know what are our favourite books and movies.

Here, we are in Rojava; the front where the armed oppressed meet and kiss. After a warm welcome, we drank çay, ate some bread with cheese under curious gazes… Everyone looked into the others’ eyes. Everyone smiled to one another in a way to hide the fatigue that could be read on the faces.

After 3 or 4 days of waiting, our organisation came to bring us to the front, where we would fight. On both sides stand two mountains: one made of dust, the other made of smoke. On one side, the Abdul Aziz mountain, on the other side, the Şengal mountain. What remains is just a wide emptiness, a thirsty ground, flat and arid, without a single tree. The temperature depresses the eyes of a person. Each day, dust storms reduce the visibility to nearly zero. Where we are, friends come from the 4 corners of Kurdistan – from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. All are young fighters full of life. It reminds me of Ahmet Arif’s poem: “If you only knew, my brothers and sisters, how they were good kids. I would have wanted you to know.”

In the battalion, the lifestyle is collective. Everything that needs to be done is planned collectively. Our friendship is great. Many friends don’t know TKP-ML/TiKKO, it’s curious for them that there is another organisation aside from YPG/YPJ. As we tell our parties our reasons for coming to Rojava, our friendship grows and our confidence in one another expands. We have a slogan in our battalion: “Tea, cigarettes and war”. These three things are firmly bonded here.

We are at the front. Our position is 700 metres away from that of the ISIL gangs. We will certainly be in combat every day. Mortars, missiles, bullets illuminate our dark nights. At night, we await ambushes, having mined our grounds. Some days we have 8 or 10 hours of surveillance duty. Our morale is good because we concentrate on the war. Here, we learn many things about the city and the battle fronts. Just like the leader and comrade İbrahim Kaypakkaya taught us, we learn war by doing it. Freedom means to be conscious of one’s musts and we decided to answer the call of the proletariat under the direction of the party. We continue walking forward with confidence, with small steps, humbly conscious that we are small and with our ideals.

Comrade Sefagül Keskin instructed us : “everyone must do their work”. We received our instructions and are committed to our work. On their paths, today in Rojava, tomorrow in Dersim, then at the Black Sea, we will do our work. Each time we repeat: where there is oppression, there is resistance and Comrade İbrahim is there.

(A TKP/ML fighter in Rojava)

Via New Turkey