Turkey

Greater Middle East

Amnesty International condemns arrest of Istanbul mayor

Amnesty International condemned the Turkish government’s detention of over 100 individuals, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, calling it a severe escalation in an ongoing crackdown on the political opposition. Amnesty decried “the weaponization of vague anti-terrorism allegations to detain and prosecute opponents.” The timing of the crackdown is notable, as it comes just before the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is to select its presidential candidate. İmamoğlu was expected to be chosen, but the government actions, including the closure of transportation routes in Istanbul and the cancellation of İmamoğlu’s university degree, have thrown this into doubt—and added fuel to the fire of public dissent. Article 101 of the Turkish constitution mandates that those seeking the presidency must hold higher education qualifications. (Photo: Hunanuk via Wikimedia Commons)

Syria

Syria: interim government, SDF sign integration pact

Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the Kurdish-led SDF into Syria’s state institutions. A statement by the Syrian Presidency said a pact was reached to “integrate all civil and military institutions in northeast Syria [Rojava] under the administration of the Syrian state, including border crossings, the [Qamishli] Airport, and oil and gas fields.” The statement emphasized that “the Kurdish community is indigenous to the Syrian state, which ensures this community’s right to citizenship and all of its constitutional rights.” (Image: Rudaw)

Syria

Podcast: Free Syria and the Kurdish question II

In Episode 268 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the continued fighting in Syria since the fall of the Bashar Assad dictatorship in December. The recent outburst of violence in the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast made headlines, but this week also saw anti-regime protests by Druze in Syria’s south. And fighting has never stopped between forces aligned with the new transition government and those of the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast. The situation is complicated by continuing military adventures on Syrian territory by foreign powers—Israel, Turkey, Russia and the US. Will Syrians be able to overcome these challenges and forge a democratic and multicultural order, in repudiation of sectarianism, ethno-nationalism and Great Power intrigues? (Photo: SOHR)

Syria

External, internal challenges for Syrian Revolution

Apparent Assad loyalists have taken up arms against Syria’s transitional government in the Alawite heartland of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. Fighting meanwhile continues between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northeast, while Israel grabs a “security zone” in the south and continues intermittent air-strikes. Elsewhere in the south, the Druze of Suweida protest their perceived exclusion from the transition process. All this as Russia opens talks with the new authorities in a bid to keep its military bases in Syrian territory. (Map: PCL)

Greater Middle East

Call for human rights opening after PKK insurgency

Human Rights Watch urged that the call by imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan for an end to the organization’s decades-long insurgency against Turkey must serve as a catalyst to end the systematic misuse of terrorism charges against government critics in the country. Öcalan founded the PKK in 1978, and the party waged an insurgency against Turkey for four decades, with approximately 40,000 killed in the conflict. The PKK has been declared a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and EU. Öcalan is serving a life sentence on the island of Imrali, where he has been imprisoned since his capture in February 1999 for violating the controversial Article 125 of Turkey’s Penal Code. (Image of PKK la via Wikipedia)

Syria

US aid freeze escalates Syria crisis

Just weeks after US President Donald Trump’s order to freeze foreign aid, Syrians are already seeing medical clinics providing urgent assistance close, water distributions slow down, and bread distribution in many displacement camps grind to a halt. After nearly 14 years of war, the UN estimates that 16.5 million people across Syria are in need of aid. While the December overthrow of Bashar al-Assad has lifted the siege conditions in the country’s north, the need for relief among those facing severe privation, food insecurity, and mass internal displacement remains unrelenting. (Photo: UNHCR)

Palestine

BP accused of Gaza war crimes complicity

A group of Palestinian-British individuals took initial steps to bring British Petroleum (BP) to court, accusing the company of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The action led by Bimdman’s LLP asserts BP’s complicity through the continuous supply of crude oil to Israel, facilitated by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, amid ongoing military operations in Gaza since October 2023. The claimants, backed by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), aim to hold BP responsible for their suffering and press for the company’s immediate cessation of activities they say expedite the conflict. (Photo: Fossil Free London via MEMO)

Syria

Podcast: Free Syria and the Kurdish question

Amid jubilation following the overthrow of long-ruling dictator Bashar Assad, the only fightingin Syria is now between Arabs and Kurds—as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) expels the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Manbij. Ankara’s design is clearly to expunge the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast region of Rojava. Yet there are also positive signs of an accommodation between the Rojava Kurds and the new revolutionary administration in Damascus. In Episode 256 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the new political landscape in Syria and tries to identify a way forward—past the threat of ethnic war and toward a multicultural democracy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Rudaw)

Syria

Syria: after the fall of the regime

As Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus in a surprise lightning offensive, the Rojava Kurds seized territory from the Bashar Assad regime, and the Druze took up arms in their own region. After years of the lines in the conflict being frozen and the genocidal Assad dictatorship being “normalized,” the unthinkable happened and the dictator fled. Suddenly the 13-year aim of the Syrian Revolution has been realized—the fall of the regime. But the lead rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has an ugly past, its partner the Syrian National Army (SNA) is in the political orbit of Turkish aspiring dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the threat of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war in northern Syria looms closer. Amid a conflict now dominated by armed actors, can the unarmed civil resistance that began the revolution 13 years ago re-assert itself, and revive the secular-democratic spirit of 2011? In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes a hard look. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo of Aleppo Citadel in rebel hands via social media, e.g. Twtter)

Syria

Threat of Arab-Kurdish war in new battle for Syria

With the Syrian city of Aleppo now mostly in rebel hands following a surprise offensive, the danger emerges that Kurdish forces could be drawn into the conflict on the side of Assad dictatorship. Kurdish militias have for years controlled their own enclave within the city, the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsood. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are now trying to open an evacuation corridor between Sheikh Maqsood and the Kurdish-held town of Tal Rifaat to the north. An evacuation of Tal Rifaat itself to Kurdish-held areas to the east is also being prepared. This effort is being blocked by one of the rebel militias, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), with clashes between the two forces reported. The SNA has been repeatedly implicated in abuses against the Kurdish population in areas it took from SDF-aligned forces in a 2019 offensive. This offensive drove the SDF into a tactical alliance with the Assad regime—although this alliance has repeatedly broken down over the regime’s rejection of the SDF’s principal demand of Kurdish autonomy. (Map: Google)

Syria

Syria: rebel forces launch new offensive on Aleppo

In the most significant escalation in Syria since a 2020 ceasefire instated under emergency conditions during the COVID pandemic, rebel forces in northwestern Idlib province launched a surprise offensive on the country’s most populous city, Aleppo. The rebel advance is said to have penetrated the perimeter of the city, which had been held for years by rebel forces before it was retaken by the regime with the help of Russian air power in 2016. Russia has responded to the new offensive with fresh air-strikes on Idlib, which has been coming under intermittent Russian bombardment for years. At least 225 fatalities are reported in the new fighting, including some 25 civilians killed in Russian air-strikes. (Photo: Syrian Observer)

Palestine

UN human rights chief: Gaza faces ‘darkest moment’

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that “the darkest moment of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north of the Strip.” Calling for urgent action by the international community, Türk stated: “Unimaginably, the situation is getting worse by the day. The Israeli Government’s…practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians. We are facing what could amount to…crimes against humanity.” Türk asserted that under the Geneva Convention, member states have “an obligation to act when a serious violation of international humanitarian law has been committed.” (Photo: badwanart0/Pixabay via Jurist)