{"id":7495,"date":"2017-07-25T10:45:10","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T10:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=7495"},"modified":"2017-07-25T10:48:38","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T10:48:38","slug":"kurds-oppose-turkish-dictator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=7495","title":{"rendered":"Kurds oppose Turkish Dictator"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve long admired the Kurds and their continuing struggle for their identity and culture in Turkey and elsewhere against a long policy of \u2018Turkification\u2019 since the end of the First World War. I think I first photographed them in October 1999 on the streets of London shortly after the arrest and death sentence (later commuted to life imprisonment) of their nationalist leader,\u00a0Abdullah Ocalan<\/em>, the face on many flags, still held in prison on a Turkish island.<\/p>\n

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Since then I\u2019ve photographed many protests they have taken part in as well as cultural festivals, including their New Year festivities and of course London\u2019s May Day march. \u00a0As well as the protests they organise, they also take part in a wide range of other protests in London.<\/p>\n

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Although their struggles have gained some advances for Kurds in Turkey they are still very much under attack \u2013 military and otherwise \u2013 from the Turkish government under Islamist\u00a0Recep Tayyip\u00a0Erdo\u011fan<\/em>, who is increasingly pushing through laws and repressing opposition including the Kurds to make himself a dictator. Its a process that has accelerated since the Kurds gained greater representation in the Turkish parliament.<\/p>\n

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While Kurds outside Turkey, have made progress, \u00a0particularly in Iraq and now Syria where they have achieved de-facto independence, peace talks in Turkey initiated from prison by Ocalan broke down in 2015, since when the Turkish state has tightened its programme of repression and human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

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Erdogan used the rather pathetic military coup attempt of\u00a015 July 2016, thought by many to be a \u2018False flag\u2019 event, as an excuse to carry out wholesale arrests of his political opponents, including MPs, academics and journalists.<\/p>\n

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There is a pragmatism about Kurdish protests, and a determination that is missing from many of those more organised events on London\u2019s streets, and an unwillingness to be bound by petty restrictions and bylaws. I don\u2019t think that they ever march along chanting \u2018Whose Streets! Our Streets!\u2019 but unlike some other groups that\u00a0do, it is something they put into practice. \u00a0I met them in Parliament Square, from where the marched up Whitehall to Downing St, and then on to Trafalgar Square, where I left them. They told me they would perhaps go on to the BBC and from there to the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square.<\/p>\n

And in Syria, in\u00a0Rojava<\/a>, a\u00a0polyethnic\u00a0community home to many Kurds among others and also known as\u00a0Western Kurdistan, again thanks to Ocalan from jail in Turkey, they have put in place a remarkable constitution\u00a0based on a\u00a0\u201cCharter of the Social Contract\u201d\u00a0\u00a0embodying the\u00a0principles of democratic socialism, gender equality and\u00a0sustainability. It is a model for democracy while perhaps not perfect in its application makes our own aging pseudo-democratic and class-dominated system look rather autocratic.<\/p>\n

Kurds march through London<\/a>
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