While the Israeli army has been committing carnage in Gaza since the Hamas assault on October 7, and a ground intervention has just begun, Turkey’s autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been particularly conspicuous by his presence. First as a potential “mediator” between the Israeli government and Hamas, then – as Israeli strategy seemed to take on ever more clearly genocidal contours – as a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause.

Kobanê will not fall! Just 9 years ago, as the city was encircled by the forces of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, whose advance had been lightning-fast, a day of international mobilization was organized in support of the Kurdish resistance. On November 1, 2014, millions of people rise up around the world to express their support for Kobanê and denounce the international community’s inaction and the collusion of certain states with Daesh.

A decisive turning point in the war waged by the self-defense forces of the Federation of North and East Syrian (YPG/YPJ), the battle of Kobanê was a few months later the first major setback suffered by the Islamic State. It marked the beginning of its retreat and eventual downfall.
The fierceness of the fighting and the resulting loss of human life made the heroic resistance of the self-defense forces a symbol of global resistance against the forces of reaction. A modern-day Stalingrad, this battle will forever be remembered as the one that changed the course of the war in Syria and the Middle East.
This battle, and the subsequent liberation of the Syrian northeast, was the triumph of a self- administrated, democratic, ecological, multi-ethnic and multicultural project founded on women’s freedom against a fundamentalist and fascist order.