This video says about itself:
The Flowers of Rojava – A Feminist Revolution in Northern Syria (TRAILER)
5 November 2015
I am producing, with a small but very motivated team, a documentary on the situation of women in Rojava, the self-administered [mainly Kurdish] region in the North of Syria. This is the video trailer for our crowdfunding campaign.
Many politicians in many countries don’t often tell the truth. However, United States Vice President Joseph Biden did that at least once.
Mr Biden told Harvard University students in 2014 that Middle Eastern US allies such as Turkey strengthened extremist groups like ISIS in their bid to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Now, however, it looks like Mr Biden is betraying that moment of honesty.
Translated from Dutch NOS TV:
US calls on Syrian Kurds to withdraw
These Syrian Kurds are the only force effectively fighting ISIS terrorists. However, the Erdogan regime in Turkey hates them, and has fired artillery shells at them before, and has otherwise helped ISIS. Today, Turkish soldiers have crossed the Syrian border to attack Jarablus city, to prevent Syrian Kurds from entering it.
Today, 16:58
The US vice president, Joe Biden, has asked the Kurdish militias in northern Syria to withdraw behind the Euphrates river. If they do not do that, then the US will not “under any circumstances” support them. …
The Kurds expelled IS earlier this month from the southern city Manbij. Manbij is west of the Euphrates. Turkey therefore demands that the Kurds withdraw and for that, they now receive support from the US.
This blog has reported how happy the women of Manbij were when Syrian Kurds and their Syrian Arab allies drove away the ISIS reign of terror from Manbij, and the women were free again to dress the way they liked without fear of ISIS killing them. If Erdogan or the Joseph Biden of 2016 get their way in Manbij, then the women will have to fear another reign of terror, by ISIS or by a similar gang.
Biden meets with Erdogan, backs Turkish invasion of Syria: here.
With support from the US Air Force and military “advisers,” Turkish soldiers expanded their invasion of northern Syria Thursday: here.
On Wednesday, US Vice President Joseph Biden arrived in Turkey to announce, at a joint press conference with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that the United States military would directly support Turkey in its incursion into northern Syria: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Thursday 25th August 2016
posted by Morning Star in World
Turkish troops in a bid to capture Isis-held town
by James Tweedie
TURKEY invaded northern Syria yesterday with US military and diplomatic backing, striking at both Islamic State (Isis) and Kurdish forces.
Turkish troops and up to 20 tanks accompanied by extremist insurgents pulled from fronts in the Syrian civil war to capture Jarabulus, the key Isis-held border town in the north-east of Aleppo province.
The “Euphrates Shield” operation secured the town and the village of Keklijah three miles to the west by the afternoon.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the offensive would target “terrorist groups like Daesh (Isis) and PYD,” referring to the Democratic Union Party whose military wing are the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of Jojava.
The Syrian government and the PYD immediately condemned the “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.
The Foreign Ministry in Damascus said: “What is happening in Jarabulus now isn’t fighting terrorism as Turkey claims; rather it is replacing one type of terrorism with another.”
PYD co-president Saleh Muslim warned: “Turkey will lose in the Syrian quagmire just like Isis.”
The YPG claimed the Turks were deliberately shelling and bombing Kurdish districts in the town and had killed 29 civilians, and forced 3,000 to flee, while wounding one guerilla.
The PYD’s Hawar news agency claimed the invasion force included terrorist groups such as the Levant Conquest Front — al-Qaida in Syria — and the CIA-armed Nour al-Din al-Zinki that beheaded a Palestinian refugee boy in Aleppo last month.
The latest escalation came less than 48 hours after the US imposed a no-fly-zone over northern Syria, where some 100 of its troops have been acting as advisers to the Kurdish YPG militia.
In an indication of the invasions objectives, US Vice- President Joe Biden told the YPG to withdraw east of the Euphrates river — echoing threats by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
The YPG “must as soon as possible cross to the east of the Euphrates. That’s what the US promised,” Mr Cavusoglu said. If not, “we will do what is necessary.”
Mr Biden said the YPG faced losing US military support that helped them capture Manbij — a few miles south of Jarabulus — after a two-month siege.
Speaking after flying in to Ankara for talks with the government, Mr Biden said: “they cannot — will not — under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment,” to withdraw.
An unnamed senior US official travelling with Mr Biden confirmed that the US-led coalition — which includes the RAF — was supporting the Turkish invasion.
On Friday US jets invaded Syrian air space on the pretext that Syrian planes attacking YPG forces trying to seize the north-eastern city of Hassakeh might hit its troops — hundreds of miles from the fight against Isis in Aleppo.
Stop the War convener Lindsey German condemned the intervention, saying: “This is yet another dangerous move in the many-sided conflict in which Turkey and its Nato allies have long been involved.
“Turkey’s war against the Kurds has been longstanding,” she pointed out.
“Its past support for Isis has included allowing it to cross the Turkish border to sell oil.”
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-1f87-Turkey-invades-Aleppo-with-US-backing#.V77ePzWZ0dU
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Saturday 16th September 2017
posted by Morning Star in Features
The destruction of Hasankeyf is another extension of Erdogan’s cultural genocide on the Kurds, says STEVE SWEENEY
SITUATED on the banks of the Tigris River, Hasankeyf is a 12,000-year old largely Kurdish city in Turkey’s Mardin province.
It is an important centre of Kurdish cultural and archaeological heritage which at its height attracted around half a million visitors a year.
Hasankeyf is a symbol of Kurdish identity and its flooding is yet another act of “cultural genocide” in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s escalating war against Kurds.
When I visited Hasankeyf in May this year, I found the once thriving town almost deserted. The many cafes and restaurants that lined the banks of the river were empty and the souvenir shops were desperately competing for custom.
The city boasts masterpieces of Islamic architecture from the 12th to the 15th century and is a major centre of Seljuk culture from the Artukid and Ayyubid dynasties.
Comparisons have been made with Isis’s destruction of Islamic cultural sites and the “historical massacre” of ancient statues and buildings in the Syrian city of Palmyra.
Construction vehicles have moved in and the 5,000 caves which used to house the city’s population and remain a major tourist attraction are being destroyed by dynamite.
And it faces being submerged due to the expansion of Turkey’s controversial Ilisu dam project.
Since the dawn of civilisation, the great rivers of the region — the Euphrates and the Tigris — have powered empires and defined the Middle East.
Whoever was able to harness their powers was able to rule over an area known as the Fertile Crescent. From these rivers came food, life and the expansion of some of the world’s greatest civilisations and cultures.
The development of the Ilisu dam would allow the Turkish government to use water as a political tool against its neighbours, in particular Iraq and Syria.
Almost all of the drinking water for Iraq’s major cities is drawn from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and the dam would give Turkey the ability to cut supplies and control water flow.
This would almost certainly be used to further Turkey’s ambitions to become a major regional power amid instability and imperialist conflict.
This is no mere threat. In 1990 Turkey cut off the flow of the Tigris to Syria and Iraq as it filled the Ataturk dam.
And the south-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) also threatens Iraqi agriculture with the draining of its marshlands once again set to cause untold environmental and ecological damage.
The wetlands in southern Iraq have been described as the cradle of civilisation. Their historical significance didn’t stop Saddam Hussein from draining them in the 1990s as an act of revenge against Marsh Arabs for supporting a Shi’ite uprising against his rule. The area’s rich wildlife disappeared as it became an uninhabitable desert, forcing the country’s Marsh Arabs to be displaced as the UN declared a “major ecological disaster.”
Following the US invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s Marsh Arabs returned to the land and in July 2016 it was added to Unesco’s World Heritage list as a “refuge of biodiversity.”
The Ilisu dam project have been fraught with difficulties and marred by controversy from its beginning. Turkey has struggled to get financial backing for the project since it was first proposed in the 1950s.
International consortia has withdrawn support for the project following a failure to gain export credit guarantees from their respective governments — in other words taxpayers’ money.
The plans have proved to be so toxic that even notorious blacklisters Skanska and Balfour Beatty pulled out of a construction deal.
While the plans are ostensibly about the harnessing of hydro-electrical power, the Ilisu dam appears to be an extension of Erdogan’s oppression of Turkey’s Kurdish population.
The flooding of the ancient town of Hasankeyf will destroy thousands of years of history and lead to an estimated 78,000 people being added to the almost one million displaced in Turkey’s largely Kurdish south-east.
Only around 50 families from Hasankeyf’s 3,000 remaining residents are believed to have taken up the government offer of alternative housing in the newly built New Hasankeyf.
With unemployment high in an area reliant on its tourist trade, and inadequate government compensation, many are forced to move to major cities, including Diyarbakir and as far away as Istanbul.
This is an area that has suffered due to the pursuit of a military solution to the so-called Kurdish question.
The 1990s saw over 3,000 villages razed to the ground as the Turkish authorities pushed Kurds out of the area and forced them to “assimilate” in towns and cities where the Kurdish language was not widely spoken and connections to traditional Kurdish culture are weaker.
The plans have led to local and international resistance. Despite promises from the Turkish government to employ local, mainly Kurdish labour, this does not appear to be the case.
Many I spoke with during my visits to the area said that construction companies were drafting workers from other cities into an area with high levels of unemployment.
In July 2015, workers took strike action after bosses refused to give them additional breaks or extra pay during Ramadan.
Construction company Malamira warned the union not to attend the dam site and opened fire on protesting workers.
They responded by torching the company’s offices and destroying vehicles and machinery, stopping work on the project.
Heavy police and military presence has deterred many villagers from protesting against the development of the dam which has also come under attack from the Kurdistan Workers Party.
Turkish authorities have continued to clamp down on opposition to the project. Just one day after my visit French photographer Mathias Depardon was arrested in Hasankeyf while working on a project for National Geographic. He was charged with terror offences and held in solitary confinement where he started a hunger strike in protest at his detention. Mr Depardon was released in June.
As the Ilisu dam plans and the flooding of Hasankeyf draw nearer to reality, resistance has become more desperate.
People’s Democratic Party (HDP) MP for Batman Mehmet Ali Asla has chained himself to rocks in protest at the destruction of the town and government denials of dynamite being used to destroy historical monuments.
He said it was “incomprehensible that such places are being dynamited” and accused the authorities of making false statements.
“They say that dynamite is not being used. Are these then images of children popping balloons?
“When I saw the footage, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I associated it with the Isis historical massacre in Palmyra.”
Saturday September 23 will see the second global day of action for the defence of Hasankeyf and the Tigris River.
Actions and activities will take place in towns and cities across the world including London.
Steve Sweeney is a Morning Star reporter. For further details on the campaign and the action on September 23 visit: http://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e613-Flooding-out-the-Kurds-from-their-ancient-home#.Wb1CPMZpEdU
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