Photos: Kurdish activists march from BBC to Parliament — 2019

Kurdish solidarity activists march from the BBC to Parliament

Kurdish solidarity activists departing from the BBC towards Parliament at around 2pm. — 20th October 2019

All photographs belong to Matt Florence and were taken on the 20th of October 2019. All photographs are protected under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) Click here for details of the license and what you can and cannot do with the photos.

Activists gathered outside the BBC to hear speakers at 1pm, then marched to parliament around 2pm. Demonstrators start leaving the grounds surrounding parliament between 4pm and 4:30pm

The crowd chanted “biji biji Kurdistan”. The word bijî means ‘long live’ in Kurmanji, the largest of the two primary Kurdish languages

Left: “Freedom for Ocalan” flags with the face of Kurdish freedom fighter Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan was the leader of a Communist guerrilla organisation called the PKK which has fought against Turkey for over 40 years. He was arrested in 1999 and has been in a Turkish prison ever since.

Many Socialist Worker Party (SWP) placards such as the one on the far left. The SWP gives these out during demonstrations so it is not known whether those holding the signs are actually members and supporters of the SWP.

Left: Flag of the International Freedom Battalion whose members consist of foreign fighters who joined the Kurds to fight against ISIS and Turkey. Left: Flags of the YPJ and PYD. The PYD (white flag, red star) is a Kurdish political party in Northern Syria (Rojava), their female fighters belong to an armed wing of the party called the YPJ (green triangular flag)

Several anarchists are spotted trying to play fast rock music on a speaker before being told off by one of the organisers.

The green banner seen in the above three photos hold the images and names (english and Kurdish names) of British fighters who were killed fighting ISIS and Turkey. Anna Campbell shown on the far right was the first British woman to be killed fighting ISIS, her death sparked major media attention in Kurdish matters in the British press.

Center photo : Several PETA activists happened to be close to the Kurdish demonstrations.

The Kurdish liberations struggles in the 20th century are heavily influenced by Communism, hence the hammer and sickle flags of the Turkish communists of the MLKP. With thousands of communists fighting against ISIS and Turkey alongside Kurds in Syria. Most Kurdish political parties and resistance fighters are heavily tied to Marxism-Leninism, but have also shown much sympathy for other leftist tendancies such as Anarchists.

Extra notes on the march:

• The streets were litered with dropped leaflets and placards from previous demonstrations against leaving the EU. Many stickers of Kurdish heroes such as Anna Campbell and Ocalan were found on lamp posts.
• Despite anarchists having a heavy presence in the International Freedom Battalion, their presence at this demo was nill. This is unusual as anarchists sent fighters to defend Kurds from ISIS and the Kurdish hero Abdullah Ocalan was known to haev been influenced by American Anarchist academic Murray Bookchin.
• Anger against Trump and NATO was a heavy theme with speakers, the struggle against Turkey was tied in with other anti-imperialist struggles such as the fight against the Nazis. The Americans were seen as taking undue credit, where as America contributed airstrikes the Kurds contributed the lives of 10,000 of their fighters.
• Turkey was credited as a supporter of ISIS. This is due to a number of reasons including the recent Turkish October attacks on the YPG freeing imprisoned ISIS families. Another reason is because the Turkish military allowed ISIS militants to cross the border from Turkey into Syria unchallenged in an attempt to soften up Kurdish resistance fighters in preperation for an invasion. The most important reason however is the fact that many former ISIS members are looking for revenge against the Kurds that defeated them by joining militias supported by Turkey including the Free Syrian Army (FSA).
• Several zionists appeared and attempted to hijack the demo in favour of Israel, despite Israel not giving anything other than verbal support for Kurdish liberation. Ironically Israel is a primary dealer in weaponry to Turkey, selling them weapons which they use to kill Kurds. When challenged they attempted to frame those criticising them as anti-semitic but were far outnumbered by the leftists at the demo.

All photographs belong to Matt Florence and were taken on the 20th of October 2019. All photographs are protected under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Click here for details of the license and what you can and cannot do with the photos.