On its 11th anniversary....How did the Rojava revolution begin?

When the spring of peoples began in the Middle East in 2010, starting with Tunisia and Egypt, the ground in Syria was prepared for a movement that had already begun in all its provinces in 2011, but the spark that broke out in Kobani on July 19, 2012, was different in its orientations and goals.

15 July, 2023 00:40

NEWS DESK- KOBANI

In mid-March 2011, the movement began in Syria through demonstrations, which took place in the Syrian governorates, calling for "the overthrow of the regime," without a program and clear visions for this movement.

In Rojava, the matter was different, only the movement began based on a comprehensive revolutionary and philosophical ground that calls for a change of mentality instead of overthrowing the regimes.

The year 2004, the date on which the Qamishlo uprising began against the Baathist authorities, is considered the starting point on which the revolution of July 19, 2012 was based.

Where did the revolution begin?

That revolution started in Kobani, when the people expelled all the security branches and institutions of the Baath Party from their city, where the people forced the security branches of the Baath Party to surrender and leave the city, liberating the buildings of the Cultural Center, Air Security, Criminal Security, State Security, Brigades, the Peasants Association, the District Directorate building, the recruitment building, and the Institution General Consumer Affairs, Money Directorate, Central Prison and Grain Center.

The Baath Party building in Kobani, which was the symbol of the central authority and security grip, was transformed after the revolution into the center of the Autonomous Administration of Kobani canton.

While the rest of the buildings turned into centers for institutions serving the people and training them.

This historical transformation that started from Kobane, the city from which the leader Abdullah Ocalan moved from Turkey towards Syria and the Middle East in July 1979, inspired the rest of the Kurdish areas in Syria. Far from Kobani, the people of Afrin, Qamishlo, and Hasaka expelled the Baathist institutions from their areas and began to organize themselves.

The matter did not stop here. Kobani, which is considered the cradle of the July 19 revolution, turned in 2014 into a global symbol of the democratic struggle against the regime.

In September 2014, ISIS mercenaries, with direct Turkish support, attacked the Kobani canton, and after the leader Abdullah Ocalan launched the general mobilization call, hundreds of young Kurdish men and women and where they achieved a great victory, the Autonomous Administration project began to spread and left the areas of Kobani, Afrin and Jazera to reach Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij, Deir Ezzor, Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods in Aleppo. Not only that, but the revolution that started in front of a building in Kobani inspired the people of As-Suwayda governorate in southern Syria, and they went out several times in demonstrations and demanded an autonomous administration similar to NE Syria.

a.k

ANHA