NEWS CENTER - Margaret Owen stated that the ISIS threat emerged because international legal mechanisms failed to function. She emphasised that the international community must raise its voice everywhere in the world, adding, "We owe the Kurds and Öcalan so much."  

 

Attacks by Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), ISIS and Turkey-backed groups on Rojava have continued since 6 January. A 15-day ceasefire between the two sides was declared yesterday. While previous ceasefires were constantly violated by HTS, there has been no adequate explanation or concrete action from the international coalition and independent organisations regarding these violations. 

 

On the international stage, reactions to the attacks on Rojava are growing, and Kurds and their friends are protesting through various actions. Margaret Owen, a British lawyer who has followed and supported the Kurdish Freedom Movement for many years, is among those reacting to the attacks. 

 

'ROJAVA IS OUR ONLY HOPE'

 

Commenting on the attacks and the international silence to the Mezopotamya Agency (MA), Margaret Owen said that what happened was sexual violence, referring to the throwing of a female fighter's body from a building during the attacks. Margaret Owen emphasised that every country in the world should look at Rojava with admiration, not only for the Kurds but for people of all nationalities, saying, "I think there are more than 200,000 displaced people. And it’s now freezing weather, and there’s no electricity, there’s no light, there’s nothing. And the world is silent. I don’t understand how there is such ignorance. Lots of people don’t even know what I’m talking about. And yet this is the one hope we’ve got. That model of the Kurdish women’s revolution is a model for every country in the world if we want any sort of stability, if we want to save our planet, and if we want to stop war.”

 

Margaret Owen, referring to Turkey-UK relations, said, "We have meetings here all the time in Parliament. I’m in meetings almost twice or three times a week. But again, it’s just talk. And then I’m often the only one who talks about Turkey and the UK’s support. And we do Turkey’s nasty, dirty work on our London streets. We’re actually persecuting, prosecuting, and convicting Kurds in this country who aren’t even members of the PKK. And you know that our Labour government wanted to delist the HTS, but we will not delist the PKK. And the PKK has been dissolved in any case.”

 

‘I WOULD WANT TO JOIN THE YPJ’ 

 

“I’m nearly 94. And if I was younger, I would want to join the YPJ. I would be dashing off to Rojava to join. So all I can do, sitting in London, is speak wherever I can," Margaret Owen said, expressing that the Kurdish people, including in Turkey, want a fair life for everyone. 

 

‘ALL JIHADIST REGIMES TARGET WOMEN’ 

 

Margaret Owen, who said that the United Nations (UN) is now “powerless,” reacted to the silence regarding the crimes against humanity that occurred just before Shara was declared “Interim President.” Margaret Owen said, "These sorts of jihadist regimes, all of them, they target the women, because that’s how they hope to destroy the cultural identity of people, by actually targeting the women and either raping them or forcing them into forced pregnancies or things like that. I mean, it’s terrible. So it’s up to civil society now to raise its voices all over the world. And that’s what we try to do. We try to do it, and we will go on trying to do it." 

 

'TURKEY IS A TERRORIST STATE'

 

Responding to Turkey's open support for groups affiliated with HTŞ and ISIS, Margaret Owen said, "Turkey itself, like Israel, is a terrorist state. Turkey is a terrorist state. And there is a corollary here: that in both Israel and Turkey, our government serves those two terrorist states by trading, by arming, by talking to allies. I mean, on the other hand, all the international focus is on Gaza, rather than it should be on Syria as well.”

 

Speaking about the release of ISIS members held in prison by groups, Margaret Owen said: "We are seeing that the SDF has been controlling these prisons for so many years, and now this threat that’s happening is because legal mechanisms didn’t work until today. Now masses of ISIS have been released, and the Al-Hol camp is run even by ISIS women. A lot of countries, even America, and Denmark Germany have brought them back But we, the UK did not. We should bring them back to our country to face justice here and to find, through our own, I hope, fair justice system, our fair investigations, who is guilty of these terrible international war crimes under ISIS and who were innocent children who were groomed and should never have had their citizenship taken away. We don’t bring them back and we say we don’t because there’ll be a security risk here, they’re more a security risk to everyone if we just allow them to go back and be recruited by ISIS. So we’re supporting ISIS by leaving them there. So, you know, this is another cause: we have to bring them back.”

 

'WE OWE A LOT TO THE KURDS AND ÖCALAN'

 

Margaret Owen stated that the whole world should look to the model of the Kurdish women's revolution, saying, "I want the whole world to look and learn from the model of the Kurdish women’s revolutions, to read the writings and philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan, to see that Abdullah Öcalan is freed from his 26 years in Imrali so that he can sit at these tables. And we should all be reading it, and everyone studying political science or economics or human rights. His prison writings should be on the curriculum. I mean, this is a great, new, unique possibility for other countries to understand that women’s empowerment and gender equality are essential, basic building blocks of any democratic and free society. So we owe the Kurds and Öcalan so much.”

 

MA / Hîvda Çelebi