Final Declaration of the 1st Conference hold on April 23-24, 2016, in Wan – North Kurdistan
On April 23 and 24, 2016, in the city of Wan (Van) the first conference of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) has been held with the participation of 100 delegates from the provinces Amed (Diyarbakir), Dîlok (Gaziantep), Riha (Sanliurfa), Merdîn, Muş, Wan, Elih (Batman), Siirt, Dersîm and Bedlîs (Bitlis), from Turkey with activists from the following movements and groups Gaya magazine, Anti Nuclear Platform, Green Resistance, Green Newspaper, Green and Left Party, Black Sea in Rebellion, Defense of North Forests, Water Right Campaign, Dersîm-Ovacik Municipality and with of the German ICOR and the East-Kurdistan group Green Chiya. Including representatives of the DTK, KJA, HDK and HDP there were in total 170 people joining the first big gathering of the MEM since its buildup.
The conference in Wan has been organized in a period of intensive political struggles by people in Kurdistan for freedom and self-governance which may change significantly the future of a region, but demands many victims.
Based on the trinity city-class-state and the method of dominance-capital accumulation, the capitalist modernity creates a breathless and unproductive life for the society as well as it faces the nature with every kind of destruction. On behalf of the existing hegemonical system the nation-state und its governments disperse the social-solidary character of the society and imposes unemployment, poverty, unhealthy nourishment via industrial and GMO’s and the cultural-social devastation on the people. Huge destructive projects like the GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project), Ilisu Dam, Munzur dams, Green Way, Cerattepe Mining and Kanal Istanbul are developed and realized with the aim to enable the forests for construction, to commercialise the waters, commodification of the land, to control nature and people and promote the consumption of fossil fuels which is nothing else than the move away and alienation of people to their original nature and life.
Currently, the ruling regime in Turkey carries out a brutality which is incomparable in the recent history of Kurdistan and the Middle East and has a new perfidious dimension. Hundreds of thousands of people from Sur, Nusaybin, Hezex, Kerboran, Farqin, Şırnak, Gever, Silopi and Cizre are displaced forcely from their cities which are under a systematic destruction. While doing so, the world public keeps silent on the destruction of nature and cities and all massacres.
The denying and monist mentality of the nation-state and the unlimited profit-competition and domination seeking character of the capitalist modernity has brought the world into the current grave state. Thats why social disasters turn into ecological disasters and vice versa. The society and the humanity has to say stop to this development. If this situation continues then we will pass over a point from where a turnabout would be not possible any more. In this sense also the raise of an ecological resistance is very important.
Despite of the destructive mentality and practice a return is possible. It is necessary to raise the ecological struggle both against the wars and the elimination of life areas and our cultural and social values through destructive and exploitative numerous projects like dams, coal plants, mining. In this line the ecological struggle has to be done and spread under the maxim “Lets communalize our land, waters and energy and setup the democratic free life”. It is the right time to defend the democratic nation against the nation-state, the communal economy based on anti-caputalism and anti-monopolism against capitalist fast profit seeking logic and large industrialism, the organic agriculture, ecological villages and cities, ecological industry, energy and technology against agriculture and energy policies imposed by capitalist modernity.
With the consciousness that the ecological struggle is the touchstone for the liberation of the whole humanity we are aware that every action may bring us closer to a free individual and free society. We understand that our struggle towards reaching our nature and societal truth, which are the fundamentals of our existence justification, is an important contribution for the liberation of people and nature in our world. With a big exitement, which we feel deeply, we take our position in this struggle.
Our paradigm, the herald of bright ages of the 21st century’s and coming milleniums, is the one of a radical democratic, communal, ecological, women libertarian society. In this sense the ecology struggle is beyond being any struggle but the vital essence of the free life paradigm. Without ecology the society and without human and nature the ecology can not exist. Ecology, as the essence and self to milleniums old universal dialectic of formation, dialectically weaves all processes of entities connected to each other and like the rings of a chain.
In this sense the struggle against capitalist modernity; is the struggle to develop democratical, social and liberatarian mindset, the struggle to become a social subject against the statist – sovereignist mindset. This can only develop with social entity, with a struggle of freedom, with a stand against to the system that puts up the nature-society-individual for the interests of capital-rent and hegemony.
In the Middle East, the history of ecology hasn’t been written like the history of woman. Like for free woman it is necessary to know the history of woman, for a ecological society it is necessary to know the history of ecology. In this sense, by opening up ecology academies, it is necesseary to include ecological consciousness to the programs of all social spheres and academic educations as an essential extent. Like organizing our own assemblies, the responsibility to ensure the organization of social sphere and institutional studies with ecological consciousness and sensibility is vital. In relation to democratic and ecologic society’s construction, important things been agreed upon in our conference. At the same time with the decisions, that have been taken in our conference, an intellectual, organisational and operational contribution has been aimed for the global ecological movements. Some ofthe decisions that have been taken are:
– To establish a strategic intellectual, organizational and operational
coordination with national and international ecology movements in order
to enhance common discussions and actions against ecological destruction and exploitation.
– To struggle against the mental, physical and ideological destructions
in vital things for life such as energy, water, forests, soil,
urbanisation, agriculture-seed, technology; based on the approved
policies of the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement at the conference to rise
the struggle within the aimed construction of a new life
– To fight against the system that demolishes the urban settlements, that burns the forests in Kurdistan; to treat publically the ecological devastation experienced in Kurdistan and to map the devastations within the war.
– To plan actions with other ecology movements against the destruction of cities in Kurdistan; to ensure active participation in solidarity platforms that have been established in these cities.
– To maintain the struggles protecting the cultural and natural sites/values that faces extinction such as Hasankeyf, Diyarbakır-Sur, Munzur Valley, “Gele Goderne” due to energy and security policies in Kurdistan.
– To develop a Kurdistanesque ecological model.
– To be more and regular present in printed and digital media organs and
to establish ecology academies.
– To carry out the legal struggles in parallel to ongoing actions and campaigns.
– To expand the own organizational structures in all Kurdistan and Middle-East.