Kurdish Afrin is democratic and LGBT-friendly. Turkey is crushing it with Britain’s help

“It’s like Spain in 1936.” Those are the words of Alexander Norton, a charismatic 31-year-old railway worker from east London, as Turkish forces besiege the Kurdish city of Afrin. Following in the tradition of Britain’s courageous International Brigades eight decades earlier, Norton has risked his life to fight Isis alongside Kurdish freedom fighters in Kurdish Syria. As you read this, a secular democracy that celebrates women’s rights is under attack, including by Turkish-aligned troops who have sung al-Qaida songs and threatened to cut off the heads of their “atheist” victims. If you’re wondering why Kurds and their supporters occupied King’s Cross and Manchester Piccadilly stations last weekend: here’s why. The Conservative government is arming to the teeth a nation ruled by an authoritarian despot, whose regime is linked to extreme jihadist groups, and which is now attempting to liquidate one of the only islands of democracy in a sea of Middle Eastern despotism: and yet virtually no one is speaking out about it.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians – many of whom are refugees who have fled the barbarity of Syria’s civil war – currently live under siege. Since Turkey launched a military offensive with the Orwellian codename Operation Olive Branch, around 230 civilians have died. But this isn’t just about the threat to civilian life. 26-year-old Elif Sarican – an activist with the Kurdish Women’s Movement – struggles to speak to me: her voice is hoarse through protesting. “It’s important to understand the attack of the Turkish army, with its allied jihadist forces, is not just against the Kurdish people,” she tells me. “These are two systems at war.”

Consider the nature of the two sides in this onslaught. The self-described Democratic Federation of North Syria, known as Rojava, is a remarkable experiment: of direct democracy and a gender revolution. “Essentially, in the birthplace of patriarchy, women are liberating themselves,” Sarican tells me. Most striking are the women soldiers who have fearlessly fought Isis fighters. “One of the first things I noticed was that female soldiers were incredibly equal and assertive,” says Norton, the first Briton to sign up because of their socialist convictions. “They’re not afraid to come up to you and say, ‘Take your gun off’, or argue with you. They’re not physically nervous around men, which you immediately notice: different, not just in their society, but in our own.”

There are democratic assemblies ranging from the neighbourhood level to cantons. Quotas are enforced to ensure representation for women, as well as for ethnic minorities. Democratic involvement is deemed mandatory. One of Norton’s jobs in the People’s Protection Units (YPG) was to go from house to house to ask citizens to attend commune meetings and offer lifts. Women-only meetings drew up a new social contract for Rojava: banning marriage under a certain age, proscribing polygamy, making domestic violence a specific offence. When any woman says her husband forbids her from attending meetings, a group of women will instead descend on their home, leaving him with little choice. “This is a huge social revolution,” says Paula Lamont, the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign’s co-chair. “Attitudes to gay rights and women’s rights have been totally changed in a matter of years.”

If a town of 50,000 has even one synagogue attended by just 15 Jews, Jewish representation is guaranteed on the assemblies. Every poster is translated, almost obsessively, into every language of every minority, however few people belong to it. “I saw a real workers’ revolution,” Norton tells me, one where socialism, feminism and even environmentalism were synthesised.

Consider our noble friend and ally Turkey, on the other hand. Turkey’s regime locks up more journalists than any other government on Earth. Since an abortive coup in 2016, tens of thousands of Turks have been detained or sacked on political grounds. It is a regime with a history of sordid links with jihadist extremists. It once backed the al-Nusra Front, which is al-Qaida by another name; and backs Ahrar al-Sham, an extreme jihadist group. Isis was allowed to expand because, for many years, Turkey allowed its murderous zealots to cross its porous border into Syria. There is evidence of oil smuggled by Isis with Turkish buyers as its main client, and relationships between Turkish officials and Isis officers. Isis commanders have been treated in Turkey’s hospitals with impunity.

The evidence is even more damning than that. One former Isis soldier has told the journalist Patrick Cockburn: “Most of those who are fighting in Afrin against the YPG are Isis, though Turkey has trained them to change their assault tactics.” In any case, the relationship between Turkey and fanatical extremists is undeniable. Yes, there have been repeated terrorist attacks against Turkey by a group of fanatics the regime is partly responsible for fuelling: but note they have repeatedly targeted Kurds, such as in the town of Suruç – just across the Turkish border – where 33 Kurdish socialists were killed in July 2015; or when 109 died in a bomb attack on a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Ankara in October 2015.

What is our own government’s response? In January 2017, Theresa May signed a deal worth £100m to develop Turkish fighter jets. This is utterly scandalous. Given the Labour leadership is routinely called a threat to both national security and democratic values, why is it permissible for the Tories to arm to the teeth a jihadist-linked foreign government intent on snuffing out a beleaguered democracy?

There is a challenge to the left, too. We rightly condemn the injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people as they languish under the occupation of a western-backed state. Where is the equal outrage over the assault against democratic socialist Rojava? Our own government – complicit in this unforgivable bloodshed – must be pressured to cease arms sales to Turkey and to exert diplomatic pressure. The same goes for Saudi Arabia: after all, it is that repulsive regime that exports Wahhabi and Salafist extremism to the Middle East and beyond. Rojava, too, must be officially recognised, and have a seat at the table in any resolution of Syria’s protracted horror.

Alexander Norton is right. This is our Spain. Extremist authoritarians who despise democracy, women and freedom are at war with what should be an international beacon, a society that offers an example far beyond the despot-afflicted Middle East. Turkey knows that Rojava’s success will inspire not just its own Kurdish population to assert its rights: it sees a system which threatens its own degenerate authoritarian order. British Kurds are occupying train stations and roads because no one will listen to them about one of the gravest injustices on Earth. To abandon them now would be a shameful crime that would never be forgotten.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist