Speaking to ANF, YPG (People's Defense Units) fighters in Aleppo Azad Efrin, Nuri Heleb and Ziyad Efrin condemned the February 15 conspiracy and stated that the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan defeated the conspirators with his resistance in İmralı and his ideology and philosophy.

A UNIQUE RESISTANCE FOR 6 YEARS

Azad Efrin said everybody in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods did more than their fair share for six years and everybody displayed an uninterrupted resistance to achieve freedom, and continued:

“6 years have passed since the Rojava Revolution became a reality. During this time, there have been many important and historic steps. Now the steps that are most prominent are products of a long period of struggle and especially Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan’s philosophy and ideology.

The Rojava Revolution also developed over the ideology and philosophy put forth by the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan for all peoples. For this reason, some states wanted it.

Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods in Aleppo were also targeted by the powers that wanted to smother the Rojava Revolution. For 6 years, they were under attack by Syrian National Coalition (SUK) allied gangs like Al Nusra, Sultan Murat Brigade, Liwa 99, Faylaq Sham, Faylaq 16, Mehmet The Conqueror Brigades, Abu Amara Brigades, Nurettin Zenki Brigade, Jabhat Al Shami, Jaysh Al Islam, Liwa Tehrir, Syrian Turkmen Front and Jabhat Islami.

For 6 years, YPG and YPJ forces defended the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods under gang blockade and embargo with their lives. Their resistance achieved victory in November 2016. They launched liberation operations on areas under invasion by gang groups as Al Nusra, Ahrar Al Sham and Sultan Murat Brigade, and ripped them out of the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo.”

Efrin condemned the conspirators and all powers that took part in the conspiracy or provided a basis for it and said: “I salute the revolutionary martyrs that created a ring of fire around the Leader by setting their bodies on fire.

We will be followers to those comrades until the end, we will fight until the end to actualize their goals. The imperialist powers first turned to the Kurdish People’s Leader when they intervened to redesign the Middle East. Because the Leader was the greatest obstacle for all the dirty games and colonialist calculations over the Middle East.

They thought they could eliminate the Kurds’ fight for freedom by imprisoning the Leader. But on the contrary, when the Leader was taken prisoner, great serhildans rose to defend the Leader in four parts of Kurdistan and in many other countries.

And we will make the conspirators pay with our struggle to be worthy of the Leader’s efforts and struggles, as he had sacrificed himself for his people, and spent great effort since his youth for the freedom of the Kurdish people.”

“THEY WANTED THE WILL OF THE PEOPLES TO SURRENDER”

YPG fighter Nuri Heleb pointed out that the dirty plans and projects are updated and reinstated constantly.

Nuri Heleb stated that the conspiracy plans against the Kurdish people always surfaced somehow, and added: “We protected our people with our lives when we took on the defense in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods. We managed to succeed to a large extent.

During a time when Aleppo was burned to the ground and looted as a whole, Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen, Assyrian, Armenian peoples and faith groups supported the YPG/YPJ and protected their living spaces. They shared their homes, their blankets, their food and their water.”

Nuri Heleb stated that thousands of people returned to normal life in Sheikh Maqsoud, Ashrafiya and areas under YPG/YPJ control and added: “Our people never bowed down to any attacks. They displayed a unique resistance, fighting shoulder to shoulder with YPG/YPJ fighters. They didn’t kneel, they resisted. And in the end, it was our peoples that prevailed. It was the Turkish state and the SUK gangs that kneeled. Our people continue their lives in peace, prosperity and trust in the free areas.

Aleppo increased the level of organization for our people who were attacked to break their will and make them surrender. This was achieved not only in the military sense, but in the political sense also.”

Heleb stated that the Democratic Federal System was built house by house, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, and the communal life was put into practice, and said that there were forces that put their new dirty plans and projects in motion in parallel to these developments.

“This shows that the colonialist states are afraid of the democratic nation project and democracy, and that they have no intention for a solution in Syria,” said Heleb and stressed that the war in the region was a war between two ideologies in reality.

Heleb said: “The hegemonic powers want capitalist modernity to be in power, but the oppressed peoples want to instate the democratic nation philosophy put forth by Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan.”

“WE ARE LEADING THE DEMOCRATIC SYRIAN REVOLUTION”

YPG fighter Ziyad Efrin said all the peoples of Syria, not just the Kurdish people, embraced the July 19 Rojava Revolution, and pointed out that all ethnic and faith groups came together in Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiya neighborhoods on the basis of freedom, justice and equality.

Efrin said the Rojava Revolution and the YPG/YPJ fighters were leading the Democratic Syrian Revolution and stated that all plans to smother and disband the Kurdish people and the Freedom Movement in Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood have been voided.

Efrin said the revolution expanded even more through resistance against all annihilation attacks and stated that it became the revolution of not just the Kurds, but also Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmens and even the peoples of the world. Efrin said revolutionaries from various peoples around the world joined the ranks of YPG and YPJ to support the Rojava Revolution and add to the revolution, like so many ants carrying water.

Efrin concluded with saying that they will always increase their struggle to protect the Rojava Revolution that leads the Syrian revolution, and called on all Kurdish youth and the peoples of the world to support the Rojava revolution.

YPG fighter Azad Efrin stated that Aleppo had become a significant and strategic location for almost everybody right after the war started in 2011, and added that the Kurdish people and all the peoples of Syria came together under YPG/YPJ’s roof in Aleppo to protect themselves from the current state of the war and to keep the war away from their region.