Perspectives from Rojava - Young Revolutionaries talk about the Internationalist Struggle in the current phase

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To all young people,

This special edition is an outcome of the Şehid Hêlîn Qerecox Academy in Rojava, which is a place for young people from all over the world to educate themselves on the principles of democracy, ecology and women’s liberation. Moreover it is a place to understand the history and the achievements of the revolution of Rojava and try to build up a communal life and struggle together. The Academy was dedicated to the revolutionary woman and YPJ-commander Şehîd Ronahî Yekta, who was martyred on the 25 December 2024 in the defense of the Tishreen dam.

Both of these young women, Comrade Hêlîn Qereçox and Comrade Ronahî Yekta, are symbols of the resistance of the people and the fight for women’s freedom. We also dedicate this edition to Şehid Tîjda Zagros, Kelly Freygang, who fell martyr by a Turkish drone strike on the 29^th of April 2025, and to all the martyrs of the revolution.

We write this edition while living in a big global crisis. In phases like this it is important to think and discuss of how to connect the struggles of the people all over the world and how to create a new internationalism. This is the result of many discussions and practices about internationalism in Rojava with young people from all over the world. We, as internationalist youth, are called to wage the strongest struggle in order to build up an alternative to the global capitalist system. The way to achieve this is to connect and organize ourselves globally on the basis of democratic and socialist principles.

For this reason when we started to write we asked to ourselves: Are we ready to take this responsibility and especially the opportunities that this historical time is giving to us? Trying to answer this question, a story that Subcomandante Marcos (of the Zapatista EZLN in Chiapas, Mexico), once told came to our mind. He tells of a phone call he had with a young girl that lives in the future, in the year 2145.

When the young girl answered the phone Marcos asks her “How are you?” and the girl replies “It depends.” Marcos then replies asking “How do you mean, it depends?” and the girl says “It depends on you”. 

This young girl reminds us that our responsibility is not just towards the world of today, but also and especially towards the women, the children and all the ones that will come tomorrow. No matter how many difficulties we might face, whether we are ready or not, the struggle to create the world in which the young girl in 2145 can live in freedom depends on us, and on the choices that we decide to make today.

In the pages that follow we open our dreams as young internationalists in Rojava and examine our limits and difficulties in order to achieve them, our emotions, our fears and our goals inside of the Revolution. We now know that in any moment we can decide to change our way of living, organize with other young people and create the different and democratic social system that we dream of. Only those who fight can realize freedom and peace. The search for truth that brings us together today will always continue and will always represent the greatest struggle and resistance of the democratic societies. On this line we continue the fight knowing that we stand on the right side of a history that will never be defeated. We hope that this edition will be worthy of the time that we are living in and that all of you that are reading it will find new inspirations to continue the struggle for a liberated world.

Revolutionary Greetings from the Internationalist Youth Academy Şehîd Hêlîn Qereçox in Rojava.