NO FRIENDS EXCEPT FOR THE MOUNTAINS: ITALY, TURKEY AND THE KURDs

I originally wrote this article on Italics Magazine back in 2019, I believe it is one of my best works as a content creator, so I decided to post here an extract of that article.

The complete and original work can be read here

“We don’t have friends, except for the mountains.” As a woman who has lived her whole life in the Alps, I can completely relate to that quote. When you are betrayed, the only place that can give you back some kind of safety is in the mountains. They are there, always, and they watch over us, regardless of the time that passes. That phrase is actually a Kurdish expression, and those people are quite well-versed in both those things: betrayal and mountains

Back in 2016, I was in Turin buying a copy of the magazine Internazionale, issue 1085 to be exact. On the front page, there was an illustration made by the Italian comic artist Zerocalcare which represented himself in a wasteland with a heavy-looking backpack. I already knew the artist from his comics, and I was surprised to see him in that magazine. The small part of its reporting comic book Kobane Calling that was in that issue, for me, was heartbreaking. In the books, the protagonist (Zerocalcare himself) travels to Syria to understand the situation.

“If you hear RATATA, that’s Isis, but if you hear TUM. TUM. TUM. That’s us [the PKK and YPG]”. “And SBOOOM?”. “SBOOOM, it depends. Fire and SBOOOM are Americans. Just SBOOOM is Isis.” These lines (probably the most famous of the entire comic) gave me chills. I could hear the suffering of the Kurdish people fighting against Isis helping Americans and others to fight the caliphate. Now, three years later, those sounds still resound among the mountains, but the SBOOOM is no longer Isis. It’s Turkey. Back on October 8, the country, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, attacked Syria.