Ercan Ayboga : Founder of Tatort Kurdistan, German-Kurdish Anarchist Revolutionary, Rojava Activist, and Global Traveller

Ercan Ayboga has worked in the town administration of Diyarbakir (Amed) and was co-coordinator of International Relations and heritage sites, including the urban Tigris River project. At the same time is active in the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement, based in Turkish-Kurdistan. He is a coauthor of Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in the Syrian Kurdistan (Pluto Press, 2016) which has been published also into German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Greek.

(Source: OpenDemocracy.net.)

Ercan Ayboga is an environmental engineer and activist who, while still in Germany, co-founded Tatort Kurdistan. He spends his time between Northern Kurdistan and Germany, the country in which he was born to Kurdish parents who arrived from Turkey. Ayboga is involved in the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement and, in particular, in the fight for the right to water. He worked firsthand on defending the Hasankeyf archaeological site and the Kurdish families displaced by the Turkish government’s Ilisu Dam project, and for fair access to water resources in Rojava, in Syrian Kurdistan.

ldquo;In Kurdish culture, communities have a solid relationship with their land’s natural resources. Mountains and rivers are part of the collective identity. Agriculture still mostly follows rainfall cycles so as not to impact rivers, and water is part of the planning of daily life, it’s treated with respect and used with care. As in many other ancient cultures, the Kurds also have myths and legends linked to water and to their traditions. Water has a symbolic meaning: it quenches thirst, purifies, cleanses the body and the soul. Where we are there are also Alevite communities, who are also oppressed by Turkey’s central government, and water has a mystical significance for them too. After my studies, I focused primarily on the protection of rivers, having been influenced and stimulated by this cultural heritage”.

(Source: LifeGate.com.)

Ercan Ayboga is an environmental engineer and activist. Formerly living and co-founding the Tatort Kurdistan Campaign in Germany, now he lives in North Kurdistan and is politically involved in the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement, particularly in water struggles.

(Source: PlutoBooks.com.)