An interview by Necat Ayaz
Semalka is a Flemish association founded in Leuven in 2024 by David Dessers, Stijn Verhofstadt, and Deirdre Maes. The mission of this NGO is to build solidarity between Flanders—specifically the city of Leuven—and Northeastern Syria, known as Rojava Kurdistan. Through structural partnerships and grassroots initiatives, the association works to break the isolation of the region and support its unique social project.
On Thursday evening, February 19, the association officially launched a collaborative solidarity campaign at café Het Groot Ongelijk in Leuven. This initiative, launched alongside a Flemish farmer, combines support for local agriculture with international aid. I visited the café during the event to speak with David and Deirdre about their vision and the origins of their organization.
Can you explain the reasons behind the creation of Semalka?
Deirdre Maes: Let’s make more structural links between what’s happening in Rojava and also the solidarity that we want to attempt. And that’s why we founded Semalka. The idea was to really support some local initiatives, but also to raise more awareness about the projects in Syria because not so many people in Belgium know about it. Of course, the Kurdish people know, but the Belgians don’t know much. And we think we can also learn about this experiment.
David Dessers: And the reason why we took Semalka as a name is that Semalka is the border crossing between the Kurdish part of Iraq and Rojava. And Semalka is literally bridges on the Tigris, pontoon bridges on the Tigris. And so our idea was let’s build bridges between the Kurdish part of Syria and Belgium, Europe, Leuven, etc. So we took the symbol of building bridges. That was the idea.
One of your goals is “Breaking the Isolation” of Rojava. How do you plan to achieve this through collaboration?
David Dessers: We want to try to have collaboration between, for example, schools in northeast Syria and schools here, or university there, university here, or women organisations there, women organisations here, local city governments or councils and councils here. Because what we saw when we were there is that there was an extreme isolation of the region. We wanted to break that complete isolation and try to put the problems of the people there higher on the agenda at the one hand. But on the other hand, also the project, the society project, what was going on there—we think we can help them, but they can also help us.
Because, for example, the idea that each organisation or each city council have a co-share of a woman and a man is unique and is also a very good example for us. Because also here we don’t have it. So we can learn a lot from each other. There is such a collaboration possible. And we wanted to do that in a very modest way.
To what extent have you achieved these aims so far?
David Dessers: We had some good results, but it’s sometimes also very difficult because the situation is so isolated. For example, we had at a certain moment a contact between the University of Leuven, the rector, and the University of Rojava in Kamishlo. But until now, there is no concrete result of it because it’s so difficult because of the isolation.
Yes, we organised, for example, also online meetings with the mayor of Kamishlo and people from Leuven and also people from the Kurdish diaspora. So that is working quite well. I think we play a role in raising awareness, but as I said, the isolation is so big that there are limits in what we can do.
Deirdre Maes: What I wanted to say is that I think now with the escalation in Rojava, we play a little bit a different role. Also, now we are more the bridge between the Kurdish community here in Leuven and the Flemish community. We want to organise together with these manifestations, but also to try to involve more Belgians to this issue. And that’s quite difficult.
Is there anything else you would like to add about the current phase of Semalka?
Deirdre Maes: I think we were still in a starting phase. And, for example, this delegation would be very important for us. Because, for example, I tried to have some professors with me to really have this direct link. Because on a university high level, it was difficult. But when a professor would go there, teach there, but also he has students that are investigation things about water and all this kind of things, it would be really a good contact. But at this moment, we don’t know if this delegation would be able to go there.
Some other things that we did was working together with the diaspora here in Leuven. For example, we organised this activity about violence against women in Kurdistan. And that was quite an interesting activity, and also for us interesting, too.
Can you tell us about the “Pataten voor Rojava” activity taking place this evening?
Deirdre Maes: When the whole collapse now in Rojava happened, there was a farmer in Pajottenland who contacted us and told us that we have to do something, we have to show our solidarity. And as a farmer, the thing that he thought about was, okay, if we sell potatoes, we support the local farmer—because normally he doesn’t get any money for these potatoes anymore at this moment—and we support people there.
Two and a half euro goes to the farmer directly, and two and a half euro will go to buy some medical material. This is for medical material for Rojava. Let’s hope that we will be able to go there and deliver ourselves the medical stuff, or we deliver the money.
How long will this solidarity activity continue?
Deirdre Maes: Until they are finished. We have now 70 of these bags, which means 140 kilos of potatoes. I think almost half of them are already sold, even more. So, okay, after the potatoes, he was thinking maybe of doing other things. But anyway, I think in the coming months we will have other funding activities for Rojava and to help the people there. 140 kg is the quota for Leuven, but he also delivered potatoes in Brussels, Liege and Antwerpen.
To read the news in Kurdish please click on this link
————————
