Long Live the Revolution! [Closed | Attn: Volnaya]

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Abdullah Öcalan Air Base - Eight miles from Istanbul, Free Territory
January 7th, 2030

It was 9:36 AM. The weather was just above freezing, with chilling winds blowing over the eerily empty air field. Few aircraft were on display. Some helicopters flew around the base, but that was it. If anything, there seemed to be more ground troops than airmen. The only sound in the air field was not aircraft, but construction work: The air base was reduced to a husk during the brief but violent Turkish Civil War of 2028. The terminal and the field around them seemed fine, bullet holes and cracks in the asphalt notwithstanding. But in the distance, one can see skeletons of annexes being hastily worked on, and fields littered with massive craters. No wonder there were so few aircraft, this place is almost a ruin.

But that's not the only thing that's bothering you. The more important thing is that nobody has greeted you. The delegation meant to receive you is nowhere in sight. None of the soldiers are even just asking who you are. It's just been a few minutes. Maybe they're just running a little late.

A few minutes turns into five. Five turns into ten. A green Iveco drives by. Surely the delegation! Wait no, it only has a female soldier in it. Why is it heading towards you?

It parks right by your party and the woman comes out, a pale blonde, lanky woman, with a crooked nose, bags under her eyes and sickeningly yellow teeth that are visibly falling apart. She is dressed in green battle fatigues and is wearing a black fez over her short hair, which has a skull and bones with the words "СМЕРТЬ БУРЖУАЗИИ" wrapped around it. Her uniform identifies her as a Major Gündoğan. She asks in broken Spanish "You, delegation... Eothasi?". You affirm, she gestures toward the Iveco.

You feel a rush of excitement under the false belief that you're about to meet the delegation. This fades away after five minutes into sitting in Colonel General Gündoğans dimly lit office. Gündoğan seems to be ignoring you, doing paperwork while a nearby radio blasts bad propaganda music. You give a look around her office. On one of the walls stands a large memorial, with the faces of perhaps fifty soldiers, under text identifying them as "GREEN GUARD MARTYRS OF THE LIBERATION OF ABDULLAH ÖCALAN AIR BASE". What struck you was that despite this being the mixed-gender Green Guard, two thirds of the faces on the memorial were women. Some looked to be no older than their late teens.

Behind Gündoğan were three portraits, Abdullah Öcalan, the namesake of the air base at the center, another on the right being a strange bearded man with glasses who you don't recognize, and uh, bafflingly, the mug shot of the Unabomber on the left.

You finally work up the nerve to ask Gündoğan when the delegation will be here. She responds exasperatedly "Soon. They be here soon." She then goes back to her paperwork.

Five minutes passes, then ten, then fifteen...

[Eothasia]

^{Continuing from Volnaya's post here}

---

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Mûsê came in with a bright white smile. She looked better groomed than Gündoğan overall, she had a large black unibrow and a large aquiline nose, her black hair flowing down to her shoulders. Her first word was not to return the greetings of Eliseo but apologies. "I'm really sorry, our flight got held up in Rostov, there was a huge mishap, we only got here like, ten minutes ago.", she said with a hint of worry. "I dropped the ball on this one."

Gündoğan spoke up against Mûsê. "Hey! Why'd you leave these bougie fuckers in my office!" she said in Turkish. Mûsê laughed, "to to torture you of course!" The two embraced each other in an informal manner, "Asya! I can't believe you're still alive after all these years!", Mûsê said. She realized the foreign delegation was unaware, so she told them "This is Asya. We used to know each other when we were both homeless near Taksim Square. It's been a while since we met!". "Since before the revolution, I think. Since maybe.... '23?" Asya chimed in.

"I'm sorry, my heads scrambled from the flight, ha ha! Anyway, you know Colonel General Gündoğan, she is the commander of the Istanbul Military District.". She gestured toward the tall bearded white man flanking her left. "This is General Bogdan Ratković, he is the General of the Green Guard of the Free Territory, our armed forces." She gestured to a Yakut woman with a permanent scowl on her face, "This is Valentina Nikolayeva, she is the General of the Violet Guard, the revolutionary military force defending the Women's Revolution of the Free Territory.

A woman wearing horn rimmed glasses with a greasy, acne ridden face, and messy long brunette hair stepped in to shake Eliseo's hand, "And I'm Maryam Nazaryan. I am the ceremonial president of the Collective Leadership. You could say that I am a head of state, but we'd prefer to not use that kind of terminology, haha." A slightly overweight man with a moustache stepped in to shake Eliseos hand after Nazaryan. "I'm Ahmet Arslan, I am the ceremonial president of the Federation of Istanbul Soviets. I hope you enjoy your stay in our city."

The office was crowded now, "Asya, is there uhhhh, a bigger office we can do this in?" Maryam nervously asked. She was sweating, despite it being barely 5° C. This whole meeting was a disaster, she thought. "Uh, yeah, there's a conference room down the hall"

The conference room, as it turned out, was half filled with boxes and renovation equipment. It had to do, at the very least the conference table was (mostly) still free to use. Nazaryan looked visibly nervous, stumbling her words as she said "Uhhhh, so yeah, uh, sorry, uh, we have um," she sifted through her papers, one almost blew away before she stamped it, accidentally slamming the table in the process, "Sorry uh, we have a whole plan, for you, for the next week, a whole trip plan. We have a lot in store, but perhaps uh, perhaps the most important thing is what do you want to see in the Free Territory?"

[Eothasia]

^{Continuing from Volnaya's post here}

---

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

"Well, we have a lot planned.", Maryam answered. "We've scheduled this meeting at some very important dates, today if you don't know is the day of the annual women's march, it's an anniversary of the formation of the Violet Guard four years ago in Russia. Nikolayeva will be speaking there, there'll be an estimated 70,000 people in attendance, mostly Violet Guards. Nikolayeva, could you tell them about this?"

Nikolayeva brushed her right hand through her face kn slight exhaustion and responded "Uhhhh, the Violet Guard is a women's revolutionary movement that is based on the theories of our Eternal Comrade, Brother Sergei, in his book "Patriarchal Violence, Patriarchal Control". In it, he drew from the theories of such writers as Alexandra Kollontai, Simone de Beauvoir and Monique Wittig - whom I'm sure you've read - to argue that gender is a product of modern capitalist industrial civilization, and that it's a tool to enslave women and sexual minorities for their reproductive, child rearing and sexual labor. And we need a women's revolution to destroy this enslavement and bring about a genderless society where all are equal. That is where the Violet Guard comes in."

Nikolayeva continued: "We have about 6.8 million women in our ranks, of whom about 1.1 million are enlisted in our Revolutionary Womens Militia. We fight side by side men in the Green Guard against counterrevolutionary forces trying to overthrow the Revolution as we speak. Today, we are going to hold a large rally in Taksim Square to honor our martyrs and to outline the agenda for the continuation of the Women's Revolution against Patriarchy, under the eternal guidance of Brother Sergei"

"So that's what you'll be doing today", said Maryam. "Tomorrow, we want to take you through a tour of a neighborhood council, which is the lowest form of social organization in the Territory. You'll witness a community meeting, how security and disputes are handled, and talk to some locals. The next day, you'll witness some cultural revolutionary actions against bourgeois culture and technology in Taksim Square before we get you folks on a train to Aleppo. There, you'll get to see how our co-ops, Soviets and general economic system functions. Then we'll take you to our capitol Moscow."

Maryam flipped through some of her pages, "We actually have something big planned, you heard the news right? We have decided with a two thirds majority of the Federal Council to elect our dear martyred comrade, Brother Sergei as our Eternal Leader and Guide of the Anti-Civilizational Revolution in the Free Territory. There is going to be a big ceremony and large scale cultural revolutionary actions in following of Brother Sergei's teaching throughout Moscow that you'll get to see. If you want, you can even give a speech as a representative. Then, we'll hold a Collective Leadership meeting between us and you, where we'll discuss future relations.

"Does this sound good?", Maryam gave a nervous smile.

[Eothasia]

^{Continuing from Volnaya's post here}

---

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Downtown Istanbul, Free Territory
January 7th, 2030 - 5:00 PM

The ideology of the Free Territory varies considerably but a common motif is the cult of the martyr. The cult of Brother Sergei towers over all else, but there's Andrej Grubačić and Josip Broz Tito in the Balkans, Abdullah Öcalan in the middle east, and for women, there's Tatiana Ruslanovich, the first leader of the Violet Guard, one of its early and most influential ideologues, and a martyr of a military air strike during the Russian Anarchist Revolution. Like a lesser saint, Tatiana is only brought up in certain areas or occasions, like a Violet Guard base, or today.

Tatiana Ruslanovich's image is that of a young woman with jet black hair tied into a ponytail and wearing a green beret bearing the Venus symbol. Surely there are more images of Tatiana, but this is the one that's endlessly reproduced in portraits, murals and flags, and was omnipresent during the Women's March. In many ways, her image is more omnipresent than her writings. One of the first things Eliseo saw were two preteen girls - One who still had braces - holding an Anarcha-Feminist black-purple flag with a stylized version of that portrait in the center. In many ways an omen for the rest of the March.

Unlike the meeting, the March was excellently organized. The front of the crowd was a small gathering of the Women's Militia, brandishing AK-74s, wearing Turkish combat fatigues, full face balaclava masks, sunglasses and berets - More resembling a guerilla group than a professional military. Two of them marched in front of all else, carrying poles holding the portraits of Brother Sergei and Tatiana like Christian icons. Behind them were non-military cadres, wearing black uniforms and purple armbands, brandishing torches. There were about 5,000 of these cadres, the number of torches was practically a fire hazard. A military vehicle in front of the cadres played Turkish leftist music and shouted slogans to rally the crowd.

The rest of the crowd varied greatly in appearance but a common motif was a sea of Anarcha-Feminist flags - the flag of the Violet Guard - with the rainbow and trans pride flags also making occasional appearances, as well as countless portraits of Tatiana, Abdullah Öcalan and Brother Sergei. Though the crowd was massive - well more than 70,000 - it was homogenous: There were hardly any senior or middle aged women in the crowd, even among cadres. Teens under 18 were common, perhaps a third of the crowd. The vast majority were under thirty. The Violet Guard could hardly argue to be representing all women.

As the March approached the end at Taksim Square, the delegation hosting the Eothasis disappeared to prepare for their presentation. The Eothasi delegation had an opportunity to speak to the marchers directly without government interference.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

The woman looked somewhat confused when confronted with the question, as if the answer was obvious. She gesticulated as she proclaimed Not only is it viable, it is the only path. It is why we are abolishing money right now rather than marrying it like you Eothasis. There can be no socialism without the abolition of exchange. The abolition of gender, which is the heart of our women's revolution, cannot be realized without the abolition of motherhood, which is tied to capitalist exchange, work and money.

We are doing the hard work to pave the way for the rest of the world. The Free Territory will be Communist, and Communist only! There is nothing your bankers can do about it.

The woman walked away satisfied with herself. Within the crowd, you stumble upon a transgender woman, with hazel eyes and large eyebrows, walking on crutches with a medical patch on the right side of her face. Somebody walks up to her before you to ask how she got the injury. "IED. I'm from Idlib." followed by a nervous laugh. The woman who asked her seemed to have gotten emotional and hugged her spontaneously. "From Homs here. Thank you for your service." she said as she let go and reverted to a strong hand shake. You decide to walk up to the two and ask them some questions.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

The transgender woman adjusted her crutches and smiled, "I dont think you understand. The Violet Guard is the revolution. We are the vanguard of humanity, us women. If you look across our Soviets, across our cultural revolutionary committees, it's mostly women. Even our main army [the Green Guard] is mostly women. Our parliament is mostly women. Our martyrs are mostly women. Brother Sergei said that women may emerge as the leaders of the revolutionary epoch leading up to the abolition of gender, and he was right."

Another woman intervened between them and added "ask any man in Istanbul and he is probably a counterrevolutionary pig. It's us who's leading the revolution! We're doing all the work of building the new society. And all that men do is go to the mountains [to become counterrevolutionary rebels], and have 16 wives there. Its ridiculous!"

As you were about to respond, you hear a commotion. Yelling, screaming. The march visibly broke down a few dozen meters away from Taksim Square and as you approach you begin to see the commotion: A group of conservative Wahhabi women have staged their own counter demo. Dressed in full niqab and bearing signs saying "ALLAH MADE US IN PAIRS", the women were being manhandled by several Violet Guard women who also tried to rip off their veils. You wondered whether to intervene.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

"It is law of the Federation of Istanbul Soviets that you remove your masks!" shouted one of the Violet Guards as she tried to remove one of their face coverings, referencing the ban on Niqabs in the city. The fifty women counterprotesting remained steadfast even as they were being physically apprehended. "Leave us alone, you d*kes!" shouted one as two teenage protestors ripped off her veil, revealing that she was a middle aged woman. The counterprotestors appeared to be more diverse than the women's marchers. Some looked in their twenties, while others appeared to be elderly. After some minor resistance, one Violet Guard kneed a woman who refused to allow the guard to take off her veil, arousing screaming from the counterprotestors as the Violet Guards started violently beating them unprovoked.

Eventually, Eliseo could see several minivans pull up and surround the counterprotests. They looked civilian, except for some text in Arabic and Turkish. Eliseo couldn't see what they meant except he could make out the words "CULTURAL REVOLUTION". Out of it came dozens of men and women (though mostly women) wearing no uniform except a green armband and a tan bulletproof vest. They were dressed in black jackets and black jeans, some wore sneakers, some wore combat boots. The lower half of their faces were covered with black masks. They bore no insignia or means of identifying them. Most were armed with batons and lead pipes, but a few held shotguns.

"Disengage! Disengage! This is a matter for the Committee of the Defense of the Cultural Revolution!" shouted one of the people through a megaphone. As if knowing what would happen next, the Violet Guards and marchers immediately dispersed, while some of the Niqab clad counterprotestors began running away in fear, only to find that the other end of the road was closed off by the same people. Immediately after the dispersal, rubber bullets started flying in both directions, some at point blank range. Many of the counterprotestors immediately collapsed, severely injured while others shielded themselves with their signs or arms. After the wave of rubber bullets, the people began descending upon the counterprotest, hitting the counterprotestors indiscriminately and harshly, aiming for their faces and legs. Counterprotestors began collapsing en masse.

The people ripped off their veils to reveal bloodied and blackened faces. Police vans rolled by, and the counterprotestors were hauled to them. Many couldn't walk, and had to be carried off by multiple people. People filming the crackdown were then approached by the people who suppressed the protest. Most had their cameras or phones taken and smashed. Others were detained alongside the counterprotestors. The women's marchers were overwhelmingly approving of the crackdown. Eliseo could hear chants of "KILL THE WHORES! KILL THE TRAITORS" and "WAHHABIS TO THE WALL!". Whatever brutality was not only approved, but seen as not enough. After ten minutes of commotion, the police vans and minivans drove off, and the march resumed, more energized and euphoric than ever. A Violet Guard suddenly approached Eliseo, looking irritated. "Where the hell were you!?"

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

"They're about to make their speeches, come with me," said the violet guard in a tired tone.

Peering from the back of the stage, Eliseo could see an ocean of people, all women. An ocean of Anarcha-Feminist flags, of Free Territory flags. Through their chants, though Eliseo had trouble making them out, he could tell the crowd was both aware and enraged by the counterprotest he witnessed. And the chants were beyond defiant; they were murderous. "We want to stab a Wahhabi!" was the most disturbing chant, in light of what he just witnessed. The General of the Violet Guard, Naziha al-Jabbar, stood there in a bizarre uniform: a black wool trench coat with wolf pelt draped over her, head included, her long black hair poking out. Eliseo could only guess it was a motif adopted from some imagined prehistoric past, a past the Free Territory sought to return to. In what way, Eliseo still hadn't figured out.

My fellow comrades, fellow women of the revolution. Today, some eighty thousand women marched on the streets of Istanbul alone. Eighty thousand women! And today, fifty traitors attempted to stop us! said Naziha, to deafening cheers. Their numbers are getting fewer, and we are only growing. Their husbands are dying in remote mountains, our revolutionaries have liberated every city in Turkey and Mesopotamia. They liberated these cities with their lives and with their blood! Istanbul knows this more than most cities! In this city of martyrs, there can be no counterrevolutionary sentiment! There can be no treachery! Any Wahhabi remaining in this land must be wiped out! Not [any Wahhabis] in the Free Territory, the land of martyrs, the land where the women rule, and the men listen!

Dear sisters, it was two years ago that the fascist American bourgeois fascists martyred our dear leader, Brother Hussain right in this city. Today, this is a powerful demonstration that two years on, Brother Hussain still rules! He cannot die! His teachings live on in our practice, and will continue to live on, until the black and green banner is flown from the White House!, "Death to America!" chants could be heard from the crowd.

After a few more minutes of pontification, al-Jabbar concluded with We are blessed by God with being the first major city on earth on the road to its return to nature. We are the first generation to see what Brother Hussain had prophecized: The collapse of civilization, and the return to anarchy. And seeing, the prophecy unfold before us, we will not go back to civilization. They can bomb our cities, starve our children, martyr our soldiers, but they cannot suppress their own demise! And we will do all we can to accelerate it!

After Nazaryan, the representative for the Istanbul federation of Soviets and others gave their speeches, the crowd slowly dispersed as nightfall hit. The entourage that greeted Eliseo were scattered across the backstage. Eliseo could see Nazaryan and al-Jabbar conversing with one another, al-Jabbar still wearing the weird garb from earlier.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Nazaryan looked flattered but didn't know where to begin. "Well, what would you like to know about him?". Before Eliseo could answer, Naziha responded with flowery affect "Brother Hussain al-Hakim is the eternal sun illuminating our revolutionary outlook and society. Without him, no Free Territory would exist"

Eliseo sat down to an hour of Naziha's pontifications on Brother Hussain. There was little back and forth between Naziha and Eliseo, she simply monologued without interruption as if a preacher. An omen for the conversation to come was when she asked Eliseo apropos of nothing "Do you know of the Minoan Civilization?"

A picture was slowly painted. Eliseo knew of the portrait of Hussain al-Hakim. He was a tan Iraqi man whose appearance was defined by a long hooked nose, bloodshot eyebrows, messy black hair with fringes down to his bushy eyes, which very nearly formed a unibrow. Most defining was his long, black beard which came down to his chest. In western media, he resembled too much the Jihadist ghouls of yesteryear, and that appearance combined with his calls against modern technology, modern civilization and the western world allowed orientalist, belittling depictions of him being merely a crazed, cavemanlike savage with little place in the civilized world.

Through Naziha's ramblings, the exact opposite picture began to appear. Contrary to the western depiction, Eliseo began to see that Hussain was above all else, an educated man and a deeply introspective philosopher, his teachings frequently referencing thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Rumi, Freud, Marx, Michel Foucault, Deleuze, Theodor Adorno and Marshall McLuhan. The questionable conclusions aside, Hussain fell squarely into the canon of critical western theorists deeply concerned with how social norms, institutions and hierarchy might function as tools of control and oppression.

Though this philosophy was also twinned with a deeply dubious anthropology, apparently taken from Nietzsche. Hussain al-Hakim deified prehistoric human society. Hunter gatherers, al-Hakim believed, lived "in the real golden age of history, where man was a vibrant component to, and not an antagonist against mature. Where he was not defined by his gender, his nationality, what he did for the community, if he did anything at all. He was not an atomized, bourgeois "individual", but a real individual who lived for himself and for those he loved." The downfall of hunter gatherer society, according to al-Hakim, was not the introduction of agriculture, as many anarcho-primitivists believed, but the division of labor. "Oppression of man by man took root in a formalized manner when man became male and female, when males were told to work only in the fields and the female told to only raise children. This is the division of labor. It is a division of labor that began with the division between men and women, and it continued into agriculture, and eventually, our industrial-capitalist hell". The division of labor evolved into agricultural society, which lead to metallurgical society, which lead to the industrial revolution and the horrors of capitalism.

Al-Hakim dwelled on the plight of women a lot based on this idea. "The revolution does not just start with the with the worker confronting his boss, it must start with the woman confronting her husband. The workers revolution and the women's revolution are inseparable armies against civilization." But al-Hakim did not stop there. He demonized agriculture for "pitting man against nature", railed against time as "a form of totalitarian control, quantifying, categorizing and eventually commodifying the waking moments of human existence", the industrial revolution for creating a new and intensified patriarchy and "turning the hapless peasants into enslaved proletarians", and modern technology for "enslaving man to televisions and computers, making him believe the world of screens and video games are more worthwhile than the world of physical reality and senses"

Al-Hakim had no enemies in other men. He did not rail against the bourgeois, Jews, the Americans, or anything of that sort. The real enemies were the underpinnings of modern society - Time, many elements of modern technology, mass media, gender, cities, modern labor, the state and money. These were things that not only needed to be abolished but had to be abolished with immediacy. "If we allow modern civilization to fester and recuperate the revolution, we will be another USSR". Instead, a sweeping, relentless and violent "continuous revolution against culture, civilization and capital" must be waged by the "struggling masses" in perpetuity, aggressively and brutally destroying the old world in a sudden all-out war.

Though Naziha could go on forever on the ideology of Hussain al-Hakim, she had little to say on the man himself. This is not unexpected, little is known about his life before his success in the radical circles of the Turkish Left, and subsequent rise to power in 2027. What is known is that he was born to a relatively upper middle class family of Sunni Arab doctors in the more affluent suburbs of Baghdad. Greatly affected by the Iraq War, his family sent him to medical school in America. Due to what have been variously described as "depressive bouts", "suicidal tendencies", and "psychotic episodes", he failed in school, eventually allowing his student visa to expire and being deported back to Iraq. Hussain became suicidally depressed and ran away from home, becoming a transient across the Middle East, eventually settling as a menial laborer in Istanbul. There, he began writing his philosophy and became acquainted with the radical leftist scene, acquiring a cult following. Naziha did not seem to know the details of these fragments of Hussains life, and to be fair, very few people do either.

Eventually, night came and both Nazaryan and Naziha excused themselves to work. A blessing more than anything, Eliseo couldn't shake how Naziha seemed to talk of Hussain as if he were a prophet from God. Eliseo was escorted to his hotel room, given time to reflect on what he has seen and heard.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Istanbul
8:00 AM

Away from the chaos of the women's march and the Kafkaesque nightmare of Öcalan air base, the morning was pleasant. Eliseo was situated in the Shangri-La Bosphorus, a luxury five star hotel overlooking the strait that divides Europe and Asia. Eliseo could look from his window and see international freight still going through the strait. Though the Free Territory was internationally isolated, the powers that be allowed an exception in giving the Communist territory capital to ensure safe passage of shipping. The Free Territory both needed the foreign capital, and couldn't risk a joint NATO-Russian invasion if it closed the straits. Brother Hussain pondering whether to close it was after all one of the major reasons he was killed in a NATO air strike.

As mentioned before, the Shangri-La Bosphorus was a top class luxury hotel before the war. And from Eliseo's experience, it is by all means still one today. He went downstairs to the posh lobby and toward the hotel restaraunt, where he was served some of the best Mediterranean food and coffee he had in years. But something kept nagging him, he couldn't put his finger on what, until it hit him: He was the only guest in the hotel aside from his guards. The delegation wasn't anywhere in the building, nor were there anybody else. The lack of visitors aside from the diplomatic entourage however was perhaps not unexplainable, Istanbul International Airport had no accreditation anymore, and travel was virtually forbidden in most parts of the world for "safety reasons". But it was still creepy to see this bourgeois relic completely absent of life.

Eliseo received a text from Maryam Nazaryan: For undisclosed security reasons, and apparently because the delegation began to fear Eliseo was starting to think they were functioning as minders, he was going to spend the day with just his chauffeur and security detail. They did however tell him what his day was going to be spent on. As Eliseo remembered from yesterday, Maryam told him he was going to witness the neighborhood councils, otherwise known as communes. He would see how a commune would work up close but he'd mostly have chances to interview locals in their own local haunts. Apparently the locals had only been informed that a "foreigner was here to inspect the conditions of the revolution".

Eliseo was briefed on where he was going to visit. His first stop was Tarlabaşı - an impoverished slum largely consisting of transgender people, extremely impoverished Turks, Romani, African migrants and Kurdish people - and then Okmeydanı, a largely Kurdish slum and far left stronghold, and finally Kadıköy, a Turkish dominated middle class neighborhood on the Asian side of town.

The drive to the first destination gave Eliseo a chance to get a good luck at the city post-revolution. Advertising was non-existent, there was not a single tourist in sight, automobiles, once choking the major highways of the crowded city, were few and far between. Though the Free Territory had a massive oil wealth, much of it had been badly damaged during the wars of the first quarter of the century, and so the Territory suffered fuel shortages. There still seemed to be many buses on the road, at least.

But the most striking was something that unnerved Eliseo the more he felt it surround him. There were portraits of Brother Hussain everywhere. Everywhere as in literally almost everywhere. Signs by sidewalks which once held advertisements now had rows of the same portrait of Brother Hussain, his bloodshot eyes peering upon any pedestrian. Every intersection had a portrait of Brother Hussain in the middle. Billboards showed quotes of Brother Hussain, others exhorted the viewer to read Brother Hussain. Every tunnel entrance, the front of every tram, every bridge Eliseo passed under, a portrait of Brother Hussain was there. It was as if Brother Hussain was constantly watching, tracking Eliseo's every move.

When he entered the neighborhood of Tarlabaşı, the portraits intensified massively. There were portraits of him in the windows of apartments, the entrances to apartment complexes, rows of them on streetlight poles alongside the flag of the Free Territory. Posters were plastered everywhere, exhorting the viewer to "live the life of our Eternal Leader", or alternatively to join the Violet Guard, to destroy Israel, to return to nature, to kill every Wahhabi they see, and to reject "degenerate modernity", that is, western pop culture and pornography. As Eliseo was driven to near his location, he saw a column of Violet Guards march past, wearing black uniforms, purple armbands, sunglasses and berets. They sang a cadence as he passed by:

We'll kill all the Wahhabis!
We'll kill all the Wahhabis!
The yanks will pay for their deeds!
The yanks will pay for their deeds!

On the positive side, if this is a slum, it's the best slum Eliseo had seen. The streets and sidewalks were spotless, there was no trash in sight, no homeless people, there were kids freely playing on the street, and there was no indication of crime. There was no police officer in sight. There were however, many people in green armbands, but they lacked a uniform or any visible weapons, and seemed to be a part of the community. What their purpose was, Eliseo wasn't informed yet.

He was escorted to a gray concrete apartment block. There was a portrait of Hussain at the entrance, and at the end of every hallway. He walked three floors until he reached apartment number 36. He knocked on the door, but no one answered. He knocked on it a second time, and a young man in a green button-down and unibrow opened. "Selam", he said in a disinterested voice before immediately walking back to the kitchen to continue cooking. Folk music screeched through a nearby radio, in the somewhat cramped but surprisingly neat one bedroom apartment. He then saw an elderly man on the couch, underneath a portrait of Brother Hussain. He was bald, with a white bushy mustache and sleepy eyes. He was dressed meticulously in his best suit and unlike the younger man, was excited to see Eliseo. He grabbed his cane, and limped towards him, "Selam, comrade! It's an honor to meet you! I am Muhammet. The folks at the commune told me a fellow from Eothasia was about to ask me some questions about how we're holding up here after the revolution, but they didn't give me a name." He extended his callused hand for a handshake.

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Muhammet was taken aback, "you are a diplomatic envoy of Eothasia!?", he gave a nervous laugh. "If I had known better, I would have tried to get my hands on a better suit! It's... This is a very big honor!" For many in the Free Territory, Eothasia was in the same mental map as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Vietnam as being a fellow socialist project struggling against imperialism and bourgeois tyranny, regardless of the heavy ideological differences between these countries, and between those countries and the Free Territory.

Muhammet looked out the window to a very narrow busy street, characteristic of Istanbul. "Ah, how Tarlabaşı has been doing... Where do I even begin?", he reached out of his pocket for a cigarette. "I have lived in this neighborhood for some.. Forty years I believe. A long time. I can tell you firsthand, it is almost night and day. Before the war, we were-" he gave a heavy cough, "-we were the infamy of Istanbul. People from across Turkey would come here, and see refuse piled high, they'd see prostitutes, homeless people on the streets, there were drug dens. And these people would blame it on us, the people of Tarlabaşı. They'd say "oh, it's all these dirty gypsies and transvestites and drug addicts, they live in squalor and filth and they love it!", so the Turkish government waged war on us, by police raids, by bulldozing our homes, higher rents, everything in their arsenal. But Tarlabaşı remained!"

He took a drag from his cigarette as the young man placed coffee on the table between him and Eliseo. "The hatred all of Turkey had for Tarlabaşı and neighborhoods like this... It really bubbled up during the war.... You had punks from the middle class neighborhood come here," he then softly whispered "they would do terrible things to us.", he paused for a few seconds "the worst of it was from the Wahhabis and the Wolves. They would go into this neighborhood and just... You wouldn't want to hear of it. Barbaric things."

Muhammet took another drag from his cigarette before taking a sip from his coffee. "Things really changed when the Greens took power. They saw the Wahhabis and fascists burning the dwellings of Kurds, blacks, Romani, them burning the bodies of transsexual prostitutes, and beheading drug addicts, and they said plainly "you've terrorized this city. You don't belong here. You burned down others's homes, we'll burn yours." And they did just that! No Gray Wolf or Wahhabi comes to this neighborhood anymore!", he said before laughing. ""Fire for Fire" was what it was called."

"Things have totally changed since. Tarlabaşı now has it's own Soviet. We aren't governed by Ankara or Istanbul, we govern ourselves! And look at what we've done since. The Soviet established a public works program, and got the young folks here a job, and they cleaned up the streets, rebuilt the homes, and made sure no one here was homeless. We don't have rents or landlords anymore. For years I have lived in this apartment. I had bedbugs, cockroaches and mice, I had a bad leak in my ceiling, the damn door wouldn't lock, and I couldn't do a thing. My back is no good and I got this limp, so I couldn't repair it and the landlord wouldn't even come to the building. Now, whenever I have something broken, anything broken, I just call my commune deputy for this building, she comes by, has a look at it, and a few hours later, a young man or two is here to fix it. All without costing me anything!"

He then pointed to the young man as he was washing dishes. "When my deputy visited my home, she saw that it was a mess. The sink was piled up with dishes, there was trash everywhere. She didn't judge me but asked "is cleaning too difficult for you?" I said yes, my back is killing me. So she sent Mustafa here to be my caregiver, and he's been a blessing from Allah, Subhanahu wa-ta'ala."

He sipped his coffee before asking "does that answer your question?"

[Eothasia]

[The Volnaya Territoriya]

Muhammet stopped to think for a few seconds. "Well, I don't know the technical side of those things, you gotta ask one of the neighborhood deputies, such as mine. But Istanbul's Soviets are united in a federation. We coordinate our infrastructure, services and militias so they are working cohesively across the city. The bus I take sometimes is ran by the Federation, not by our Soviet. And sometimes, people from outside our Soviet come here to work under their Soviet's public works programs. I know at least a few of the sanitation workers here aren't from this neighborhood.", Muhammet sat back as he smoked "That's as much as I know, I'm not a politician. If I am going to be honest with you, the whole political process is very confusing, but we're getting used to it."

The young man appeared from the kitchen with breakfast for both Eliseo and Muhammet but not himself. Instead he sat by the two drinking a cup of coffee and checking his phone. "Nisa is really worried about Ramazan, I think. Wants me to spend most of the morning with him, since Abdullah is still sick, so I'm thinking I'm gonna leave in about five minutes." Muhammet looked slightly concerned and asked "Do you know what exactly happened to him?", "I think Nisa said something about angina? I don't know. All that I know is she wants people to keep an eye on him."

Mustafa looked at Eliseo. "Who is this guy again? Is he from the government?". Muhammet replied "This is a dignitary of the Eothasi government! His name is Eliseo.", soon after, Muhammet excused himself to the restroom. Eliseo had an opportunity alone with Mustafa.

[Eothasia]