Bêrîtan Elyakut/JINHA

KOBANÊ – As the people of Kobanê debate the city's reconstruction in the wake of the Daesh assault that razed the city, plans are beginning to turn three areas that saw the heaviest fighting into a museum to the resistance.

YPG/YPJ fighters and local volunteers have been assembling, one by one, pieces of the massive heavy artillery into Freedom Square, one of the areas planned to be part of the city museum. The YPG/YPJ fighters became legendary for defending themselves, using only light weaponry, against gigantic weapons like this. As the YPG/YPJ forces continue attempting to disarm and remove the mines with which Daesh blanketed the city as they retreated, this square has become the de facto place where they are deposited.

Rıfat Ulus spent the last six months in the border town of Suruç participating in the civilian effort to protect the Kobanê resistance from across the border in Turkey. After he participated in a volunteer effort to build a museum in the village there, he received an invitation to take part in the planning of the city museum.

"Whatever comes out from under the wreckage, we'll collect it here," he said. This includes more than mines and heavy artillery; it includes all the material and immaterial traces of the resistance.

"Children's toys, clothes, clocks that stopped when attacks began, we're collecting it all. Comrades have stories of the last months, the goodbyes, the critiques and debates that took place in their positions during the war. We'll display those stories here as well."

YPG fighter Serhildan Gever is one of the fighters collecting the bombs that rained down on the city throughout the long assault. He says that for him, collecting these bombs means not just protecting the people of the city, but contributing to the memory of the resistance.

Serhildan says he and his fellow YPG/YPJ fighters have moved for three areas in particular to remain in their untouched state, as they are today. One is the municipal building, one Sokihal field and one is here: Freedom Square.

"In memory of our friends who were martyred, and because they were the areas where the war was the most intense, we're not letting them be touched," he said. "We'll close them off with barbed wire and then turn them into a museum. The goal is for people who come here to see exactly how much this city was ruined, with their own eyes."

(fk/cm)