AS thousands of Kurds and their supporters gathered outside BBC headquarters in protest at Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria last week, they were addressed by a man who has become a familiar face.

Dirk Campbell, a musician and father of Anna Campbell, a young woman who was killed more than 18 months ago in northern Syria, made an announcement.

“I am in the process of taking the Turkish government to court,” he told the crowds to large cheers and chants of Sehid Namirin – the martyrs are immortal.

Anna Campbell – known by the nom de guerre Helin Qerecox – was a feminist and anarchist activist from Lewes in East Sussex who travelled to Syria to join the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) and help build the semi-autonomous region known as Rojava.

It was a logical step for the 26-year-old, who was well-known for her involvement in campaigns including the defence of Travellers violently evicted from the Dale Farm site in Essex and internationally with the ZAD in France – an autonomous community that stopped the development of a new airport near Nantes.

A hunt saboteur, Anna was committed to changing the world and building a better and more sustainable future, a society based on equality and freedom for all.

Nothing embodied this more than Rojava – the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria with women playing the leading role in developing a society based on gender equality, with environmental sustainability at its core.

Its status as an egalitarian beacon of democracy in the Middle East also made it a threat both to the Turkish state which feared Kurds asserting their status, and also to the jihadist groups that had swept across the region in an attempt to build a reactionary caliphate under their control.

The pair combined to invade and subsequently occupy the peaceful canton of Afrin in January 2018 through Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch. Nato’s second-largest army, allied with a myriad of jihadist groups and former al-Qaida and Isis fighters in the Free Syrian Army, rolled into northern Syria on the pretext of flushing out Kurdish terrorists to protect its borders.

The reality was very different. Turkey’s forces went on the rampage, destroying and desecrating Kurdish symbols amid allegations of extrajudicial killings as nearly 200,000 people fled their homes in fear. The Rojava project was under serious threat and Anna was one of those committed to defend it.

Initially YPJ commanders were reluctant for her to go to the front line, but Anna was persistent and committed.

“They refused at first, but she was adamant, and even dyed her blonde hair black so as to appear less conspicuous as a westerner,” YPJ sources said. “Finally they gave in and let her go.”

But in March 2018, Dirk and his family received the news that every parent dreads. Anna had been killed in Syria when the convoy she was travelling in was struck by a Turkish air strike.

A statement from the YPJ at the time said: “Our British comrade Helin Qerecox (Anna Campbell) has become the symbol of all women after resisting against fascism in Afrin to create a free world. We promise to fulfil Sehid (martyr) Helin’s struggle and honour her memory in our fight for freedom.”

Dirk paid tribute to his daughter who he described as a committed human rights and environmental campaigner who had dedicated her life to the fight against “unjust power and privilege.”

He has led a dignified campaign ever since in a bid to bring Anna’s body home. It has proved a frustrating venture, with Dirk facing an intransigent government he has accused of “a total lack of proactivity” in helping secure his daughter’s return.

One of the most enduring images of last year’s protests against the state visit granted to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Dirk speaking calmly to his supporters outside Downing Street while they made the symbol of the Grey Wolves – a Turkish fascist organisation.

But as then Prime Minister Theresa May hosted a press conference with Erdogan – during which she notoriously praised him for his fight against Kurdish terrorism – Dirk and his family were not accorded the same hospitality.

The very man responsible for killing his daughter had tea with the Queen and was lauded by a government which shut the door in his face.

He explained that he was taking the Turkish state to court “over their failure to respond to my human right to collect my daughter’s body.”

Dirk had asked them if they would allow him safe conduct into Afrin to where Anna was killed. “They didn’t even reply,” he lamented.

But he was also scathing about the response from the British authorities over failures to help him bring Anna home, despite knowing the exact location of her body.

“My own government, the Foreign Office has failed to act. My MP has failed to act. So all that’s left for me now is legal action. I will also be taking the UK government to court for its failure to pressurise the Turkish authorities in this respect,” he said.

In order to do this Dirk has started a crowdfunding campaign to “Bring Anna Home.”

He needs to raise between £10,000-£25,000 to lodge the case with the International Court of Human Rights. This will help to collect all the evidence and the witness statements.

Visit bit.ly/BringAnnaHome to donate to Dirk Campbell’s crowd fund to bring his daughter home.