The isolation imposed upon the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan in Imralı Prison, on an island in the middle of the Marmara Sea, has not yet been ended by the Turkish authorities despite the efforts of human rights defenders and the prison hunger strikes in Turkey, launched by Kurdish political prisoners who have been hunger strike for 179 days now demanding the isolation upon Abdulah Öcalan be lifted.
Firyaz Berkel, the chair of the Women’s Committee of the Euphrates Region in North and East Syria, told ANHA that the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan is especially important for the freedom of women, who liberated themselves in North and East Syria by the guidance of Öcalan’s philosophy.
“With the Autonomous Administration, women have solved the question of women’s liberation. They struggle shoulder by shoulder with the men, they take serious responsibilities and they play equal roles with men in political, military, financial and social matters,” she said.
She added: “Leader Öcalan once stated that freedom was more important than bread and water. With this analysis, he actually addressed women and their necessity to break free from a five-thousand-years of slavery.”
Berkel underlined that Abdullah Öcalan saw the link between the liberation of women and liberation of all peoples. “Expecially in the Middle East, women have suffered so much. That is why the Rojava revolution was evolved as a women’s revolution,” she said.
The Kurdish politician urged women and people around the world to raise their voices against the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan. “We should make sure that Leader Öcalan’s philosophy is spread among the people. This is the greatest response one can give against the isolation,” she said. “He can be physically in prison, but his thoughts are free.”
“No attack can prevent his philosophy to spread freely, because noone can stop a person who struggles for freedom.”