In a statement released on Saturday on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) called for an escalation of the freedom struggle in all arenas against “genocide attacks” and stated that the PKK is a people’s freedom movement:
“The PKK appeared on the stage of history and changed its course at a time when the Kurdish people were isolated from all their values and their name, language and identity were banned and forgotten, bringing them to the brink of extinction through the systematic denial and annihilation of the genocidal colonialist forces.”
In the statement, the KCK defined Turkey’s recent cross-border military offensives as “genocide” and continued:
“Wherever there is a Kurd who resists, they target and try to massacre him or her. These attacks by the fascist AKP-MHP* government aim at preserving the genocidal colonialist order, which is on the verge of defeat in the face of the Kurdistan freedom struggle led by the PKK. The new wave of attacks launched against Rojava and North and East Syria also serves this purpose. The genocidal colonialist Turkish state not only aims to occupy Rojava by using all kinds of attacks, but also aims to create a Rojava without Kurds by driving the Kurdish people out. It wants to subjugate the remaining peoples of North and East Syria. It wants to carry out now in all of Rojava and North and East Syria the same genocide and ethnic cleansing that it previously carried out in Afrin.”
The KCK also said that PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned on İmralı Island in Turkey, described as “the most severe isolation and torture system in the history of humanity”, defines the PKK as a women’s party and added:
“With the emergence of the PKK, Kurdish women have experienced a very important development in the line of freedom and have achieved their own identity. It can be said that the Kurdish woman has experienced her greatest development with the PKK. The Kurdish woman represents the new and free personality created by the PKK, because the PKK developed and fought in keeping with the idea of women’s autonomy. So much so that Leader Apo [a term of affection for Öcalan] defined the PKK as a women’s party.”
Meanwhile, thousands of people in Germany’s capital Berlin gathered on Saturday calling for removal of the PKK from the terror listing.
*AKP-MHP refers to the ruling coalition of the Justice and Development Party and the Nationalist Action Party
