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Öcalan, Mandela and the Struggle for Self Determination

In this hard hitting essay, Sinan Önal compares the suffering and the significance of imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan with Nelson Mandela, and emphasises the importance of Öcalan’s role in the struggle for Kurdish rights and self determination.

1:40 pm 06/04/2024
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Öcalan, Mandela and the Struggle for Self Determination
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Sinan Önal

World internationalism is experiencing a new wave since October 2023. The Kurdish people and their international supporters have been shouting themselves hoarse for a quarter of a century from 1999 to 2024, demanding freedom for Öcalan, the imprisoned Kurdish leader in whom the hopes of the Kurdish peoples for liberation reside.

To speak frankly, the new campaign of ”Freedom for Öcalan, Political Solution for the Kurdish Question” is not the first time we have heard calls for Öcalan’s freedom in the last 25 years. The activists, NGOs and political parties involved in the campaign have all been in meetings, stood in rooms, sat on panels and participated in demonstrations for years. After 25 years of relentless struggle in Turkey and across the globe the network of international solidarity has become fully aware that the road to freedom is indeed a long one.

Since it is well known that Mr. Öcalan and the Kurds are not the first to have embarked on this path, walking what South African socialist, national hero and liberation fighter Nelson Mandela famously called the “long road to freedom.” Neither Öcalan nor Mandela, or Serok Apo and Madiba to use their public names, were ever truly alone, thanks to the international solidarity extended to both leaders by democratic circles, socialists, trade unionists, feminists and ordinary people around the world, each of them remains linked to a global network of struggle that spans across space and history.

Mandela spent 27 years in jail; Öcalan has now reached his own quarter-century of imprisonment in strikingly similar but unfortunately worse circumstances given the face that Öcalan has been held for so long in total incommunicado isolation.

Öcalan rarely addressed the conditions of his incarceration. He wrote in a letter addressed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in December 2010 about how he has resisted and survived in solitary confinement, which is his last letter ever permitted to be sent by İmralı Prison Administration. He has been incarcerated under the most severe conditions since then.

He writes: “In all my written papers and oral dialogues to date, I have not much touched upon my personal life in the prison. Apart from general health problems and dealings with the administration of the prison, I have not explained how I resisted the isolation specially prepared and applied only to me by this system, nor how I endured the loneliness. I suppose what is most curious is how I developed my life experiences against this absolute solitude and stagnancy.”

He continues, comparing his conditions with an ancient myth of incarceration and torture, representing his resilience in the following terms: “If mythological gods had contemplated, they probably couldn’t have conceived of a punishment as severe as chaining me to the rocks of İmralı.” He continues, comparing his conditions with an ancient myth of incarceration and torture, representing his resilience in the following terms: “If mythological gods had contemplated, they probably couldn’t have conceived of a punishment as severe as chaining me to the rocks of İmralı.”

Öcalan wrote in a letter addressed to the ECHR in December 2010 describing how he has resisted and survived in the solitary confinement applications, which is his last letter ever permitted to be sent by İmralı Prison Administration.

In both historical cases, the incarceration of these towering political figures has had a profound effect on the legal and political fabrics of their respective countries. So when Öcalan is referred to as the ‘Mandela of the Middle East’, it is not just political rhetoric. Rather, there’s deep solidarity between the two national liberation struggles, which are similar in their fights against apartheid and colonialism, and demands for liberation, democracy, plurality, and justice; the way in which repressive measures specially crafted to target the individual figureheads at the heart of the struggle are then rolled out to repress all those fighting for a better society; and also in the crucial role played by international solidarity in helping both leaders keep their feet planted on the path to struggle.

In 1993, three years on from the end of his own detention Mandela addressed the International Solidarity Conference. We can only imagine what words Öcalan would share with his own international friends and supporters were he free today to join this global Freedom-to-Öcalan network. But as Öcalan remains in solitary confinement, in extreme conditions that Mandela’s legal representatives say surpass even those used to imprison the South African leader, I’d like to share some quotes from Mandela’s speech.

Addressing his own network of international supporters, Mandela said: “You are the friends from five continents who kept hope alive. You took the plight of our people, our hopes, our dreams, and our struggle, to your hearts and made it your own. You have forged bonds of friendship that are unbreakable. You refused to let the world ignore the tragedy wreaked by apartheid.”

In 1993, three years on from the end of his own detention, Mandela addressed the International Solidarity Conference.

As these words make clear, international solidarity and gatherings like the global ‘Freedom for Öcalan Network’ help to keep hope alive for all those imprisoned political prisoners who can only receive scraps of news and rays of sunlight from the outside world. They demonstrate that the international powers which have long supported Turkey in its brutal war against the Kurds have not proven capable of breaking the bonds of solidarity or making Öcalan disappear into the silence of his long-term, solitary isolation. They help the detained to keep placing one foot after the other on the long road to freedom, and they help us to build the connections, relationships, and platforms which are so essential in advancing Öcalan’s vision of a free, democratic society in Turkey, the larger regions of the Middle East and North Africa, and beyond. From his prison cell, he continues to inspire movements that bring real, transformative change to the outside world.

As such, demanding Öcalan’s freedom means demanding the leadership of women, ensuring direct participatory democracy on the basis of people’s assemblies, liberating academy and science from the chains of capitalism, building a new education system on the basis of free academies, questioning power structures and nation-states, establishing new alternative systems of life and existence, defending ‘democratic confederalism’ and the ‘democratic nation’ which are his contributions to the liberation literature of human history.

These are days of great crisis in the capitalist world system, especially in the last decade, the increasing and deepening authoritarianism in the world and monopoly capitalism that incorporate everything within the framework of the interests of corporatist economy make life unlivable. For this reason, great international anti-war, freedom-seeking public movements are emerging, which are very important and ensure humanity’s continued resistance. The global campaign for Öcalan’s freedom is increasingly becoming one of the most popular of all these grassroots, bottom-up, global activist movements.

This is because his freedom will solve the four major authoritarianisms that together with his incarceration constitute the deadlock in the Middle East. We have seen the Jin Jiyan Azadi (Women, Life, Freedom) uprisings in Iran last year, we see the ongoing resistance against Ba’athism and Jihadism in Rojava (North and East Syria), we see the struggle against the foundational ideology of Kemalism and against neoliberalism and authoritarianism in Turkey, and we see how the struggle is being waged in Southern Kurdistan against both nepotistic and corrupt governments. It is precisely the Kurdish leader’sdecisive struggle that give the diverse communities of Kurdistan the determination and the will for all these struggles. This is why it is also important not only for Kurds but for the whole world to demand his freedom.

Öcalan’s freedom will solve the four major authoritarianisms that together with his incarceration constitute the deadlock in the Middle East.

It is important for the whole world to demand his freedom because our system makes people want to forget hope. What we see in Öcalan is that yes, there is hope; hope is in the degree to which you struggle, hope is in the degree to which you realize your daily existence on the basis of freedom. Hope is realized only when we evaluate this collectively, internationally, on a global level. And his paradigm gives us hope. We see it in Rojava, in Syria, in Northern Kurdistan, in Turkey, in Iranian Kurdistan, in Iran, in Iraqi Kurdistan, in Iraq, wherever the Kurdish diaspora is now spread all over the world, and in the continuing resistance of the peoples. Adorno, the pioneering social scientist of the Frankfurt School, used to ask: can the wrong life be lived rightly? Yes, the “wrong life” can be lived correctly through struggle, resistance, and internationalism. This is the answer to the philosopher’s question offered by Öcalan himself through his manuscripts written in prison.

To return to this essay’s origins as a comparison with Mandela and Öcalan, it must be underlined that nobody can know what the future holds: we don’t know when the day will come when Öcalan is freed, and his vision of a better society takes another leap forward. That’s why this global network continues struggling on all fronts, seeking legal redress, demanding political pressure, and calling protests. All of these rely on support from international activists and organizations, and all of them can play a part in bringing about Öcalan’s personal freedom.

This essay focuses on Öcalan’s personal freedom, because politically, his ideas remain free, traveling round the world, and inspiring people across five continents. Turkey has not been able to silence his voice within prison walls. But even though Öcalan’s ideas are inspiring more people than ever, the Kurdish people also face grave, existential threats, and his democratic vision faces violent opposition. Again, the international movement must play their part in keeping this movement alive. But we must also keep working together to liberate Öcalan himself, not only because of the inhumane torture he is suffering, but also because his liberation would mark a truly giant step along the long road to freedom and liberation. That’s a road we must all walk together, in international solidarity and incessant, organized activism.

To recall a quote from Mandela, written after his own liberation, he said: “I have walked that long road to freedom. I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”

The struggle for Öcalan’s freedom is not just about one man’s release from prison: it is just one hill among many on the long road to freedom he has passed through. Already, the movement Öcalan leads from his jail cell has achieved remarkable victories and triumphs. He, too, must one day be able to survey those triumphs from the vantage point of freedom, while looking ahead to a better future for Kurdistan. To achieve that will require unstinting international solidarity and struggle, as we stand together with a man who has given everything for a better world. It is especially valuable that such a global network and campaign has emerged, inspiring the whole opposition to build up a peace movement capable of achieving democratic change in Turkey, just as experienced in South Africa. To end with, I’d like to close with a final quote of Öcalan, or rather a short poem he wrote in his cell of İmralı Prison, about the folk heroes Dewreş and Adule. This poem is based on a great heroic legend, updated for our existing movement. In fact, it is a call for international activism.

From his prison cell, Öcalan warned of threats facing the Yazidis even before the devastating 2014 genocide by ISIS. A 2010 poem he penned in İmralı Prison pays homage to the legendary Yazidi hero, Dewrêşê Evdî, and expresses his deep yearning to be in the sacred Sinjar (Shengal) Mountains, the ancestral home of the Yazidis.

I wish I were with Derwêşê Evdî
in the Sinjar Mountains!
That I dove into the Mosul Plains
on the back of white horses!
That I took Derweş on my shoulder
when he was shot
to Kurdistan’s mountains!
I wish I told him, “Look!
Edûlê is here by the thousands
The Twelve are here by the thousands!
Rest easy on these mountains
where thrones of goddesses lie!”
Death…
Wherever it comes from…
And however it comes
Grieve no more!
Sharpened Kurdishness and the life free
They are truth eternal, I wish I said!

*Sinan Önal is a political scientist, currently an envoy of the Kurdistan National Congress-KNK who formerly acted as an adviser in policy-building and international affairs to the left-wing alternative and pro-Kurdish parties DTP, BDP, and HDP in Turkey. Mr. Önal also represented the pro-Kurdish party in the United States and in Germany respectively.


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