Ahead of Newroz 2024, a chorus of voices, particularly the pro-Kurdish opposition, have been calling for a peaceful solution to the ongoing Kurdish conflict in Turkey. These voices referred to a crucial letter penned by imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan and read during Newroz celebrations in 2013, which marked the beginning of the short-lived peace talks between Turkey and the PKK. Advocates stress that this letter remains the linchpin of the long-awaited peace.
Amid escalating military actions by the Turkish government, here we republish the full translation of Öcalan’s 2013 plea for peace:
“Greetings to the peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia who celebrate this day of awakening, revival and resurrection, Newroz, with the greatest participation and unity…
Greetings to the brotherly peoples of the world who celebrate Newroz, the milestone and the sunshine of a new era, with great enthusiasm and democratic tolerance…
Greetings to travellers on the great road to democratic rights, freedom and equality…
Greetings to you, the Kurds, one of the most ancient peoples who have built an agricultural, village and urban civilisation from the foothills of the Zagros and Taurus mountains to the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris; from the sacred lands of Mesopotamia and Anatolia…
The Tigris and the Euphrates are the brothers of Sakarya and Maritsa for the Kurds, who for thousands of years have lived and built this great civilisation in a brotherly and friendly coexistence with different races, religions and sects. Ararat and Cudi are companions to Kaçkar and Erciyes. Halay and Delilo are kin to Horon and Zeybek.
This great civilisation, these brotherly communities, have been tried to be set against each other by political pressures, external interventions and group interests. Orders have been tried to be established which are not based on justice, law, equality and freedom.
The Arab, Turkish, Persian and Kurdish communities have tried to enclose nation-states, virtual borders and artificial problems through the wars of conquest of the last two hundred years, Western imperialist interventions, oppressive and denialist understandings.
The time has now expired for exploitative regimes, oppressive and denialist understandings. The peoples of the Middle East and Central Asia are now awakening. They are returning to themselves and their origins. They are putting an end to provocative and blinding wars and conflicts against each other.
Hundreds of thousands and millions of people, whose hearts are inflamed by the fire of Newroz and who fill the squares to capacity, are now calling for peace, brotherhood and a solution.
This struggle, which began with my individual rebellion against the helplessness, ignorance and slavery into which we were born, aimed to create a consciousness, an understanding and a spirit against all kinds of impositions.
Today I see that this cry has reached a point.
Our struggle has never been and cannot be against any race, religion, sect or group. Our fight has been against oppression, ignorance, injustice, backwardness, all kinds of oppression and suppression.
Today, we are waking up to a new Turkey, a new Middle East and a new future.
Young people who answered my call, great women who took my message to their hearts, friends who accepted my speech with a nod and a bow, people who listened to my voice;
A new era is beginning today.
The door is opening from the process of armed resistance to the process of democratic politics.
A process with political, social and economic aspects is beginning; an understanding on the basis of democratic rights, freedoms and equality is being developed.
We have sacrificed decades of our lives for this people, we have paid a high price. None of these sacrifices and struggles have been in vain. The Kurds have regained their self, their originality and their identity.
We have reached the point of “let the guns fall silent, let ideas and politics speak”. The modernist paradigm that ignores, denies and excludes has been destroyed. The blood is flowing from the people, from the bosom of this geography, regardless of Turks, Kurds, Laz, Circassians.
With the testimony of millions of people who responded to my call, I say that a new era has begun; politics, not weapons, are coming to the fore. We have now reached the stage of withdrawing our armed elements across the borders.
I believe that all those who open their hearts to me and believe in this cause will observe the sensitivities of the process until the end.
This is not an end, it is a new beginning. This is not the end of the struggle, but the beginning of another struggle.
The creation of ethnic and mono-national geographies is an inhuman production targeted by modernity, which denies our origin and nature.
Everyone has a great responsibility to create an equal, free and democratic country for all peoples and cultures that is worthy of the history of Kurdistan and Anatolia. On the occasion of this Newroz, I call upon Armenians, Turkmens, Assyrians, Arabs, Assyrians and other peoples as well as Kurds to see and live the lights of freedom and equality emanating from the fire as their own lights of equality and freedom.
Honourable people of Turkey;
The Turkish people living today in ancient Anatolia as Turkey should know that their common life with the Kurds for almost a thousand years under the banner of Islam is based on the law of brotherhood and solidarity.
In its true sense, in this law of brotherhood, there is and should be no conquest, no denial, no rejection, no forced assimilation and no extermination.
The policies of oppression, extermination and assimilation of the last century, based on capitalist modernity, express the efforts of a narrow elitist power elite that does not bind the people and denies all history and the law of brotherhood. Today, I call on all of us, as the two main strategic powers of the Middle East, to build our democratic modernity in accordance with our own cultures and civilisations, in order to emerge together from this prison of oppression, which has shown itself to be contrary to history and to the law of brotherhood.
This is not the time for conflict, confrontation and contempt, but for alliance, unity, embrace and halalisation.
Turks and Kurds, who martyred side by side at Gallipoli, fought the War of Independence together and opened the Parliament together in 1920.
The reality of our common past is that we must build our common future together. The spirit of the founding of the Turkish Grand National Assembly illuminates the new era today.
I call upon all oppressed peoples, representatives of classes and cultures, women, the oldest colonised and oppressed class, oppressed sects, sectarians and other owners of cultural assets, representatives of the working class and all those who are excluded from the system to participate in the new exit option, the democratic modern system, and to gain its mentality and form.
The Middle East and Central Asia are looking for a modern and democratic order in accordance with their own history. The search for a new model in which everyone can live together freely and fraternally has become as objective a need as bread and water. It is inevitable that Anatolian and Mesopotamian geography, culture and time will lead and build this model.
We are experiencing a newer, more complex and deeper derivative of the national war of independence that took place in recent history under the leadership of Turks and Kurds within the framework of Misak-i Milli.
Despite all the mistakes, shortcomings and inaccuracies of the last ninety years, we are once again trying to build a model by taking with us the victimised peoples, classes and cultures that have suffered great catastrophes. I call on all these segments to realise the organisation of an egalitarian, free and democratic form of expression.
I call upon the Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians and Arabs who were dismembered in violation of the Misak-i Milli and are now condemned to live in Syria and the Iraqi Arab Republic in serious problems and conflicts, to discuss their own realities, to become conscious and to decide on the basis of a united “National Solidarity and Peace Conference”.
The breadth and inclusiveness of the concept of “WE”, which has an important place in the history of these countries, has been reduced to “ONE” by narrow, elitist power elites. It is time to restore the concept of “WE” to its ancient spirit and practice.
We will unite against those who would divide and confront us. We will unite against those who would divide us.
Those who cannot read the spirit of the times will go to the dustbin of history. Those who resist the current of water will be swept into the abyss.
The peoples of the region are witnessing a new dawn. Tired of wars, conflicts and divisions, the peoples of the Middle East want to be reborn from their roots and stand shoulder to shoulder.
This Newroz is good news for all of us.
The truths in the messages of the Prophet Moses, the Prophet Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad are being realised today with new good news, and humanity is trying to regain what it has lost.
We do not completely reject the values of the modern civilisation of the West.
We take its enlightened, egalitarian, free and democratic values and synthesise them with our own values of existence and universal forums of life.
The basis of the new struggle is ideas, ideology and democratic politics, and we are launching a great democratic movement.
Greetings to those who give strength to this process, to those who support the democratic-peace solution!
Greetings to those who take responsibility for the fraternity, equality and democratic freedom of the peoples!
Long live Newroz, long live the brotherhood of the peoples!”
