A Kurdish organisation that defeated a serious threat to the world like the Islamic State (ISIS), that promotes women’s freedom and democratic society in the Middle East, and that fights for freedom, should not be on terror lists, said Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Executive Council Member Murat Karayılan in a Sterk TV broadcast on Thursday.
The enlisting of the PKK as a terrorist organisation by Western countries is used as an excuse by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its far-right ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) for legitimising attacks against Kurds everywhere, including northeast Syria, Karayılan said, adding that not delisting the PKK meant support for Turkey’s attacks.
“If [Western states] really want to be friends with the Kurds, it is a must to find a solution for the Kurdish people to be able to live freely in their lands, in their ancestors’ lands,” said Karayılan, and called on governments to change their policies in this regard.
Karayılan underlined that the PKK wanted peace, recalling a previous statement of Abdullah Öcalan in which the PKK leader stated that he would solve the Kurdish conflict in a week if given the chance.
The commander stressed that it had been the Turkish government who wanted to solve the Kurdish issue with bloodshed and aimed to achieve results by killing the Kurdish people.
“We are resisting genocidal aggressions,” said Karayılan, adding that the PKK wouldn’t attack, but it was their international right to respond to attacks.
If Turkey insisted on this aim, the war would continue for decades, Karayılan concluded, but if international powers shifted their policies towards the PKK, the Turkish government would also remain without means to continue its attacks.
“If anyone is sincere in their desire for peace, they should first eliminate this terror list,” he said.
Both the United States and the EU designate the PKK as a terrorist organisation despite legal and political objections.
In 2008, the Court of First Instance, the EU’s second-highest court, ruled that the decision to put the PKK on the terror list was illegal because the decision had not been properly justified.
Similarly in 2018, the General Court in Luxembourg decided that the Council of the European Union failed to provide sufficient reasons for the decision to list the PKK.
Recently in 2022, Belgium’s Foreigners Litigation Council ruled that the acts committed by the PKK cannot be considered terrorist acts as a whole.
