European networks for solidarity with Kurdistan are set to hold a conference in Rome on 11-12 April to discuss the campaign for the release of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and wider Kurdish rights.
The organisers highlighted the extensive collaborative work which has taken place under the ‘Freedom for Öcalan, a Political Solution to the Kurdish Question’ campaign since its launch in 2023. They emphasised that the recent shuttle meetings at İmralı Prison, which led to Öcalan’s 27 February ‘Call for Peace and a Democratic Society‘, were supported by the campaign efforts.
“The campaign has succeeded in bringing together trade unions, social movements, lawyers, jurists, political parties, elected officials, artists, intellectuals, activists, Nobel laureates and millions of Kurds, building solidarity networks at local and international levels,” the solidarity network said. This collective effort has put significant pressure on the Turkish state, they argued, and created the conditions for meetings with Öcalan.
The conference will be divided into three primary panels and two forums, with translations of the diverse group of participants available in Kurdish, Italian, English, and Spanish. The first panel on 11 April will give a brief overview of the campaign itself, followed by an artistic event from Ararat, the Kurdish cultural centre. On 12 April, panels will focus on Öcalan’s isolation in Imrali prison, and its relation to the legal and political struggle of the Kurdish freedom movement at large.
The final panel will concern itself primarily with Öcalan’s perspectives on a political solution to the Kurdish question and how this democratic vision can be understood in a broader geopolitical context, including in Syria. The conference will close with two forums which seek to envisage the future perspectives and plans of the solidarity network, with the hope of realising greater goals than those achieved so far by the campaign.
