Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Movement (KJK) Executive Committee member Zerrin Ruken spoke to Medya Haber TV on a wide range of topics, including the Turkish campaign in northern Iraq, the role of international governments in Turkey’s policies targeting the Kurdish people and the isolation in Imralı island.
Ruken shared her view that ongoing operations in Zap, Avashin and Metina regions will result in the “victory” of the Kurdish fighters “just like in Gare”.
“The resistance of the YJA-STAR and the HPG guerilla will eventually win. We saw the victories in Gare, in Hakurk, in Haftanin. The resistance of the guerrilla during Operation Gare, their resistance for freedom, has been recorded in the pages of history with golden letters not just for the Kurdish people, but for all the peoples of the world,” she said.
Defining the alliance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) as a “neurotic” regime, Ruken added: “The fascist AKP-MHP Erdoğan regime has a major neurotic psychological problem. Such a government, which lost all its capacity to govern, cannot survive too long against the freedom guerrilla.”
Ruken underlined that Turkey’s choice of 23 April as the date to begin operations in northern Iraq has secondary meanings. “To launch operations in the night connecting 23 and 24 April was not coincidental. It was planned for a reason.What was that reason? It was the date of the anniversary of the Armenian genocide. In this regard, the attacks against the Kurdish people were planned in much the same way as attacks against the Armenians were planned,” she said.
The KJK Executive pointed out that attacks targeting the Kurdish people have an international dimension. “Starting with the USA and France,” she said. “Alongside other hegemonic powers, the aim is for this genocidal plan to be finalised under the guidance of TC [Turkey]. International powers, of course, benefit from these operations as well. To keep the Kurdish question unsolved, to deepen the isolation of leader Apo [Abdullah Öcalan], to wage war and constantly launch operations against Kurdish people — this works for them. Operations in Rojava and Sinjar, too.”
Ruken criticised the isolation of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned in Imralı Island in Turkey since 1999.
“The uninterrupted isolation of the Leadership [refers to Abdullah Öcalan] has turned into deeper isolation and more severe torture, especially in the last seven years. This torture system has reached a dangerous level,” she said.
Öcalan shows “resistance” under heavy isolation conditions and such a “paradigmatic stance” has found “correspondence” among the international public, she said. “The historical resistance of the Leadership finds great correspondence among the people. His paradigmatic stance and democratic modernity project finds great correspondance among the people, among women, among the oppressed and among the political left.”
