Mustafa Karasu, a member of the KCK Executive Council, paid tribute to Sheikh Sait and his friends who were executed 99 years ago today and Martyr Zilan, who fell a martyr on 30 June 1996.

We are approaching the anniversary of the historic action of the Zeynep Kınacı (Zilan) against the conspiracy against the people’s leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1996. When we look at the freedom struggle carried out since then, can we say that Martyr Zîlan, with her historic action, revealed the initiative to protect and correctly embrace the Kurdish People’s Leader?

I commemorate with love, respect and gratitude all the martyrs of the month of June, particularly comrade Zilan, Sema, Gulan, Hanim Yaverkaya, Raperin Amed, Berivan Zilan, Ali Piling, and Fazil Botan.

I also commemorate with gratitude and respect Sheikh Sait and his friends who were executed on 29 June 1925. Their memory lives and is kept alive in our struggle.

It is clear that Martyr Zilan’s action is a turning point in terms of embracing Rêber Apo. It is the peak of devotion to Rêber Apo. Martyr Zilan called on the entire PKK and the Kurdish people to understand and embrace Rêber Apo correctly. She showed everyone that Rêber Apo and the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom are inseparable. That is why Rêber Apo emphasized that Martyr Zilan’s action was a manifesto. She did not only make a big sacrifice; she put forward an ideological, political, organizational, and operational line. Undoubtedly, there was a sacrificial line in the PKK before; there were great acts of devotion to Rêber Apo. But Martyr Zîlan deepened this line with her action. She added new dimensions to this line of self-sacrifice. To embrace Rêber Apo means understanding and living the women’s liberation line in depth.

Martyr Zilan also determined the attitude of the movement against the conspiracy. The actions that were taken under the ‘you cannot darken our sun’ campaign, which developed after the international conspiracy in 1999, were the outcome of the line that Zilan had drawn. Martyr Zilan’s action has depth and an important dimension in terms of Kurdish history. She was born and raised in Malatya, west of the Euphrates, where the so-called Eastern Reform Plan, basically a plan of cultural genocide, was implemented. The genocide practiced there created great anger among the people, which created a great will and power of resistance. In this respect, Martyr Zilan’s action is also a response to genocide. She was deeply aware that the attack against Rêber Apo was a genocidal one and carried out her action with the deep awareness that turning against Rêber Apo is turning against everything belonging to the Kurds. Today, we express that the priority and main target of the genocide policy and attack is Imrali. Comrade Zilan had already acted with this awareness thirty years ago.

Martyr Zilan, as a comrade who understood Rêber Apo deeply, embraced him by carrying out that great self-sacrificing action. As our women comrades stated, we should embrace Rêber Apo as deeply as Zilan did. We will definitely liberate Rêber Apo and ensure a democratic solution to the Kurdish question by embracing him in every field and dimension of the struggle like Zilan did.

The freedom fighters continue their resistance against all kinds of attacks by the fascist Turkish state with the spirit of Martyr Zilan. The occupying forces, which are experiencing difficulties, have recently intensified the use of internationally banned chemical weapons again. Do you see a weakening in the struggle against the silence of international powers, especially the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and if so, how should this situation be overcome?

A dirty war has been waged in Kurdistan for decades. If this war was conducted in any other part of the world, international powers and many states would take a stand against the perpetrators of this dirty war and impose sanctions. However, when it comes to the Kurds, all international law, morality, and conscience are put aside. When it comes to Kurdistan and the Kurds, everybody only considers their own interests. After the First World War, the West, led by Britain and France, was mainly responsible for the system established in the Middle East. The Kurds were the victims of their political new order. They established an order that approved the genocide of Kurds. In exchange for the cession of Mosul and Kirkuk to Britain and Syria to French sovereignty, the Turkish Republic’s genocide of the Kurds was approved. This political order is still continuing today.

Already before, poisonous gases, chemical and banned weapons were used against the guerrillas. However, in the invasion attack they have been carrying out for three consecutive years now in the Medya Defense Areas , these weapons are being used daily. Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil, Turkey’s longest serving foreign minister, confessed how they poisoned the civilian population who took refuge in caves in Dersim (tr. Tunceli) “like rats” in 1937-1938. The Turkish Republic has such a tradition of dirty war. Even then, the West, which calls itself civilized and democratic, remained silent.

The current fascist government of the AKP-MHP has been declaring for nine years that it will end the Kurdish freedom movement. And now, the resistance of the guerrillas and the Kurdish people has led the AKP-MHP government to its own collapse. In the face of the resistance of the guerrillas and the people, which led to the collapse of their power, it has increased its dirty war, particularly in the last three years. Perhaps hundreds of times more bombs were dropped on Kurdistan than were dropped on Vietnam. There are no valleys or hills that have not been bombed. In order to break the resistance of the guerrillas, poisonous gas, chemical weapons, and thermobaric bombs are being used to destroy the living environment of the guerrillas. Since they cannot fight against the guerrillas, they poison the air the guerrillas breathe and the water they drink, making the guerrilla areas completely uninhabitable for living beings. Thus, they kill everything alive. This is being done by a NATO army. The West and NATO are waging this dirty war against the guerrillas. The answer to the question of why international powers and institutions remain silent must be sought there. It is because they also have a hand in this dirty war.

Undoubtedly, we are still not able to fully explain this dirty war to the world, nor are we putting up enough struggle against this dirty war and its methods. The struggles do not go beyond the level of protest. They do not go beyond the reactions to a negative practice in any democratic country. However, there is an attack on the existence of Kurds. It is in this awareness that we must struggle, so that the OPCW cannot remain silent, it must be forced to take action. Otherwise, no results can be achieved. Both the Kurdish people and the guerrillas are engaged in a life-and-death struggle. Therefore, whatever kind of struggle is necessary to live, must be fought. Otherwise, we will end up in the situation of the Laz who said “let this be a lesson to us” on his way to execution. In short, there is an existential attack on the Kurds. It is necessary to take these attacks more seriously and develop the struggle with more effective ways and methods.