People's Defense Forces (HPG) Military Council Member Seyitxan Dersim spoke to ANF on the 33rd anniversary of the August 15 Initiative, Day of Resurrection, in which PKK launched its first armed actions against the Turkish army in Siirt’s Eruh and Hakkari’s Şemdinli districts in the year of 1984.     

Seyitxan Dersim firstly saluted Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan and commemorated the legendary commander Mahsum Korkmaz (Egîd) and martyrs of the revolution.

Dersim talked about the atmosphere prior to the August 15 campaign, starting with his hometown Dersim, saying: "At that time, the policy of forced evacuation and assimilation of the enemy forced us to leave our home and land, and we resettled in Amed."

Dersim said, when Mazlum Doğan, one of the first leading cadres of the PKK fell a martyr as result of his resistance in the Amed prison, Doğan’s parents, very close with Dersim's family in the same place, had waiting for months to receive their son’s body. Dersim said he got to know the Kurdistan freedom movement very closely after Doğan’s death, and his elder brother’s participation in the PK ranks.

"On the one hand, the enemy pressurized my father and whole family through undercover police and soldiers, on the other hand they were observing our family with vehicles constantly patrolling around our home, only because we stood by Mazlum Doğan’s family.”

Dersim told that as the days passed under growing pressure and threats, his desire to look through the truth intensified, until it turned his feelings into a tornado and sparked a raging fire in his heart.

Describing the AKP-MHP coalition under Erdoğan’s dictatorship as a bit different version of the military coup in 1980, Dersim said the following:

“The state gathering all the authorities in one hand through state of emergencies and statutory decrees, trying hard to suppress the people through policies similar to those of that period, and baselessly vowing to finish off the guerrilla, is nothing but a repetition of history.

Just like the 1980’s coup was defeated by the resistance in dungeons and leading guerrilla figure Mahsum Korkmaz showed us the path of freedom through his spirit of resurrection and victory, today’s coup will also face an inevitable defeat by the campaigns carried out in many parts of Kurdistan."

Dersim underlined that the currently ongoing guerrilla actions extending from Zagros to Cilo, from Xakurke to Zap, from Amanos to the Black Sea, will take on a more intense form and will bear vivid results after August 15. He stressed that; "This will bring a very fast end to the government of the AKP and MHP."

On occasion of the 33rd anniversary of August 15 Initiative, HPG Military Council Member Seyitxan Dersim reiterated their promise to ensure the liberation of entire society of Turkey as a requirement of their loyalty to their martyrs.