PKK’s 38th anniversary celebrations continue in Medya Defense Zones. PKK Executive Committee Member Duran Kalkan spoke to the guerilla in the celebrations and commented on PKK’s anniversary and Fidel Castro’s death.

Kalkan said Castro was a great revolutionary and his ideals will live forever and continued: “I celebrate the 38th anniversary of the official founding of the PKK  for Leader Apo, all comrades, all humanity and our people. I wish success on all who fight for freedom and democracy in the 39th year. With respect and gratitude I salute our martyrs,whose numbers are in the tens of thousands and who represent the embodiment of our reality of party and leadership. I repeat our promise to realize their goals once more on this anniversary.”

Kalkan said they salute great South American revolutionary Castro with respect and graitude in the name of the people and the party and continued: “I would like to express my condolences for the Cuban people and all revolutionaries, and my wish that they march with the ideals of Fidel Castro in their struggle. In the last congress, he said ‘I will die one day, physically, but our ideals must live on.’ With this, Castro warned the Cuba Communist Party and the Cuban people. We believe the people of Cuba and all peoples of South America will continue Fidel Castro’s ideals and will march on that path. They will work for the implementation of the ideals of freedom, equality, socialism that Fidel Castro represents. We know he himself was a man devoted to the memory of great revolutionaries and worked to keep Southern American revolutionary tradition alive.”

“THE CUBAN REVOLUTION WAS THE FUNDAMENTAL FORCE THAT TRIGGERED THE 68 MOVEMENT”

Kalkan said Castro built the basic line of Latin American revolutionaries, fought to spread socialism all over the world and was the inspiration for the 1968 revolution of the youth and continued: “The revolutionary line of Cuba is embodied in the apprach of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. He developed the fundamental line of South American Revolutionarism and gave it cohesion. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara need to be considered together and that revolutionary line should be evaluated accordingly. If we do so, we develop Socialism and spread its ideals and ideology without sacrificing it for political gains.”

Kalkan noted that revolutionarism and socialism developed uniquely in Cuba despite the collapse of socialism in many other parts of the world, and this had to do with commitment to ideological principles and goals as well as being founded in society. Kalkan described the Cuban Revolution as the fundamental force that triggered the revolutionary youth of 1968, and said that the philosophies of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara was the main inspiration for revolutionary movements in that time period.

“OUR IDEALS SHOULD LIVE ON”

Duran Kalkan emphasized that the revolutionary will, spirit and enthusiasm of Castro contributed to the creation of the PKK and would always live on, and noted that the PKK’s birth followed the 68 youth movement and coincided with the national liberation of Vietnam and the struggle of peoples in Africa. Kalkan stated that the Cuban revolution would always live on in the PKK’s struggle, and Castro’s statement ‘our ideals should live on’ is a heritage to all people including Kurds. Kalkan reiterated that they would continue to struggle for disseminating ideals such as equality based on diversity, democracy, sharing, solidarity an socialism in Kurdistan and the Middle East, and continue to better understand and find inspiration in the Cuban Revolution.