The Co-Presidency of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council released a statement on the 45th founding anniversary of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party).

The KCK statement includes the following:

“We are approaching the 45th anniversary of the foundation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, which was founded on November 27, 1978. The PKK resurrected the Kurdish people that was on the verge of extinction, and has reached this day with great developments. We would like to celebrate the 45th anniversary of our party, PKK, which resurrected the Kurdish people and made great developments. Therefore, we congratulate Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan], all the martyrs of revolution and democracy, the patriotic people of Kurdistan, the peoples of the Middle East and the world. We congratulate the women, the youth, all the comrades who are resisting in prisons, all those who are struggling for freedom and democracy. We also congratulate the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla who broke the colonialist approach.

There is no doubt that the PKK has achieved all these developments with a great struggle and high prices paid for this cause. Rêber Apo once said that the decision to found the PKK was taken in response to the martyrdom of Haki Karer. This decision of Rêber Apo revealed the source of PKK’s power in a simple way. The PKK is a party of struggle and martyrs, and all the developments it has created are based on the devotion to the memory of the martyrs. It is the struggle of tens of thousands of martyrs that has brought us so much progress and enabled us to reach today. Therefore, those who made the PKK and all these developments possible are our martyrs. On this occasion, we once again commemorate all the martyrs of revolution and democracy with great respect and gratitude, reaffirm our pledge of loyalty and success to them and bow before their memories.

The emergence of the PKK changed the fateful history of the people of Kurdistan and led to the development of a new historical process in Kurdistan and the Middle East. In the early 20th century, the forces of the capitalist modernity established a dependent system in the Middle East with the nation-states they created. While the resources of the Middle East were completely exploited by them, the peoples of the Middle East were subjected to all kinds of exploitation under the rule of nationalist, religious, authoritarian, oppressive dictatorial regimes and nation-states. Peoples have been fragmented between nation-states, turned into enemies and brought into conflict with each other. Many ancient peoples of the Middle East have been subjected to massacres and genocide under the rule of capitalist modernity and reactionary, dependent, satellite nation-states.

One of the peoples subjected to genocide and colonialism was the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people were dismembered together with their country, their existence was denied and they were taken into the process of extinction. The PKK emerged first and foremost as a resistance against this great injustice and oppression. The PKK brought the Kurdish people back from the dead with its ideology of freedom and the struggle it waged based on it. Re-existence is not a discourse for the Kurdish people, but a reality. With the PKK, the Kurdish people recognized their own reality, recognized the reality of the enemy, acquired the consciousness of freedom, understood that they could exist and achieve their freedom through struggle, by showing the courage and will to wage this struggle.

With the disintegration of colonialism and the realization of the revolution of resurrection in Kurdistan, the status quo in the Middle East suffered a major blow and entered a process of obstruction and dissolution. Seeing that the developments created by the PKK jeopardized their interests, the forces of capitalist modernity, together with the nation-state regimes and reactionary forces in the Middle East, put the international conspiracy against Rêber Apo into action and tried to stop the PKK. The international conspiracy, which continues until today in absolute isolation, is based on this. However, based on the new paradigm developed by Rêber Apo, the PKK has frustrated the attacks against it and further developed its struggle for freedom, becoming the most influential ideological and political power in the Middle East. With the democratic, ecological and women’s freedom paradigm developed by Rêber Apo and his understanding of the ‘democratic nation’, the PKK has become a movement from which not only the Kurdish people but also the peoples of the Middle East and the world draw strength. Today we can say that the PKK is not only the most influential force in the Middle East with its ideas and understanding, but also the greatest force of solution.

One of the most important developments that the PKK has achieved for all humanity is undoubtedly the struggle for the emancipation of women and the ideas and paradigm it has developed for this purpose. As a requirement of his deep faith, trust and love for women, Rêber Apo developed the PKK as a movement in which women find and live their own reality. As a second step, Rêber Apo developed the women’s freedom paradigm and developed a system of free life in which women re-create themselves and achieve their freedom. Today, with the slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî”, this understanding has spread all over the world, and women all over the world express and liberate themselves with this understanding. This is one of the biggest steps towards the realization of a free life. On such a day, which is recognized as the ‘International Day Against of Violence against Women’, we believe that it would be the most meaningful and correct attitude to know the roots of the understanding of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî”. We can easily say that the establishment of the PKK and the developments it created have been one of the most meaningful attitudes in history against all forms of violence, exploitation and massacre against women. On this occasion, as a movement that is convinced that free life passes through women’s freedom, we condemn all forms of violence, exploitation and massacre against women, and state that we stand with women in the march for freedom.

The PKK has taken root in the garden of society and humanity with its place in the consciousness and hearts of the Kurdish people, the impact it has had on the peoples of the Middle East and the world, and its great power to solve the problems of society. Those who attack the PKK thinking that it will weaken or disappear are genocidal colonialist fascist enemies who cannot comprehend this reality. The PKK is a great movement of mentality and a social force. It will never be weakened or destroyed by attacks. On the contrary, it grows its struggle and develops a little more every day. The PKK will continue to create new developments. The PKK is an Endless Novel, a Song, a Poem and a Beauty. With this belief and hope, in this 46th year of struggle, we wish great success to everyone who fights, resists, struggles, believes in the PKK and has a heart connection with the PKK.”