The HPG Command Council said in a written statement that it held its annual conference. “As the HPG Command Council, we held our annual regular conference between 18-26 January 2021,” said the statement, adding: “Our conference has been held with the participation of 40 members representing all our fields of duty in a time when our struggle is going through a historical stage. The meeting made a comprehensive political and military analysis of 2020, evaluated the current situation of the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla and assessed that 2021 must be the year of victory for our people. The meeting also analysed the perspectives to ensure the goal is achieved and determined the tactics for this period and plans for 2021.”

The statement underlined that “the conference discussed Turkish colonialism, which is experiencing one of the weakest periods of its history in the face of our struggle, and for this pursues a repressive and aggressive policy against all progressive sections of the society in order to save itself from the impasse. They are trying to overcome the military insufficiency with advanced technology tools. The AKP-MHP-Ergenekon alliance could not get the result it wanted, thus put forward special war policies and tried to mislead the public and its own followers by hiding facts. In this context, it has been concluded that this fascist alliance, which made our peoples suffer, will soon be thrown into the bin of history, if the struggle tasks required by the period are fulfilled.”

The statement continued: “In this context, our meeting, which comprehensively addressed the tactics, struggle and style of action in today's guerrilla struggle, determined the role and mission of the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla. We established the new era of war and struggle line of the Democratic Modernity Guerilla against the hegemonic and colonial attacks of Capitalist Modernity. Our meeting reached important decisions on this basis, discussed the problems experienced in 2020, the deficiencies and tactical problems in depth. In this context, success was achieved thanks to the answer given to all kinds of attacks against our people and our forces with the spirit of self-sacrifice characterising us.”

The conference also underlined the “importance of a national unity stance to be taken by all Kurdish forces” and “rejected violent attitudes among Kurds and emphasized that it is essential to solve the problems through dialogue.”

Call to new guerrillas

Another important issue addressed in the meeting was the “participation problem of young people who want to take part in the struggle ranks. We found that a considerable number of young people could not reach the ranks despite their desire to join the guerrilla. Even though there was a certain amount of participation, the meeting called on all the patriotic youth of Kurdistan to act in a more organized way in order to reach the guerrilla ranks.”

The statement ended with the following remarks: “In this important and critical phase of our struggle, the historical decisions made by our meeting in 9 days of intense and fruitful discussions will be an important milestone for 2021 to be a year of success. Indeed, the response of the Kurdistan Freedom Guerrilla to the attack carried out by the colonialist Turkish army in Garê between February 10-13 is the first concrete reflection of this meeting on the battlefield. Our meeting established that the first measure of success is the defeat of the International Conspiracy and the physical freedom of Leader Apo [Abdullah Ocalan], and decided to approach this year’s tasks with this in mind.”