French intellectual and author Bernard-Henri Lévy has called for the removal of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) from the list of terrorist organizations in an article of his published by the literary magazine “La Règle du jeu”.

Following a recent article titled "Last call for Kobanê", which reminded Turkey of the importance of the fight against ISIS, and that of Kobanê, the French philosopher has once again manifested his stance towards the Kurdish people and their freedom struggle in face of continuous attacks by gangs affiliated to the so-called Islamic State aiming to capture their lands.

Reminding for what purpose the Kurdistan Workers' Party was formed in 1978, Lévy defended that the organization "was rightly classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union" after being held directly or indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths in Turkey and elsewhere.

"But time has passed and four factors, or perhaps five, have changed the picture and should cause us to reconsider the status of the organization", he suggested, remarking that the first factor is that the organization renounced violence 15 years ago on the occasion of the fourth ceasefire unilaterally declared by PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan when he was arrested in 1999.

According to the French philosopher, the second is that this apparatus, which once practiced Marxist-Leninist obedience and was based for so long on a cult of personality, transformed itself gradually into today’s nebulous array of parties advocating a settlement of the Kurdish question based on “dialogue” and “confederation.”

The third - Lévy said- is that the new PKK is the organization that, particularly through its forces fighting in Syria under the banner of the YPG (People’s Protection Units), is on the front line in the battle against the dark caliphate of the Islamic State, where it is showing exemplary courage and no less exceptional effectiveness.

Lêvy continued; "The fourth is that, in these areas as in others—in the martyred village of Kobani that the Peshmerga are, not incidentally, in the process of liberating—one finds a level of gender equality, a respect for secularism and minorities, and a modern, moderate, and ecumenical conception of Islam that are, to say the least, rare in the region."

Bernard-Henri Lévy stressed that; "So that if one compares Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party with Ocalan’s PKK, setting the increasingly immoderate Islam of the former against the increasingly anti-radical Islam of the latter; contrasting the double game of Erdogan, who let pass across Turkey’s borders convoys of heavy arms destined for decapitators, with the heroism of fighting women and men who, aided only by NATO planes, are holding off those same decapitators and meeting them head to head; if one compares the Turkish army, which has not let its membership in the Atlantic alliance prevent it from standing idly by as Christian minorities were massacred, with the PKK-affiliated PYD unit that, in the space of ten days, succeeded in saving 70,000 Yazidis stranded on Iraq's Mount Sinjar—after making these comparisons one is forced to admit that terrorism is no longer where we think it is."

Lêvy continued suggesting that the PKK leaders have now reached the point reached by the Irish Republican Army when, at the close of the 1990s, after decades of urban guerrilla war, it renounced violence.

Lêvy also recalled that Nelson Mandela had to wait until June 28, 2008, for the United States to remove his name and that of his party from their list. "Ocalan is not Mandela, of course. His professions of friendship for Jews and Armenians must be put to the test of time", he noted.

The French author added that; "But as a matter of fact the Kurds are our most solid allies in the long-term war that jihadism has declared against us. The PKK in Syria is the tip of the lance not only of resistance against the Islamic State but of our defense of the values that IS would eradicate. The PKK, whose leaders for the most part fell into step with Ocalan when, at his 1999 trial on the prison island of Imrali, he asked for the forgiveness of his innumerable victims, is no longer a terrorist organization but, if words have any meaning, an organization that resists terrorism."

Lêvy added that this is why the PKK and its affiliated parties should be recognized for what they are: agents of stability now and, tomorrow, of peace in the Middle East.