Peace in Kurdistan Campaign: 20 years after the conspiracy

Peace in Kurdistan Campaign has issued a press statement to mark the 20th Anniversary of Abdullah Öcalan’s expulsion from Syria.

Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has led the struggle for Kurdish rights for many years. 9 th October marks the twentieth anniversary of his expulsion of Abdullah Öcalan from Syria, where he had lived in exile for nearly 20 years. 

The Kurds, recalled the statement “view the expulsion as part of an ‘international conspiracy’ against Öcalan and themselves. Abdullah Öcalan was subsequently abducted from Kenya on 15 February 1999 and taken to Turkey, where he was subjected to a show trial and has been imprisoned ever since, kept on Imrali Island, Turkey’s equivalent of Robben Island. For more than 10 years he was isolated as the only prisoner on the island. Despite the horrendous conditions, Öcalan has never given up hope of achieving a peaceful resolution of the conflicts in the Middle East, especially the Kurdish question”. 

For several years the Turkish government had engaged in talks with Öcalan about a resolution of the conflict. In Northern Syria, his ideas have inspired the building of a multi­ethnic, multi­religious, democratic revolution based on women’s freedom and ecology.

“Öcalan - underlined the statement - has become a symbol of hope for peace and democracy in a troubled region and around the world his ideas have resonated with people looking for an alternative to existing conditions with all the inequalities and spiralling crises”. 

British political leaders, reminded the statement, “have a particular historical responsibility for the fate of the Kurdish people. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish people and their lands were ruthlessly divided up by the British and the French governments; first by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and then formally with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne”. 

Abdullah Öcalan has provided Kurds with inspiring leadership. He has repeatedly sought a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish question, but his proposals have, so far, been rejected and he is held in strict isolation and denied visits, even from his family and lawyers, said the statement.

European Court of Human Rights ruling

On 27 September 2018 the European Court of Human Rights rejected a complaint that Öcalan had been mistreated during a cell search on 7 October 2008. Contrary to this ruling, Abdullah Öcalan has been treated inhumanely throughout his incarceration.

In prison, Abdullah Öcalan has written numerous books which advocate a democratisation of Turkey and the whole region. 

“Öcalan’s writings - said Peace in Kurdistan Campaign - have inspired a democratic and feminist revolution. He was able to transform Kurdish society from pursuing a statist approach to a confederalist approach. He has outlined the theoretical and practical basis for the Rojava Revolution, the liberation of the

Yazidi Kurds in Shengal, as well as the HDP project in Turkey. Clearly, prison bars and the most intense restrictions have not been able to prevent him from inspiring the people. It is time to end the criminalisation of the Kurdish struggle for self-determination and to free Abdullah Öcalan. The British government must stop supporting the Turkish state’s war against the Kurds”.