A press conference was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, within the scope of the initiative launched to demand freedom for Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan and a political solution to the Kurdish question on 10 October.

The statement was read by the well-known sociologist Dr. Rastko Močnik, former member of parliament, former Slovenian ombundsman Matjaž Hanžek, and professor of political science at the University of Ljubljana, Dr. Andrej Kurnik.

Matjaž Hanžek

Hanžek said: "The oppression of Öcalan is also the oppression against Kurds in all 4 countries they live in and in other European countries, where they live in emigration, and where their rights are being systematically violated .

Our politicians should take responsibility for being part of the hatred and oppression against those who don't fit into the system."

Rastko Močnik

Močnik said: "National liberation struggles are struggles against imperialism and also against capitalism, but their goal is mainly the nation state. Rosa Luxemburg was against the alliance of socialists with nationalist struggles, because they should ally with the global working class, not on a national basis but as internationalist.

Lenin was on the other side, supporting the alliance of socialism with nationalists against the imperialist powers. National liberation struggle, according to Öcalan, should not be only for a new state but for a new society, classless, antipatriarchal, anticapitalist. The Kurdish national liberation struggle is an actual revolution for the transformation of society. The Kurdish movement is very important in this sense, because national liberation struggles and revolutionary struggles are now globally on the defence, but the Kurds fight on for  humanity and are very successful at that."

Dr. Andrej Kurnik

Kurnik said: "Öcalan is not only a thinker but also a political leader. He is in prison but he is profoundly embedded in the Kurdish society and he articulates its emancipatory tendencies and processes. He embodies the struggle of the Kurdish people. Why is he in prison? He is a threat to the global war being waged through new modes every day – for example, ISIS terror in Syria, he is the prospect of global peace.

The Kurdish society represents the struggle for the end of global domination and repression. The Kurdish struggle points beyond the world of nation states, which are machines of homogenization of heterogenous societies and peoples.

In a nation state there are only majorities and oppressed minorities. Where the colonisation processes were not successful in exterminating this heterogeneity, there are other struggles that build horizontal democracy from below. 

In Slovenia, the tradition of communitarianism is systematically fought against. We can see that there is a big injustice, because people themselves say that they don’t feel that there is any justice. The experience of neoliberalism and devastation in society shows that Öcalan is also important for Slovenia."