The Italian Society of Territorialists has approved a motion at its annual assembly calling for freedom for Abdullah Ӧcalan, leader of the Kurdish people. The assembly also joined the international campaign “The time has come. Freedom for Ӧcalan.”

The text approved by the assembly reads: “In joining this campaign, the Society of Territorialists, which has been involved in research / action relating to territorial realities and innovative models of local rebirth on a socio-political, environmental and cultural level, recalls that its annual conference of 2018 on the theme “The democracy of places. Actions and forms of community self-government” was opened by a report by a Kurdish representative who illustrated the model of “democratic confederalism”, developed by Ӧcalan himself during his years of hard prison.” The statement added: “Centrality of women and gender collaboration in the construction of a democratic society, attention to social, environmental and territorial problems, coexistence between different ethnicities, religions and political cultures, "bottom-up" democratic planning in open criticism of "patriarchal" statism: all this has begun to take place in Rojava and in Turkish Kurdistan, despite the repressions and armed attacks of the Turkish regime, in the courageous awareness of being bearers of a great message of radical social change and of scientific research itself, which is a prelude to new possibilities of brotherhood and peace among all the peoples of the Middle East.

Therefore, we join those who are asking for Ӧcalan's release, aware both of the unsustainability of a prison that violates the most elementary human rights, as well as the contribution that this man has already given and will continue to give to the causes of democracy, of transformation social, of coexistence between peoples.”