Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan was abducted in Kenya on 15 February 1999 as part of an international conspiracy and taken to the Turkish prison island of Imrali. This operation, which violates international law, began with Öcalan's forced departure from Syria on 9 October 1998.

Conspiracy of capitalist modernity

The coordination of the KJK (Kurdistan Women’s Community - Komalên Jinên Kurdistan) issued a statement to call for participation in the central rally organized Saturday, 17 February in Cologne to demand freedom for the Kurdish people’s leader.

The statement said: “The main force behind the international conspiracy was the global system of capitalist modernity. The aim was to destroy the Kurdish freedom movement via Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] in order to have a free hand in reshaping the Near and Middle East and especially Kurdistan.”

A deep power struggle for world domination is taking place in the region, and is being carried out on the backs of the people. Öcalan's capture was part of the genocide against the Kurds; the international conspiracy was also directed against the Kurdish women's movement, added the statement.

Women's liberation and ecological revolution

Öcalan, on the other hand, developed the model of democratic modernity, which shows the path to success for the existence and freedom struggle of the Kurdish people and women, said the KJK, adding: “He explained that the path to a democratic society is essentially based on women's liberation and based on an ecological revolution. At the same time, he showed that the capitalist powers were hostile to freedom and democracy as well as women and peoples and that a just social model should be condemned to death with his person.”

The international conspiracy failed

The KJK emphasized in its statement that the international conspiracy against the Kurdish freedom movement had failed. In Imrali, despite the heavy isolation and incommunicado regime he was subjected to, Öcalan developed new ways of thinking and implemented a paradigm shift that gave hope worldwide. The KJ said: “His voice, the voice of free life, which was supposed to be silenced by the hegemonic powers, has reached the whole world.”

The patriarchal system of power has lost blood

The KJK said that the “paradigm, based on grassroots democracy, women's revolution and ecological change, is directed against a system that takes away women's identities, devalues them and turns them into a commodity that can be bought and sold, removes them from their own values, puts them between house walls or imprisons them across state borders and murdering them.”

The KJK continued: “The Kurdish people’s leader demolished the walls of this life of captivity that was imposed on women as a fate. While the forces of capitalist modernity view women as their most important asset for the development and survival of their own system, Rêber Apo's freedom paradigm has become the gateway to a free life. Women supported this paradigm. The system based on the enslavement of women and male domination has lost blood with our paradigm of free living.”

Building a system based on women's liberation

The isolation of Abdullah Öcalan is therefore also a conspiracy “against all women who seek a free life” and must be fought actively and organized, according to the KJK. “Let us act in the knowledge that our fight is extraordinary, and it leads to a free, democratic and equal life. In the spirit of mobilization, let us take part in the big action in Cologne and all actions for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo. Let us read and understand his thoughts everywhere. Let us build a confederal system based on the freedom of women and strengthen our organized strength.”