Just as great misfortune comes from ignorance, great love comes from deep knowledge and awareness and consciousness. For this, great thought is necessary. Great thoughts keep people alive. People live, for the sake of great thoughts they toil. If you think big you will create great things. Only great thinkers can change the world.
– Abdullah Öcalan
Youth means understanding. Understanding means justice. Therefore, one should have enormous knowledge and be able to organize enormously. Insist forever on your freedom, insist forever on legitimate self-defense, peace and brotherhood. Defense, peace and sibling-hood. This is tantamount to a holy peace. We were born as a youth movement. Our movement, as a fundamental dynamic force of freedom and democracy, was born to play a historical role.
We are waging the struggle for freedom and democracy with the same excitement and hope as our foundation and even more intensely. As a youth movement, we will make freedom and democracy our standards. Because a freedom based and democratic struggle can only be led with the dynamism, the understanding of the Ideology. Youth means courage, will and consciousness. When courage and will are combined with consciousness, there is nothing left that cannot be conquered. Those who have the aspiration and ambition can realize this. How great misfortune comes from ignorance, great love comes from deep knowledge and consciousness. For this, great thought is necessary. Great thoughts keep people alive. For the sake of great thoughts they toil. If you think big, you will create big.
Only great thinkers can change the world. Youth means understanding. Understanding means justice; and justice means achieving the truth. Therefore, you should have tremendous knowledge and be tremendously capable of organizing. Insist eternally on your freedom, insist eternally on legitimate self-defense, peace and sibling-hood. This is tantamount to a holy peace. You will love the people. Your heart connected to the heart of the people, your brain to the concerns of the people.
There is no other way. You will believe in our people. To embrace dignity is to embrace identity. You will come to know your own reality. Love, ambition, creation, hope, pain and recreate yourselves and thus become human beings. You will achieve becoming a free youth and a free people. Only in this way you can become free and honorable. Those who can give meaning to freedom and dignity are strong. These will never die.
You must have a strong historical knowledge. Even to taste bread properly you need to have a strong historical knowledge. You must be well versed in history, sociology and other sciences. Without this knowledge you cannot know what bread is, family, friendship, social bonds and all other experiences. It is necessary to have a good knowledge of classes, history and society. With this knowledge and good ethics, you must express your own style of struggle. Only in this way can you fight for people and a democratic Turkey in a right way. Develop a personality that is fighting for peace, real courage can promote a truceful personality; Only the strong can do this. If democracy and freedom do not exist for you, they do not exist for anyone. Peace needs a strong personality, thorough democracy and dignifying peace. Do not settle for less. When we dug a pit with a needle we did so under difficult conditions. In the name of camaraderie, humanity and freedom, we remained serious. If we could do it, so can you. Bravery means understanding, comprehending and acting freely. Bravery means to serve freedom and equality. If a person remains resilient, she/he is stronger than a state. For all the oppressed people of the world, you must raise your global democratic struggle.
Creating a democratic civilization in which cultures, classes and genders are mixed is significant. How can we bring the Middle East to a democratic civilization? and how can we realize Kurdish democratization on the basis of sibling-hood? You have to think. Democracy is at least as important as the emergence of civilization is important. The realization of democracy among the Kurds is the realization of a 5000 year old dream of the Middle East. The success of the Kurds with democracy will be the dawn of the people of the Middle East. You have to start an extensive democracy and enlightenment movement. For this you need, above all, faith. Modernize your personalities. Strengthen your energies; internalize democracy. The way to democracy is peace and sibling-hood. Instead of nationalism we must deepen democracy. With democracy everyone will win. Nationalism is modern clanism. Traditional and also modern clanism are wrong. Every class, every culture will unite around democratic representations realizing a rise of freedom; A coalition of forces will bring about wealth and justice. Youth is the guarantee of democracy. In order to play this role, youth must educate themselves in an enormous way, educate themselves in a tremendous way. With a mobilizing, democratic spirit you have to work. Democracy means mobilization, organizing everyone from 7 to 70. Stir up your democratic consciousness for deep work, deep love and deep fulfillment. Awaken, educate, organize, systematizing your own demands, you must come forward.
You must live consistently. I live consistently. Living without principles makes you age. Youth means necessarily being forced to live consistently. When I was a child I said, “If you live, then either free or not.” I rejected a life without freedom. I continue to do my utmost here for all of you to create freedom and dignity. The youth, no matter where they are, like the modern Kawa’s¹, have to be be the voice of democracy, justice and freedom against violence and exploitation.
Kawa and Zarathustra were both efficient responses to lies, violence and exploitation. I call on the Kurdish and Turkish youth to develop these efforts further. Develop these efforts! I call on the democratic youth to intensify this struggle. Everywhere we are heading for a quick victory; the contradictions will be resolved, but more than usual you must stand by each other. I call on the youth to stand up together with a great will of truce for peace and democracy: “A march to the triumph of peace”. For an even freer country, an even more dignified life, all young people must accomplish everything that comes their way. This is also a historical responsibility. Everything you have done so far has been for the free and honorable future of the youth. The youth that we have created will understand and magnify this. On this basis, I offer my greetings and love.
Abdullah Öcalan
¹ Kawa is the hero of the Legend of Newroz in which he fights against the Tyrant Dahak. He organized the people in the villages and with his great plan he killed the Tyrant and brought freedom to the people. When Dahak died the people in each village would turn on a fire on the mountain peaks to inform all the other people around.