On April 4th, the birthday of Abdullah Öcalan, we congratulate the Internationalist Youth, the fighting women all over the world and all friends striving for democracy and freedom!
Why is this day important for all of us?
Abdullah Ocalan’s search for truth began in his childhood. It was his response to the injustice experienced by the girls in the feudal village community and the denial of Kurdish identity. Answers he found in Islamic teachings, among others, proved incomplete for him. When he began to study socialism, he proclaimed: “Mohammed has lost, Marx has won”. Based on his analysis of the situation in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan in the 1970s, his statement “Kurdistan is a colony” was destined to break open the concrete under which the Kurdish people seemed to be buried and prepare the ground from which not only the Kurdish people would shoot up like a resistant rose, but also all oppressed peoples, classes, ethnicities, youth and women would find a way out of a seemingly hopeless misery. By educating and organizing the people of Northern Kurdistan and building a guerrilla force that is now able to resist the fascist Turkish state and NATO’s second largest army, he opened the way for the Kurdish people to live in freedom and self-determination.
This search for answers to social problems, which had already begun in his early childhood, was to make him a beacon for all those striving for freedom, in particular with the paradigm for a democratic civilization that he developed in solitary confinement on the Turkish prison island of Imralî. His critique of real socialism, social democracy and National Liberation Movements, based on a profound analysis of the history of civilization and thus the roots of patriarchy and the state, provided a perspective for the construction of a genuine alternative to capitalism, industrialism and the state.
The transformative potential of his ideas, his philosophy and the sociology of freedom he developed also becomes evident when we consider the international conspiracy that led to his abduction on February 15, 1999. The hegemonic forces of capitalism, above all the USA, Europe and Israel, not only saw their interests in the Middle East threatened by the Kurdish freedom movement, but also saw their global hegemony in danger in Abdullah Ocalan’s ideas. And therefore facilitated his arrest and abduction by the Turkish state.
Despite solitary confinement and torture, Abdullah Ocalan continued his historical resistance undeterred and, in the course of incomparable intellectual effort, developed a paradigm that paved the way for the revolution of mentality, feelings, thoughts and emotions so urgently needed today and laid the foundation for the revolution in Rojava. In all important social issues; the question of women’s freedom, democracy, ecology, economy, social ethics and science, he has offered comprehensive solutions and thus enabled a radiant hope that is spreading to all continents today.
Every year on April 4th, we, as well as all resistant people in Kurdistan, plant trees to celebrate this day. Just like the revolution, they should sprout their branches in all directions and become deep-rooted trees that guarantee the life of humanity in the future. However, on this day we also remember the fact that Abdullah Ocalan has been imprisoned on the prison island of Imralî for 25 years under the most difficult conditions. For 3 years there has been no sign of life, no lawyer or family visits are allowed. We must fight resolutely against this historic injustice against all humanity. This means living the alternative in every place, strengthening communalism and society and never letting the demand for the release of Abdullah Ocalan fall silent!
Internationalist Commune of Rojava,
04.04.2024