By Dilzar Dîlok, member of the PKK Central Committee
The most beautiful part of describing the guerrilla is to share the life that lies between dream and reality, but whose place can never be absolutely determined, and to try to define a place for this life. Each word is a step in this sharing. Writing in the guerrilla is not the internal reflection of picking up a pen at the whim of the angels of inspiration who come when they feel like it. Nor is it mere propaganda. The most beautiful aspect of writing about the guerrilla is the ability to transmit to all hearts in distant lands what is filtered through the meanings that settle in the depths of the heart, thus making distances meaningless, integrating, overcoming plains, mountains, border fences and all civilisational barriers that create separation. This is what creates the will to tell and what gives meaning to storytelling. It is to give an explanation for the fact that we have given our whole life to breathe freely, to carry the meaning out of ourselves and to want to spread this purpose to the whole of life.
Life in the mountains creates a perception that makes our hearts tremble. Because when we say mountain, while the simple life that is created in the name of life is erased and disappears, the layers of meaningful life that we create with ourselves rise like a mountain. The most beautiful aspect of mountain life, where every moment has meaning, is the intensity of the effort to be aware of the moment you are living. This intensity is reflected in the desire to immortalise each moment, to embody it, to turn it into a work. And the flourishing of this desire in each guerrilla, despite all the negative factors, reveals positive aspects along with the colourfulness of life. Infinity is not sought in mountain life. It is the embodiment of the consciousness that there is something beyond eternity. The desire of every guerrilla is to embroider something of themselves and the living spaces they feel into the time that is running out. Heroic ascents are the expression of this desire at the summit.
There is life and death in mountain life. After all, we are brothers and sisters. But death is far from being an awareness that one is helpless in the face of it or that one tries to defeat it. The awareness of death never tends to prevent or postpone dying in the mountains. But the guerrillas who find themselves in this life breathe with the love of life, as if to prove that they can rescue something from death. Writing is a method of this love of life, of taking something from the hands of death, of creating a legacy of freedom to leave to the next generation. To write about a day, a part of a mountain life, or the glory of the meaning embedded in a moment, is to share that glory, to multiply it and to engrave it in time.
The life of the Kurdish guerrillas, who gave their bodies to the mountain winds in the heart of a wounded geography, who tended to live the spirit of time together with time and held on to life firmly, is the reality that created this greatness. Mountain life is concrete, but it is also charged with metaphysical meanings. The creation of new meanings out of lived concreteness is something that happens every day.
A strand of hair takes you to infinite meanings in this life. When you walk along a path and see strands of hair caught in the trees, you can't help but stop and think. A long strand of hair, alone, surrendering to the wind, swaying. It speaks to the wind as it waves. To whom does it belong, how long has it been on this branch on this path, how long has it been away from the body to which it belongs, how many seasons has it been in this new place, how many spring suns has it felt, how many autumn sorrows has it seen on the slope of this branch? What does it say to the wind, does it experience the sadness of separation or the joy of its new place, what melodies are hidden in its waves? We can ask thousands of questions about this strand of hair. Those who know life in the mountains will multiply these questions, and similar questions will flutter on the wings of the wind along with the fluctuation of that strand of hair. As if sensing parallel universes, parallel lives will be recalled in the fluctuation of that strand of hair...
In mountain life, the moments lived have taken root in the heart of time. And no power will be able to remove them from our hearts. They have been lived and written in the spirit of time. Writing what is written in the spirit of time with a pen fulfils another purpose besides multiplying these moments in mountain life. By writing, the memory of humanity, which tends to forget, takes precautions for its own human history, its own history of freedom and resistance. Until the time comes when even what is written will disappear, what is written will become history and will be written in the memory of a new free humanity. In this way, the events will not disappear, they will remain in the bodies of hearts that breathe free times and never end their search for freedom.
We are in the Middle East. In the Middle East, in Kurdistan, a nation that is not a nation-state, the first outbreak of the PKK was a process of building knowledge. The guerrilla struggle is also a retreat in this sense. The mountain is a place of retreat and struggle. Mountains are very favourable for guerrilla warfare. But for the PKK guerrillas, the mountains of Kurdistan are not only a battlefield but also a place of freedom to create a new life. The people of the sea make their living from the sea, they sail when they are bored. They talk to the waves, they take the sound of the water from the drops and put it into the strokes. Desert people find everything they are looking for in the desert. They even found their religion in the desert, a religion that will endure for thousands of years and spread across much of the world. For the foundations of life are laid in the desert.
At such times, the people of Kurdistan also turn to the mountains, to the seclusion of their own social land. They open to the mountains as they open to the sea. They open their hearts like a sail. Just as the winds blowing from the sea, even if they are fierce, caress the hearts of those who have set their hearts on the sea climate, the harsh mountain winds touch the hearts of the Kurdish guerrillas in all seasons.
Even outside guerrilla life and guerrilla warfare, the phenomenon of going to the mountains in our country is about going away, going towards oneself. Going to the mountains is an orientation to find the search. To be friends with the wind, brothers and sisters to the rustling of the leaves, partners in the moments when the earth touches the human skin, is the windpipe of those who know this climate. And to be a guerrilla is to inhale this breath without restriction.
The guerrilla's relationship with the land is not just an embrace and a refuge. It is embracing, completing, feeling each other, interdependence or sharing life in harmony with the universe... The guerrilla blesses and sanctifies the land of Kurdistan with the drops of blood and sweat that he drains from his body, with his work and the heart that he adds to his work, with the light of his loving eyes; in this sense, he fulfils the role of sanctifying the land that is embodied in human beings at the highest level. I believe that the freedom fighters of all peoples have experienced a fraternisation through the blood they have given to the earth.
The ability of guerrilla warfare in Kurdistan to last for many years and to become massive is related to the suitability of the geography and the people who are suitable for this geography, the people who unite their hearts with the mountains and the collective will to live in freedom.
When people shiver in their most difficult moments, it is because they are far from the peace of a mother's womb. And the warmth they seek in such moments is the warmth of a mother's womb. The mountains of Kurdistan are the womb of freedom for the guerrillas. It is the womb of the mother. We Kurdish freedom fighters, PKK guerrillas, are not in the mountains of our motherland in the East of the world, but in the middle of our own world of freedom. The teachings of Abdullah Ocalan are our life's blood. The project of the democratic nation developed by our leadership shows the way to live freely together with all peoples, all religious and cultural groups and all societies, without homogenisation, sameness and turning differences into a cause for enmity. This is a beautiful path that we can walk together with all the peoples of the world.
The guerrilla consecrates and sanctifies the soil of Kurdistan with the drops of blood and sweat that he drains from his body, with his work and the heart that he adds to his work, with the light of his loving eyes; in this sense, he fulfils the role of consecrating the soil that is embodied in the human being at the highest level. The blood that is shed through the reality of being wounded or martyred (if we look beyond the philosophy of blood, with the awareness that this only deepens the divisions between peoples, despite all the pain experienced), obliges us to understand the place that the blood shed by human beings, who are an important part of the universe, will occupy in the existence of the universe. In doing so, we establish a relationship between ourselves and the Earth, and between ourselves and the Universe.
One of the important factors for the guerrilla to create itself is to write, to tell about the guerrilla, to introduce the guerrilla, to share the guerrilla feelings with the whole society. Guerrilla narration is also the core of the guerrilla struggle for freedom. Although guerrilla memoirs, stories, diaries and poems constitute an important library, they have not reached the capacity to tell about the guerrilla as a whole. In other words, the guerrilla is largely waiting to be told.
Guerrilla literature is the translation of PKK's morality, PKK's ethics into words and it is conveyed to the whole society. It is the translation of life and meaning into words by combining them with ethics. It is to create some pauses in the incessant flow of life. When a guerrilla writes something about his own life, it means that he has created an inner flow without leaving the fast flow of life. What he writes are the drops of that inner flow. Sometimes, as our leadership says, not understanding life while living it leads to deeper meanings during the writing phase.
When Rêber Apo wants to describe the project of free life as a novel, he reveals the role of literature in the creation of a new life. The fact that his analysis of "How to Live" is a draft of a novel documents this fact. It should also be noted that the claim to write the novel of the leadership depends on the claim to be in comradeship with the leadership. And Heval Beritan is the best example of the female guerrilla's claim to be in comradeship with the leadership.
For the guerrilla, literature is as important a form of self-identity and self-expression as military action. In revolutionary struggles around the world, guerrillas are known for their poetry, stories and memoirs. This fact is formed as a result of the act of writing, as a result of those who create life, those who claim to create a new life, telling about life as part of this claim.
The whole of the guerrilla struggle is centred on the answer to the question of how to live. The continuity of this question creates the determination to multiply life in the face of death. By constantly creating life, creating moments and creating meaning, steps are taken to defeat death. Moving forward by realising oneself through a life interwoven with mountains, rivers, trees of all kinds and every shade of green opens the way to creating a new meaning in each guerrilla. And the writing of these moments of creation, which form the sociology of freedom, also becomes a part of the sociology of freedom itself. Every line written represents what has been rescued from the grasp of death through great acts of life. To write what one has experienced, to write without adding extra words, is one of the basic methods of encountering the truth of life in a struggle for life and death.
Writing generalises the private. It pluralises the singular. It transforms individualities into communities. Because what is experienced belongs to the individual, but writing collectivises this belonging. Writing in the guerrilla means sharing with the whole of society what is confined to the individual. What is private ceases to be private to the individual and becomes the self, the essence and the freedom of the whole of society.
To write in the guerrilla is to be aware of one's responsibility for history and society, and to approach one's life with this awareness. It is a way to be at the heart of what is happening, so that life does not pass by, and to listen to their spirit of completion, as well as to one's own spirit, which is moving towards completion. How can two completely different goals be reached on the same path? Perhaps two completely different projections of the universe on the same axis can be reached on the same path. Guerrilla literature is like that. Through writing, the guerrilla not only realises himself, but also socialises himself by communicating what he has realised and sheds light on the struggle for self-realisation of his comrades.
Guerrilla writing is about finding the words of the guerrillas hidden in the depths of the forest, extracting them and bringing them into the present. It is to be aware of the fact that time, completed without treating moments as separate pieces of time, extends to all life. It is to integrate the universe and time with its own truth. It is to enliven the fact that history is sociological with the awareness that individuals and lives create history.
Every act of writing is an act of doing what has not been done, and it touches the souls of the guerrillas because it reminds them of what has not been done. It creates a sense of sadness, indebtedness and incompleteness, because it creates an awareness of what has not been done, as well as pride in what has been written. Guerrilla literature unites imagination and reality. It fuses the two in the existence of the reality of guerrilla life and leaves them with a new free life. Every moment of guerrilla life is a moment of self-creation, a moment of liberation. Through literature, guerrillas create a moment of the meaning of the word from the essence of all these moments. Like collecting the essence of nature from thousands of flowers in a honeycomb, they collect the meanings of life and create their lives.
A guerrilla's heart is like a rainbow. In this heart there are all the longings, joys, sorrows and all the concentrations of emotions related to life. The traces of freedom turn into struggle, find clothes in words and leave traces of time on the guerrilla's tongue. Each of them is created by being washed by the mountain winds and the raging rivers of Kurdistan. The guerrilla language is created by testing oneself at every moment.
No vocabulary, no treasure trove of words is enough to describe the pieces of life that guerrillas collect in the their hearts, which are more valuable than treasures. The guerrilla language is different. It is different from other languages and ways of life. Our words have become different, as have our meanings and explanations. A separate state of mind, a separate identification of the universe and its parts, a separate naming and a separate world of meaning has been created. And the literature of the guerrillas was shaped accordingly. Emotions, the culmination of emotions, and the translation of emotions into thought and action have taken on new forms and new meanings.
The guerrilla can best describe the guerrilla. Competent literary writers can also describe the guerrilla well, but the guerrilla's narrative is different. Because the guerrilla filters what he writes through the intersection of life, meaning, past, future and moment. Guerrilla literature is the creation of a new world of meaning through words filtered through the resistance of free living. It is partly the humility of living and writing that creates this conviction. The beauty of what is written without living is flawed. It is incomplete. In the guerrilla, on the other hand, every bit of the lived universe is reflected in what is written. It agrees to carry its own world into society.
Because guerrilla literature is also propaganda, it has a revolutionary character. This character is present in every word. In the relationship with everything in the universe, one feels a struggle to create new life. Guerrilla literature is the translation of this struggle for life into literature. Memoirs and diaries such as A Ceylan in the Zagros, Beritan's Diary, Zinarin's Diary not only describe guerrilla life but also helped thousands of young people to join the struggle. There are also some guerrilla poems that have changed the lives of many people. So much so that the number of people who hear the poem "I was human" and go on with their lives as before is small. Despite all the corruption and meaninglessness of capitalist modernity, the fact that words and writings change people's lives is still valid for guerrilla literature.
In addition to Kurdish literature in all its dialects, the guerrilla library also contains a wide range of Turkish, Arabic and Persian literature. Of course, the fact that our struggle began in Northern Kurdistan, the genocide that took place and the need to explain ourselves to the assimilated people of our society as well as to the people of Turkey have led us to take greater steps in the field of writing in Turkish. We write in all Middle Eastern languages because we want to reach all the people of the Middle East.
In every guerrilla's diary, we can certainly find poems by poets he likes and anecdotes by writers he likes. At the same time, there are poems that are the overflow of his own heart, and each sentence, even the simplest, takes us to the life that smells of the land. Although the Kurds are a stateless society, there is a Kurdistan in the heart of every Kurd. He builds himself along with the destiny of his country. He builds his country as much as he builds himself. He builds on what he has completed. And on top of that, the longing, ambition, determination and future utopia of the unfinished... The tension of hearts on the line of fire and the enthusiasm for action...
The fact that guerrilla literature is so powerful and important shows the importance that Rêber Apo attaches to culture and art. The most beautiful aspect of our leadership is that it gives importance to literary works because they are sacred to society. Because of the strong bond of love, comradeship and the demand for a free life between us and our leadership, every guerrilla has the feeling of reaching the leadership through writing, of meeting the reality of the leadership through writing. Words do not disappear when they are spoken or written. They come to life, walk, move, determine their destination and travel on the wings of the wind towards the goal. Guerrilla literature is the inscription of the lives rescued from the hands of death in the register of humanity with the mentality of free life. It is the community of the whole of humanity that takes on a new meaning.
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