Who is Abdullah Öcalan?

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Born on 4th April 1948, he grows up the village of Amara, in northern Kurdistan, south-east of what is now the Republic of Turkey. Öcalan gets to know a colonised country: Kurdistan. After the First World War, the historic territory, where the Kurdish people lived, was divided into 4 parts by the Western powers, between Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Physical and cultural genocides were carried out. Kurds were stripped of their political rights and their language was often banned. Kurdish identity was denied in favour of the dominant identity within each of the colonising states. In 1966, Abdullah Öcalan goes to university in Ankara. He becomes involved in socialist groups on the Turkish left and in organisations fighting for the rights of the Kurdish people. A coup d'état takes place in 1971, dealing a major blow to the revolutionary upsurge then underway in Turkey and in Northern Kurdistan.

After an initial 6-month stay in prison in 1972, Abdullah Öcalan declares that Kurdistan is a colony. In 1978, him and other young students found the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. Its aim is to create an independent and free Kurdistan. In 1980 another coup d'état takes place, and thousands of PKK militants are imprisoned, tortured, some to death. In 1984, Abdullah Öcalan decides to launch the PKK's armed struggle, which remains the only means of political action in this context of great repression. In 1993 he takes part in the first peace process and declares a unilateral ceasefire. The Turkish president at the time died in unclear circumstances, putting an end to the process.Abdullah Öcalan‘s will for peace is not in the interest of the Imperialist powers, especially for the USA and NATO. They want to destroy the Kurdistan Liberation Movement so they can control the region with no opposition.

In the 1990s, faced with the collapse of the USSR, Öcalan carries out extensive research to develop a new paradigm for socialism.He emphasises that women represent the oldest colony, and that their liberation should be the basis on which society as a whole can be liberated. In front of the 5,000-year-old patriarchal state system, he proposes the paradigm of democratic modernity based on women's liberation, ecology and radical democracy. In 1999, following an international complot by dozens of states, Öcalan is captured in Kenya by Mossad and the CIA. Today, 26 years later, he is still locked up in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali. From prison he publishes numerous books, including ‘The Manifesto for Democratic Civilisation’. Öcalan's paradigm has served as a model for the Rojava Revolution in north-eastern Syria, and initiated the Jin Jiyan Azadî Revolution in eastern Kurdistan and Iran.

These ideas are being put into practice by millions of Kurds, more and more Arabic people, Armenian people and Syriac people. And increasingly, many others from all across the world. During the time of his imprisonment, Abdullah Öcalan has been subjected to numerous human rights violations, including death threats, poisoning, isolation and other types of psychological torture.Despite the extremely difficult conditions, Abdullah Öcalan has always continued to search for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.

After 10 years in heavy isolation, on 27 February he launched a historic appeal ‘for peace and democratic society’, which was widely echoed around the world. Öcalan's aim is to build a genuine peace with the Turkish state based on the brotherhood of peoples and to take action against the imperialist war being waged against the Kurdish people and the peoples of the Middle East. Millions of people around the world are calling for his immediate release so that he can play his full part in the current peace process. For the moment, at 76 years of age and after 26 years of imprisonment, he is still held captive on the island of Imrali.

Lêgerîn Magazine