People’s Defense Centre Headquarters Commander and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Executive Committee Member Murat Karayılan spoke to ANF and talked about the restructuring project agreed at the HPG meeting.

Karayılan stated that this is a project that completely overcomes the classical guerrilla, re-creates the guerrilla, which foresees the complete change of the system of war, movement, base and organization.

Murat Karayilan summed up the project as follows: “We foresee a very radical change in the guerrilla's understanding of war, movement, and practice.

The 21st century guerrilla can stand against the evolving technology of the era, can defeat enemy intelligence and technique, and can competitively use guerrilla tactics and technique.

It is a ghost army, which can be sprinkled on land in very small units, hit the enemy intensely in a coordinated guerrilla style, emerge to destroy targets and suddenly disappear when necessary.

A professional modern guerrilla. We are focusing on the principles of creating victory guerrillas in Kurdistan.”

Can you explain a little more about the role, mission, social expression of the Kurdistan guerrilla and its social transformation in relation to other examples in the world?

We are aware of the fact that we should emphasize the military organizational situation rather than its political role, mission and dimensions. When we approach this axis, guerrilla organization and the process of guerrilla militarization in the old sense are in fact a process developed in parallel with the revolutionary development.

It started with little strength. When the ARGK was established, the number of people who could become members of the ARGK was several hundred. With the establishment of the ARGK, the process of resistance has gradually grown. As far as I know, the total number of guerrillas at the end of 1989 was 925. The 1990s is the process of the popularisation of the revolution and subsequent growth of the guerrilla. By 1991 and 1992, the number of guerrillas was around 10 thousand. So in 2 years, it has increased 10 times.

Perhaps this would have been much more developed if there hadn’t been deficiencies in leadership in command. Although the guerrilla remained at a certain level, it experienced a support by the millions in the society. These millions have become increasingly progressive and it evolved into a radical revolutionary process. Social and intellectual revolution, women's revolution and democratization revolution were shaped in this way. These are the developments that the guerrilla created through its struggle.

The guerrilla in Kurdistan is an ideological political guerrilla. We can't separate it from that character. The Kurdistan guerrilla is not a structure with separate military and ideological leaderships, as is the case in various countries. It is a complete leadership of revolution that harbors military, ideological and political representation in itself.

The guerrilla got positioned in the mountains of Kurdistan as an ideological, philosophical, political and social entity, and at the same time changed and shaped the society as well as itself.

Today, the source of the strong leading position of Kurdish women in Kurdistan society is the sublimity, growth and willpower that the woman lives in guerrilla.

The hope and the revolutionary transformation created by the guerrilla force as it extended its existence and at the same time protected it against colonialism, have developed a new level of progress and renewal, and formed a new perspective. The guerilla became a major actor rebuilding the society from the beginning.

The guerrilla, of course, developed all of this with the practice of the philosophical ideological thought strength of Leader Apo (Öcalan).

Leader Apo, who knows this very well, has therefore always emphasized the guerrilla reality. He has spent most of his energy in this area. When the history of struggle is examined, it is seen that the enormous effort, persistence, decisions and works of Leader Apo have created this reality.

The social reality created by the guerrilla's 34-year struggle process is that of creating a people's reality that fights for freedom and democracy.

In other words, if we include the other parts of Kurdistan, we can talk about a guerrilla reality that was born out of a few hundreds of people and has extended to tens of thousands today and created a popular reality that struggles for freedom and democracy.

Today, the guerrilla has undertaken a significant role and mission for achieving a breakthrough for not only the societies of Kurdistan or Turkey, but for all the peoples in the Middle East. In this sense, the success of the guerrilla will be the success of all the peoples of the region. The democratic ecological paradigm of Leader Apo based on women's freedom and the fact that the guerrilla adapted its struggle on the basis of the alternative of democratic modernity reached a level that would affect the whole region.