The Platform of Democratic Institutions announced a declaration regarding the ‘Democracy and Freedom’ rally to be held in Batman on 17 November. DBP co-chairs Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar and Keskin Bayındır, DEM Party MPs and TJA (Free Women’s Movement) activists attended the press conference held at Petrol İş Union hall in Batman on Monday. The banner ‘We are expanding our freedom march for a democratic country’ was unfurled at the event.

The declaration, read by TJA activist Havva Can in Kurdish and by DEM Party Assembly Member Sema Koç in Turkish, said the following:

“The crises and chaos created by the system of capitalist modernity have spread all over the world, especially in the Middle East. The system's wheel of violence and exploitation has made life unbearable by reaching the level of social destruction, ecocide and femicide. The system, whose bankruptcy is certain with its institutions and rules, has become incapable of managing even its own internal crises, let alone finding solutions to the problems of humanity, which have reached gigantic dimensions. It has become clear that the structural crises of the system have spread to our region and the world as the 3rd World War. Every move of the forces of capitalist modernity, which respond to the peoples' struggle for freedom, democracy and rights with oppression, violence and massacres, to overcome the crisis only deepens the problems even more. The reflection of these wars on the new energy routes of the capitalist modernity system, which is fundamentally based on further profit and exploitation, on the peoples is nothing but oppression, violence, death, massacre, poverty, hunger and new waves of migration.

The Middle East is the centre of the war of profit and exploitation of the capitalist modernity system with which it is in structural contradiction due to its historical, cultural and social heritage. It is contrary to the nature of things that the system, which has turned our region into a bloodbath with the nation-state mentality for a hundred years, finds solutions to the problems it has caused. The separation of peoples who have lived together for thousands of years and have common cultural and social values with a nation-state mentality did not and will not yield any results other than deepening the problems. The wheel of war and exploitation of the system has once again shown that peoples should solve their own problems through dialogue and negotiation and peaceful means. In this context, the 'Democratic Nation' and 'Democratic Confederalism' concepts developed by Mr Abdullah Öcalan offer a great chance to solve the problems of humanity.

The Third World War, which started with the end of the bipolar world order and the Cold War, has reached a new stage. While the crisis created by the Russia-Ukraine war continues at the global level, the local conflict between Israel and Hamas with the events of 7 October has approached the level of a regional war. The war between Israel, Palestine and Lebanon will inevitably have repercussions on the countries of the region in particular and the world in general. The denialist policies of despotic nation-states that reject the historical, cultural, political and social reality of the peoples have made the region open to all kinds of foreign intervention. Despotic powers that try to maintain their power through oppression, violence and massacre have no legitimacy in the eyes of the peoples. Just as no power that did not ensure internal peace has survived throughout history, no structure that continues its policies of rejection and denial has a chance to survive today.

Turkey is one of the countries that has not shown the prudence to solve its fundamental problems with the policies of rejection and denial it has pursued in the Kurdish question and has not achieved internal peace. Policies that ignore the historical, cultural, social and political reality of our geography are the main cause of a periodic conflict for one hundred and fifty years and an uninterrupted conflict for fifty years. Mr Öcalan has repeatedly expressed his will for the conflict process to evolve into a negotiated solution, but these chances and opportunities have been squandered every time. The policies of solutionlessness based on the politics of denial, which have yielded no results, have not gone beyond confirming the regional nature of the Kurdish issue. At the current stage, it is the only way for peoples to solve their problems with their own hands against the opportunism of hegemonic powers and their satellite nation-states to fortify themselves through new wars.

In this context, the discussions on the Kurdish issue, for whatever reason, are positive and important. Mr Öcalan's remark ‘Isolation continues. I have the theoretical and practical power to move this process from the grounds of violence and conflict to the political and legal grounds if the conditions arise' is of historic importance. Mr. Öcalan's decisive mission in paving the way and managing the developments in the past periods of ceasefire, dialogue and negotiation is known. The Kurdish people and politics trust in the theoretical and practical power of Mr Öcalan today as they did yesterday; they believe that he is the only addressee and interlocutor for a solution. The Kurdish politics, with all its institutions, has declared that it will act in accordance with its historical and social responsibility for a peaceful solution to the problems of Turkey’s peoples through negotiation and dialogue.

The government must firstly show the society that it is sincere in the discussions it has initiated on the Kurdish issue and take concrete steps. With regard to the Kurdish issue, practice is more important than words. As seen in world examples, trust and social support are vital for a solution. However, the government's talk of internal peace and brotherhood on the one hand, and its pursuit of policies contrary to this on the other, calls into question its sincerity. Attacking every area where Kurds are present outside and carrying out trustee policies inside is not a sign of a solution. On the contrary, it is an insistence on the continuation of a hundred years of rejection and denial policies. With these contradictions in discourse and practice, the government can neither convince the Kurdish people nor the society in Turkey, nor can it get the results it desires for its own power. There will be no solution by ignoring the will of the Kurdish people through the usurpation by trustees, and the Kurdish people will not submit to these attacks today as they did yesterday. The government must immediately give up these policies of trustee usurpation and violence.

This policy means the deepening of problems at home and the continuation of compromising policies abroad. This means that the social, political and economic crises that have emerged as a result of the security policies pursued by the government for the last ten years will evolve into a total collapse. For this reason, the peoples, especially the Kurds, women, youth, workers and the oppressed as a whole expect the AKP-MHP government to be sincere and transparent about the discussions it has initiated. The way to achieve this is for the government to immediately lift the aggravated isolation as required by the constitution and universal legal norms to which it is a party, and to secure Mr Öcalan's conditions of health, safety and freedom. In addition, opportunities for him to meet with his organisation, his lawyers and all social segments in favour of a democratic solution should be created.

On this basis, we call on everyone in favour of peace, democracy and fraternity in Turkey to increase the common struggle against the trustee and monist policies. We invite all peoples, women, youth, labourers and the oppressed to participate in the ‘Democracy and Freedom Rally’ in Batman on 17 November and to speak out against this oppression.”