Newroz 2024 declaration published

The 2024 Newroz declaration was announced in Amed. Newroz will be celebrated in hundreds of cities, and will be held with the slogan "Rabe dema azadî û serkeftinê ye".

NEWROZ 2024

This year's Newroz declaration was announced by the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), Tevgera Jinên Azad (TJA), Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and People's Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) at the Dicle Culture and Art Association in Amed.

DTK co-chair Berdan Öztürk, DEM Party co-chair Tülay Hatimoğulları, DBP co-chair Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar, TJA activist Dilan Güvenç, as well as many people attended the statement.

DTK co-chair Berdan Öztürk read the Kurdish version of the declaration.

This year's Newroz declaration said: "Newroz, which marks the beginning of spring and the herald of innovation for the people of Mesopotamia, has turned into a fire of resistance that has lasted for centuries for the Kurdish people. The Kurdish people have fought great struggles and paid the price against the rulers, colonialists, invaders and genociders at every moment of history. Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan defined the fight of the Kurdish people with the words: ‘Our fight has not been and cannot be against any race, religion, sect or group. Our fight has been against oppression, ignorance, injustice, backwardness, all kinds of oppression.’ The fight of the Kurdish people is the fight of the people of the world, of all the oppressed.”

The declaration added: “Newroz, which is the spark of a new birth, life and a free future for our people, is the day in which all the people of the world, especially the people of the Middle East, see themselves, embrace and celebrate themselves, and also represents the universal struggle against the monist, nationalist and sexist fascist state mentality.

The torch, which is the symbol of blacksmith Kawa's fight against the tyrant Dehak, burned in the hands of Mazlum Doğan in the Amed Prison, where there is pitch darkness, evil and torture, centuries later, and it continues to burn.”

The declaration continued: “Newroz 2024 is of historical importance for those who are fighting for freedom in the grip of genocide. The oppression that caused Newroz to appear on the stage of history as a legacy of resistance continues today. Hostility towards the Kurdish people's identity, language, territory, nature, water, mountains and stones is increasing. The stance of the Kurdish people against all kinds of genocidal policies is turning into a magnificent resistance day by day. The Kurdish people, who turned the fields into a people's congress and declared their will, will turn this year's Newroz into the fire of the 'Physical freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, solution to the Kurdish question' campaign.”

The declaration underlined that “the freedom of Mr. Abdullah Öcalan, whose democratic, ecological and free women's paradigm has spread and been accepted all over the world, is also the freedom of the Kurds and all peoples. Mr. Abdullah Öcalan, who showed the way to an honorable peace in every meeting held with him under the 25-year-old Imrali torture system and stated that he was ready to take any responsibility for this, is kept in severe isolation with absolute lack of communication, and his ties with the world are wanted to be cut off. For this very reason, with determination, will and insistence, the squares of Newroz will be the squares where the isolation will be shattered and the physical freedom of Mr. Abdullah Öcalan, the defender and resister of an honorable peace, will be ensured.

Newroz is unity and unity as much as it is resistance and freedom. The only demand and most precious dream of the Kurds in four parts of Kurdistan and all over the world is national unity. It is the responsibility of all of us to ensure this unity and to stand against betrayal and collaboration, in the conditions of the Third World War, which included risks and opportunities, in which the Middle East and even the world was redesigned, on the verge of genocide.”

The first fire of Newroz this year will be lit on 15 March in Karakoçan. On the same day, fires will be lit at the walls of Amed and Izmir Kadifekale.

Newroz will then be celebrated in Van, Batman, Şırnak, Istanbul, Izmir and Mersin. In Amed the fire of Newroz will be lit on 21 March.