The Presidential Council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) released a statement about the global freedom campaign that was launched last year and is committed to the physical freedom of the Kurdish people's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, and the democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

The KCK statement calling on Kurdish youth and Kurdish women to grow their organization and strengthen their actions in order to ensure the health, safety, and physical freedom of Abdullah Öcalan reads as follows:

“26 years have passed since the beginning of the international conspiracy, the attack on Rêber Apo (Leader Abdullah Öcalan), which was an attack on the Kurdish people and their struggle for a free existence. We condemn and curse the October 9th conspiracy once again with all our hatred and state that we will never submit to any conspiratorial approach.

We once again commemorate our heroic martyrs who protected Rêber Apo like a firewall, using the slogan “You cannot darken our sun!” by commemorating the comrades Halit Oral (a Kurdish political prisoner who set himself on fire in Maraş Prison on the first anniversary of the international conspiracy against Abdullah Öcalan, which began on October 9, 1998), Selamet Mentesh (a Kurdish political prisoner who set herself on fire in the prison of Midyat on October 23, 1998, as a reaction to the international conspiracy) and Aynur Artan (a Kurdish political prisoner who set herself on fire in the prison of Midyat on October 23, 1998, as a reaction to the international conspiracy). We bow to their memories with respect and gratitude.

We salute Rêber Apo, who has resisted the conditions of Imrali captivity and the system of absolute isolation and torture with high willpower and extraordinary intellectual power during the 26 years since the international conspiracy.

When the international capitalist hegemonic powers, led by the USA, were preparing to enter the 21st century with their so-called Greater Middle East Project, they saw Rêber Apo and the Kurdish freedom struggle led by the PKK as the biggest obstacle to their capitalist modernist and imperialist interests. Because they had already recognized that the Kurdish freedom movement led by Rêber Apo had the potential to influence the entire Middle East. Kurdistan was divided among the four main countries of the Middle East, and the Kurdish freedom struggle led by the PKK had succeeded in drawing the Kurds in all four parts into an important stance of struggle. Kurds in the four parts of Kurdistan and abroad, armed with the consciousness of freedom, did not want to spend another century without a leader and without status, and on this basis, they embraced Rêber Apo and the freedom struggle without hesitation. They were showing all kinds of support and were gradually becoming the biggest dynamic force of change and transformation in the Middle East in favor of democracy and freedom values. The aim of the international conspiracy was to eliminate this new free Kurdish will. For this purpose, they set up the international conspiracy in a very dirty collaboration. They did not hesitate to make all kinds of concessions among themselves for its realization. Because they calculated that if the Kurdish freedom struggle was smashed, they could more easily take over the Middle East and redesign it as they wished.

While the international conspiracy of October 9th had these regional aims, its main aim for the Kurds was to leave them without identity, leadership, and status in the new century. They aimed to make the Kurdish people lose another century just because they did not submit to the capitalist hegemonic world system and did not give up and surrender their will to struggle against the genocidal colonialist Turkish Republic’s policy of annihilation and denial. However, thanks to the new and unique understanding of resistance, intellectual creativity, and productivity shown by Rêber Apo, the indomitable will to struggle of the Kurdistan freedom guerrilla, and our patriotic people, who have taken responsibility for the cause at a very high level, these dirty aims of the international conspiracy were frustrated. In the 26 years that have passed since the beginning, a more conscious and organized popular reality, a more professional guerrilla, and a matured level of political consciousness and practicalization of the essence of the party have emerged. The national and social values of the Kurdish people have been further enhanced during these 26 years of struggle and have succeeded in achieving a democratic organizational perspective.

However, the comprehensive aims of the failed conspiracy are being updated in various forms by the conspiratorial forces and are being carried out in different ways and methods. The current form of the international conspiracy is in an effort to sustain itself in many areas. Keeping Rêber Apo as a “hostage” and under torture in solitary confinement in the Imrali isolation center is the current dimension of the conspiracy. By keeping the doors of Imrali closed, on the one hand the Kurds are being deprived of their leader; on the other hand, solutions to historical problems such as the Kurdish question, which is the biggest and main question of Turkey, are being prevented from being solved, and Turkey is being prevented from entering a democratization process.

Rêber Apo’s cause is the cause of the century, and its solution will be the solution of the century. The solution to such a historical case that has left its mark on a century is not possible without a revolutionary struggle. However, the political and legal grounds opened by the revolutionary struggle must also be utilized strongly. As our people and the democratic public opinion have been following, according to the existing international law, the conditions necessary for the physical freedom of Rêber Apo have now emerged. The sentence imposed on our leader has now expired according to international law. The most recent meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the Council of Europe (CoE) was forced to admit this fact, but in order to stall the Kurds in practice, they have developed a “delaying policy.” This policy of delay by the CoE is unacceptable.

While these developments are taking place in terms of international law, the anti-Kurdish fascist AKP-MHP regime is engaged in a major legal conspiracy against Rêber Apo. It is trying to develop a state of lawlessness by imposing disciplinary penalties on Rêber Apo without any justifiable basis. It weaves this a little more tightly every day, just like a spider weaving its web. It aims to prolong the “hostage” situation and the conditions of captivity on Rêber Apo indefinitely with the unfounded disciplinary penalties that it has linked to automatism. In order to prevent any objection to these so-called disciplinary penalties, Rêber Apo’s lawyers are not even notified. In this way, the fascist Turkish regime aims to legally nullify the “violation” verdict of the ECHR on the “aggravated life imprisonment” sentence that it has specially developed for Rêber Apo. Along with the ongoing absolute isolation, we all need to see this conspiratorial reality imposed in legal terms and develop all kinds of struggles to prevent it.

Rêber Apo overcame the torturous conditions of imprisonment in Imrali with the power of his free thought and developed a new paradigm of a democratic, ecological society based on the free women and presented it to the Kurdish people as well as to all oppressed and exploited peoples of the Middle East and the world. This new world of ideas and thought, which Rêber Apo lives and reveals in his own person, is almost a program of salvation for all the peoples of the Middle East and the world, especially the Kurds and the peoples of Kurdistan. This tremendous level of thought, which he revealed in a state of captivity and under the torture of absolute isolation, is being embraced by the peoples of the world, the democratic humanity. A very valuable and very meaningful friendship and brotherhood relationship with the peoples of the Middle East as well as with various peoples in Europe and many other parts of the world is developing. The relationship of democratic peace and brotherhood that Rêber Apo wants to develop between peoples, beliefs, and cultures, the relationship of democratic modernity is beginning to produce new values for humanity, for democracy, and for freedom. It is beginning to be accepted as the only way out of the social and vital crises caused by the statist, power-oriented system that the capitalist ideology has built itself as nation-state and industrialism. As this reality emerges, the level of global embrace of Rêber Apo and the demand for his freedom develop in parallel.

The global campaign under the name of ‘Freedom for Abdullah Ocalan, a Political Solution to the Kurdish Question,’ which was initiated last year under the leadership of our international friends and gradually joined by leading intellectuals, writers, academics, artists, lawyers, feminists, ecologists, anti-capitalists, anarchists, and laborers on a global scale, and finally by Nobel laureates, has reached an important level. Once again, we salute all those who are participating in and supporting these efforts for the physical freedom of the Rêber Apo, all our friends, and their valuable struggles. With the conspiracy entering a new year, we express our belief and expectation that this global work for the freedom of Rêber Apo will be carried to a new stage.

Rêber Apo’s thesis of women’s liberation illuminates the path of Kurdish women more and more in the 21st century. The struggle waged by Kurdish women who set out with his theses on women’s liberation is bringing about very serious developments in Kurdistan and the Middle East. The high level of will of Kurdish women in the political, military, and social spheres is transforming into a serious awakening and consciousness in all parts of Kurdistan, as well as among the women of the neighboring peoples with whom they live together and intertwined. This is emerging as an unstoppable development. No state power is enough to suppress this conscious, enlightened, and questioning will of women’s freedom. At the current stage, the women’s freedom stance that has emerged in all four parts of Kurdistan and abroad, and the level of ideological paradigmatic nutrition of this stance from Rêber Apo, continues to play a pioneering role in terms of frustrating the international conspiracy.

The Kurdistan freedom guerrilla, taking its basic ideological, philosophical, and organizational nourishment from Rêber Apo, has been the most fundamental force that has prevented the international conspiracy from succeeding in the past 26 years, thanks to its determined struggle and sharp will. Our guerrilla force has an unbreakable bond with Rêber Apo and sees him as its main moral center. Thanks to this strong morale and consciousness it receives from Rêber Apo, it continues to show its strength and will to resist under all circumstances.

In order to break the absolute isolation of Rêber Apo, to bring freedom closer, to frustrate the total war plans of the Kurdish enemy AKP-MHP fascist regime against the Kurds, and on this basis to defeat the conspiracy in its new year, we call on our people living in all parts of Kurdistan and abroad, together with their friends, to carry out the struggle at the highest level until the main goal is achieved. On this basis, we particularly call on Kurdish youth and Kurdish women to grow their organization and strengthen their actions in order to ensure the health, safety, and physical freedom of our leader, Rêber Apo.”