The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was founded 41 years ago. The founding congress took place on 27 November 1978 in the village of Fis in Amed. On the occasion of the founding anniversary, the Executive Council of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) issued a statement congratulating "Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan], our people, friends and all those who fight for freedom and democracy" on the anniversary of the founding of the PKK. The founding of the party changed "the history of Kurdistan and the Middle East".

The statement reads as follows:

"Together with the grouping process before the founding of the party, the PKK looks back on 47 years of history. We remember with gratitude and respect the people who fell in these 47 years. Rêber Apo has defined the PKK as the 'Party of the Martyrs. The values created by the PKK were created by our martyrs under the lead of Rêber Apo. The standards of value for the life and struggle of our people and the KCK system were also created by the martyrs. These standards that the martyrs have set in their lives will continue to guide our liberation struggle."

Struggle developed amid impossibilities

"Rêber Apo and the PKK have led a people get up from their deathbeds. In a time of hopelessness and impossibilities, only the existence of this people was based on. Starting from the principle that the greatest force is the self-power, an organization from zero took place and struggle was developed amid impossibilities.

With the conviction that those making impossibilities the very reason of struggle will not be defeated, great developments took place within a short period of time that no political power would have ever expected. People, especially the youth, united around Rêber Apo and entered into a struggle for their existence and a free life. The followers of Apo and the PKK became a force that influenced the political developments in Kurdistan, Turkey and the Middle East in an unforeseen way. Yet in 1979, the US intelligence agency CIA reported to their government that "the PKK is the most dangerous organization in Kurdistan, Turkey and the Middle East for the USA and its collaborators”.

PKK gave rise to the hope of freedom

"The PKK has above all given the youth, women and the people self-confidence. It has given rise to the hope of freedom. It came into being as a youth movement. The PKK has created a youthful dynamic in the entire Kurdish people and has become a popular movement in which the youth is in the front ranks. Trusting in their self-power, they were also able to remain standing during the military coup of September 12, 1980. When fascism was most noticeable, they started the guerilla fight in 1984.

In the fifth year of the guerrilla struggle, popular uprisings [Kurdish: Serhildan] took place in Kurdistan and a democratic, social, political, national and cultural revolution began. This revolution has continued uninterrupted for decades and has created a reality in which the Kurdish people are passionately committed to a free and democratic life. The women, whose fate was as dark as that of Kurdistan, stood up and heralded a democratic revolutionary age with the paradigm of free individuals in a free society, affecting the entire Middle East.

Today the PKK is the name of Kurdish existence. That’s why the people of Kurdistan chant everywhere the slogan 'The PKK is the people and the people is here'.

Today Rêber Apo is not only regarded by the Kurds, but by all peoples of the Middle East as a leader for freedom and democracy. Through the struggle led by him and the PKK, a time has been created in which all ethnic groups and religious communities in the Middle East can live peacefully in the age of a democratic civilization.

The fate of the Middle East will be determined by the peoples

The fate of the Middle East will no longer be determined by the representatives of capitalist modernity and their collaborators, who have emerged from a five-thousand-year-old system of power-obsessed and statist exploitation, but by the peoples. The 47-year struggle of Rêber Apo and the PKK introduced the age of peoples to the Middle East.

Rêber Apo’s paradigm for women’s liberty, ecology and democratic society and the Democratic Confederal structuring which is the people’s system for freedom and democracy, became the hope of the peoples who want to get rid of the system that favors power, State and exploitation. We as the KCK will put this system of freedom and democracy into practice with the principle of democratic modernity and make it into a democratic socialist model that all democratic communities will take as an example.

We, the Kurdish Freedom Movement, reiterate our promise to enhance the struggle and realize Free Kurdistan and Democratic Middle East in the 42nd year. Once again, we salute Rêber Apo and remember with gratitude our martyrs, promising to make their longings real.”