A fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference will address the Kurdish Question. The meeting titled “Fighting fascism in the Middle East – Ocalan, the Kurds and defending the women’s revolution” will take place on Tuesday 25 September from 12.30 to 14.30.

Speakers will include:

Lloyd Russell-Moyle – MP, Julie Ward – MEP, Órfhaith Begley - Sinn Fein MP for West Tyrone,  Simon Dubbins Unite the Union - International Director, Ertugrul Kurkcu - HDP former MP.

Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq have been central to the fight against the extreme savagery of Daesh yet are now facing the barbarism of President Erdogan in his all-out war against the Kurds. In Turkey, Kurds face massive repression with Erdogan having ordered the arrest and detention of hundreds of thousands of opposition politicians, journalists, trade unionists, human rights activists and many others.

The brutal war on the Kurdish population has resulted in thousands murdered and cities destroyed. In Syria, Turkey has illegally invaded Afrin and committed acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing and atrocious human rights abuses against the Kurdish population, and in Iraq the Kurdish population live under the very real threat that Turkey will invade.

The situation is critical. Yet in Northern Syria the Kurds are developing a true progressive society that is centres on direct democracy, ecology, human rights and women’s liberation based on the teaching of the jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.