An online petition has been launched calling on the Australian government to de-list the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a “terrorist organisation”. Peter Boyle reports.
Abdullah Ocalan
Abdullah Ocalan's jailers hoped that by slamming shut the prison doors, the world would forget about him. But, as John Tully writes, Ocalan remains a living symbol of resistance to a century of oppression by the Turkish state.
Delegates to the policy conference of Unite union in Britain have called on Turkey to release Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned for more than 22 years, reports Susan Price.
Trade unions have a long, proud history of supporting struggles of workers and oppressed people around the world. The campaign to free Abdullah Öcalan is a continuation of this activism, says Clare Baker.
Veteran South Africa anti-Apartheid activist Sidney Luckett spoke to Green Left's Peter Boyle about the important link between South Africa's iconic freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Thousands of Kurds and their international supporters converged for a huge protest in Strasbourg, France, to demand the release of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, writes Peter Boyle.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn met with Kurdish solidarity activists on March 30, according to the campaign website freedomforocalan.org.
Leyla Guven, a member of Turkey’s parliament for the left-wing, Kurdish-led People’s Democratic party (HDP), launched an indefinite hunger strike on November 7 from Amed Prison, where she was held jailed by Turkey’s regime. Her demand is for an end to the isolation of jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Jailed by Turkey since 1999, Ocalan is the recognised leader of the Kurdish liberation movement. Since 2011, his lawyers have been unable to met with him.
The Kurdish people are an oppressed nationality without a state, whose homeland is currently divided between five countries in the Middle East. Despite this, the left-wing Kurdish movement in Syria’s north is not fighting for a separate nation state. Rather, it is seeking to unite all ethnic groups and religions to fight for an autonomous, participatory democracy as part of a profound social movement that puts women’s liberation at its heart.
A large minority in Turkey, at about 20% of the population, the Kurdish people have long faced systemic discrimination by the Turkish state. This has included massacres and violent repression of their culture, with even the Kurdish language banned until recently.
Such oppression led to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) launching an armed struggle for national liberation in 1984. In recent years, the PKK — whose leader Abdullah Öcalan remains in solitary confinement in a Turkish jail — has declared its commitment to a peaceful solution to the conflict.
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told a meeting in London on September 15 that the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination needed to be recognised, Firat News Agency said the next day. The meeting was organised by the British Kurdish People’s Assembly.
Hunger strikers begin their fast for Öcalan in Diyarbakır on September 5.
A hunger strike was launched in Turkey’s Kurdish capital Diyarbakır on September 5 by politicians and activists demanding a meeting with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan.
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