Nilüfer Koç from the Kurdish National Congress spoke at the Ecosocialism 2022 conference about the popular uprising in Iran, war in Ukraine and Rojava Revolution. Alex Bainbridge and Susan Price report.
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)
Shocking video footage was released on October 18, showing the painful death of two young Kurdish freedom fighters, who were among 17 people recently killed in a chemical weapons attack by Turkey, reports Peter Boyle.
Turkey has opened a new front in its ongoing war of annihilation against the Kurdish liberation movement, writes Marcel Cartier.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Foreign Relations Committee wrote the following letter to the American people and United States President Donald Trump, responding to the comparisons made between the Kurdish movement and ISIS, amid the genocidal campaign of the Turkish state against the Kurdish people.
* * *
“To the American people and President Donald J Trump,
There is little about United States President Donald Trump that one can truly be surprised by at this stage in his presidency. Buffoonery and delusion — not to mention racism and the incitement of violence — have become normalised during his time in office to a frightening degree.
Still, even if we take the most jaw-dropping quotes of his more than two-and-a-half years in office into account, there is something remarkably horrifying about the comments he has made in recent days since he de facto supported Turkey’s offensive into northern Syria, writes Marcel Cartier.
July 19 marked the seventh anniversary of northern Syria’s Rojava Revolution. On that day in 2012 the nascent People’s Protection Units (YPG) took control of the Kurdish-majority city of Kobanê. The outnumbered forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad surrendered and were allowed to depart (without their weapons). Other Kurdish cities and towns in the north were soon liberated as well.
Peoples Democratic Party MP, Leyla Güven ended her 200-day hunger strike on May 26, after the Turkish government finally allowed imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to meet with his lawyers.
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on November 22 that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was wrongly on its list of terrorist organisations between 2014-17.
In recent days, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have once again been ratcheting up their clash of the colonisers, writes Marcel Cartier.
Turkey has condemned Israel’s slaughter of unarmed Palestinians, but the Turkish regime commits the same atrocities against Kurdish people.
A Kurdish journalist charged with being a member of a proscribed terrorist group — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — was granted bail in the NSW Supreme Court on October 14. He was released on strict conditions, including a surety of $1.5 million.
Sydney-based Renas Lelikan was charged after he returned to Australia in July from northern Iraq, where the PKK is fighting Islamic State (IS).
On October 6 NSW Supreme Court Judge Natalie Adams reserved her decision on Kurdish journalist Renas Lelikan’s bail appeal until 14 October. Lelikan, who is charged with membership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been remanded in custody since July 20.
Originally held in Sydney’s Silverwater Prison, he was transferred to isolation in the Goulburn “Supermax” jail following death threats against him by ISIS sympathisers.
