ANF, BEHDINAN – The Kurdish Liberation Movement made up of a group of Kurdish and Turkish youths, known as pro-Apo (Öcalan) and -national liberation groups till 1978, became a party following the first congress held in the house of the Zoğurlu family, which supported the organization since its formation, in the Fis village of Diyarbakır’s Lice district on 26-27 November. The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) has become a public movement addressing millions during the 35 years that have passed since the first congress which had been attended by 22 delegates.
Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-President Bese Hozat spoke to ANF about the struggle PKK has given for 35 years now, what it has achieved so far and what kind of a change and transformation it has introduced to the Kurdish people.
How does the PKK define itself?
The PKK is no doubt a strong insurrection movement against cruelty and the exploitation of people and society, and for a people who were deprived of all their rights, denied any kind of fair defense, their language banned and their land occupied and exploited. The PKK is a contemporary insurrection movement with a program, ideology, philosophy and struggle strategy, not an ordinary one for a people greatly exploitated and enslaved. The PKK has the power to change the balances in the region and the world, as well as a strategic and tactical leadership, an army of thousands of guerrillas and an organized grassroots of millions of people.
In line with all these facts, it remains inadequate to define the PKK as an insurrection movement because of the fact that the party has presented the democratic nation paradigm, improved the democratic confederal system of peoples, built an alternative project of democratic peoples’ system against the five thousand years old statist government system and is leading the building of this project now. The democratic, free and equal form of life and the democratic ecological system the PKK has built is the only system that will liberate the peoples. The Kurdish people are today giving a struggle to build this system on the basis of their own will. In the current state of affairs, the PKK has gone beyond a movement and become a social living system.
PKK has made a great mindset revolution for the Kurdish people, clearing their minds of slavery and fear which it replaced with the sense of freedom. This is the greatest revolution the PKK has achieved, for the liberation of a people relies on a mindset revolution and the attainment of the sense of freedom.
The party has on the other hand placed women at the center of the social liberation, and women’s struggle at the center of the national struggle. This has introduced a new context and depth to the sense of freedom, because of the fact that a people can never be free without free women. Thousands of women assured by this reality in theory and in practice have taken to the mountains and assembled an army, bravely fought against the exploitative system and destroyed the mindset which defends that war is a man thing. The liberation struggle the Kurdish women are giving on mountains is not against the Turkish army alone, it is also against the male-dominant mindset and the cruel and exploitative system it has created.
This war has led to a great social change and transformation, it destroyed the ordinary perspective against women, changed the gender based morals and culture, and enabled the Kurdish women to become subjects in all areas of life, to take an active part in the social life and politics, and to lead civil commotions and public resistance. Women became the symbol of resistance and the liberation struggle, changed the social fabric of the Kurdish society, transformed the feodal culture and displayed a determining stance in the democratisation of the society. This is a women’s revolution the PKK and Kurdish people have achieved by creating a free society with free women, and a sense and culture of democratic nation against the culture of tribes, which is at the same time a human revolution.
The struggle the Kurdish people are giving today under the leadership of the PKK plays a crucial role in the democratisation of the Middle East region and is the greatest hope of the peoples in the region. Kurds are taking to the stage in the history with the building of a democratic autonomous and confederal system.
The PKK defines itself not only as a Kurdish movement but also as a liberation movement. What has the PKK done for the peoples in four parts of Kurdistan, what kind of a culture has it created?
The PKK movement has never given an ethnic struggle. Those claiming the PKK to do so were the enemies of the party and the people. The PKK ideology sides with freedom and equality. PKK is a democratic socialist movement against nationalism, religionism and sexism which all are ideologies that lead up to fascism, nationalism and militarism. As an organization for the struggle of the peoples in the Middle East, the PKK has fought for the freedom of peoples and represented the human values in the region. PKK is the follower and contemporary representative of the democratic civilisation tradition in the Middle East. All these prove that the Kurdish question is not related with Kurds alone, it is an issue which concerns the entire Middle East region.
Firat News Agency