PEACE IN KURDISTAN
The crisis in Turkey and Ocalan’s call for peace
A few weeks have now passed since Abdullah Ocalan, the detained leader of the Kurdish people, surprised the world by making a renewed historic call for peace that offers hope for Turks and Kurds alike. Turkey has now entered a political crisis and needs peace more than ever.
In a dramatic public appearance from his Imrali Prison cell and flanked by a delegation of elected politicians and his visiting legal team, in February Ocalan issued his call by reading out a prepared statement in which he addressed directly his supporters within the Kurdish movement and Turkish political leaders.
The call was the Kurdish leader’s latest attempt to break the deadlock in the stalled peace process, over which he exerts a fundamental influence despite his decades of incarceration in Imrali.
Repeatedly over the years and tracing back long before his apprehension by Turkey, Ocalan has been articulating his thoughts on peace in successive writings and speeches which have amounted to a meticulous mapping out of a path towards reaching an enduring negotiated peace settlement to resolve the historic conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people.
Such a resolution would remove a blight that has festered since the very foundation of the Turkish Republic over a century ago because the forty years armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is more accurately viewed as simply the latest chapter in this century old struggle whose roots are enmeshed in the denial of the very existence of the Kurds as a people by a state that was founded on the Kemalist ideology of “one nation, one people, one language” where nothing but Turkish identity could be tolerated.
This latest call from Ocalan was eagerly awaited by the Kurds who continue to view him as the natural political leader of their people and movement. Their support remains unassailable despite all the machinations by Turkey to break their loyalty and detach the Kurds from their leader by methods of isolation, suppression, denigration and brute force.
All these efforts have proved futile and support for Ocalan and the Kurdish national movement that he founded have grown progressively stronger even though generations of Kurds have been born who have only ever known Ocalan as a political prisoner. Achieving his freedom has become inextricably bound up and symbolic of achieving their own freedom as a people.
Ocalan’s ideas have continued to foster inspiration because they embody the vital quality of hope that all people resisting oppression need in order to sustain themselves in their struggle. For the Kurds their political struggle has been, and remains, an existential struggle against annihilation. Ocalan’s call for peace is also an opportunity for Turkey to resolve one of the key underlying factors that contributes towards the destabilisation of the country.
These tentative moves towards breaking the stalemate are a hugely positive development in the pursuit of peace and represent a real sign of hope in a Turkey that is facing a growing national political crisis.
Most recently on 19 March, a leading opponent of the president, the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, was detained and jailed on alleged corruption charges, in what has been widely interpreted as a cynical abuse of power and politically motivated move designed to prevent him posing a challenge to Erdogan in the presidential elections scheduled for 2028.
The peace process needs to gather momentum, and its success is all the more urgent amid this deepening crisis where popular protests and growing unrest have led to thousands of arrests already. Turkish citizens have been outraged by the arrest of political opponents of President Erdogan who has now been in power for 22 years, first as prime minister and then as president.
Abdullah Ocalan is now 76 years old and has been held in jail since 1999. His latest call for peace offers possibly the last chance for Turkey to achieve a lasting peace with the Kurds and whose resolution will have an impact across the country, on its allies, its neighbours like Syrian and on the wider region. Everyone has a stake in seeing this renewed peace process succeed so they need to maximise every effort and use their influence towards this end.
A route towards a resolution of the Kurdish question that involves releasing Abdullah Ocalan and bringing the Kurdish movement within the political framework has started to come within the grasp. It is thanks to the foresight of Ocalan that the political deadlock can be removed.
This development represents a historic opportunity to enable the Kurds to be brought within the orbit of democratic, peaceful and legitimate activities. But the process remains a fragile one and must not be squandered amid the growing political turmoil currently being witnessed inside Turkey. Time to act for peace, time to free Ocalan.
By David Morgan and Estella Schmid
On behalf of Patrons of Peace in Kurdistan
Patrons: John Austin; Mike Arnott, President STUC; Baroness Blower of Starch Green, former GS NUT; Prof Bill Bowring; Mickey Brady, MP for Mid Ulster; Julie Christie; Noam Chomsky; Jeremy Corbyn MP; Maggie Cook, UNISON women activist; Prof Mary Davis; Lord Dholakia; Simon Dubbins, UNITE International Director; Dr Radha D’Souza, writer; Desmond Fernandes; Lindsey German, Convenor STWC; Prof Dr. Michael Gunter, Secretary-General, EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC); Rahila Gupta author, journalist; Chris Hazzard Sinn Fein MP; Nick Hildyard, policy advisor; Dafydd Iwan, Former President Plaid Cymru; George Katsiaficas, Greek-American historian and author; James Kelman, novelist; Baroness Helena Kennedy KC; Jean Lambert, former MEP; Dr Les Levidow, Open University; Gawain Little, GFTU General Secretary; Elfyn Llwyd; John McDonnell MP; Mike Mansfield KC; David Morgan, journalist; Conor Murphy, Sinn Fein MLA; Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley; Dr. Jessica Ayesha Northey; Kate Osamor MP; Margaret Owen OBE; Ali Gul Ozbek, Former Councillor and Mayor of Haringey; Gareth Peirce; Dr Felix Padel, anthropologist; Mahmoud Patel, Chairperson of the Kurdish Human Rights Action Group in South Africa (KHRAG) SA, legal scholar and academic; Maxine Peake, actor; Dr Thomas Phillips, Liverpool John Moores University; Father Joe Ryan; Dr Thomas Schmidt, ELDH Europe; Bert Schouwenburg, International Trade Union Adviser; Roza Salih, Scottish politician; Tony Simpson, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation; Stephen Smellie, PIK Trade Union Liaison Officer; Jonathan Steele, journalist; Chris Stephens SNP MP; Gianni Tognoni, General Secretary Permanent People’s Tribunal; Dr Federico Venturini, Associate Researcher, University of Udine, Italy; Dr Tom Wakefor; Dr Derek Wall; Julie Ward, former MEP; Frances Webber, former Vice-Chair of IRR and barrister; Kariane Westrheim, Chair, EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC); Hywel Williams MP.
22 April 2025
Peace in Kurdistan
Campaign for a political solution of the Kurdish Question
Email: estella@gn.apc.org
https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com
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