Continue reading “KCK Statement on the killing of Bemal Tokcu”
Murat Karayilan: We are making preparations, the other side should do likewise!
Transcript of an interview with Nuçe TV.
NEWS CENTER 28/03/2013
KCK Executive Council President Murat Karayilan and member of the Executive Council Presidency Ronahi Serhat, have made important statements about withdrawing from the Turkish territory. Karayilan, pointing out the important responsibility on the Turkish Assembly, said “To ensure continuity of this process, it needs to be developed mutually. We are preparing for withdrawal, but the other side also needs to start preparations. To facilitate this process, our leader’s conditions of imprisonment need to be improved.” Ronahi Serhat stated that the channels for dialogue with the architect of the peace process need to be opened.
KCK Executive Council President Murat Karayilan and member of the Executive Council Presidency Ronahi Serhat, answered the questions directed by the journalists Koray Düzgören, Erdal Er and Khaled Hermit from Nuçe TV.
Continue reading “Murat Karayilan: We are making preparations, the other side should do likewise!”
KJB: The murders in Paris must not be forgotten
Statement by the High Women’s Council:
To the public
On January 9, 2013, the co-founder of the PKK and leading figure of the Kurdish women’s movement, Sakine Cansiz, and our comrades Fidan Dogan (Rojbin) and Leyla Saylemez (Ronahi) were murdered in the French capital of Paris. Although a month has already passed, these murders are still not sufficiently resolved. The French state refrains from disclosing its findings to the public.
Continue reading “KJB: The murders in Paris must not be forgotten”
Bayık: talks are the last chance for AKP
While the talks with the Kurdish Leader Abdullah Öcalan in Imrali are being debated, member of the KCK Executive Council, Cemil Bayık, evaluated the subject in his column published at the Yeni Özgür Politika and Azadiya Welat newspapers.
Bayık, in his article written in Kurdish, entitled ‘the last chance for AKP’, stated that as a result of the resistance of Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan against one and a half year of threats and blackmailing, the AKP had to restart the talks. Stating “resistance of the Guerrilla and the People also forced the AKP to talk with the Kurdish People’s Leader”, Bayık’s article is as follows:
Karayılan: Dialogue is important but there also needs to be a policy for resolution
Edited version, 9.01.12
London
KCK Executive Council President Murat Karayılan talked to ANF reporters Deniz Kendal and Rosida Mardin about the recent meeting with the leader of the Kurdish people, Abdullah Öcalan, on Imrali Island. Stressing the importance of monitoring the initiative carefully, he said, “the initiative launched for dialogue is both an important and an accurate approach.”
Karayılan said that meetings have been taking place with Öcalan since November, and he continued, “of course the visit of Ahmet Turk and Ayla Akat to Imrali showed the significance of these meetings.” This is a new dimension and we are aware of its importance. However, we will find out in the coming days whether these meetings and the renewed dialogue will turn into a process that leads to a resolution of the Kurdish issue or not. The present period may be described as a consultative one, but we need more data to assess the process. The attitude of the AKP government is especially important in this regard. In terms of whether the process of dialogue will be turned into resolution process or not, the government’s attitude will be absolutely decisive.
The Kurds and Human Rights
David Morgan asks what the Kurdish people have to celebrate on International Human Rights’ Day 2012.
The Kurds constitute one of the world’s largest populations without a nation state of their own. This great injustice is the root cause of the abuses and discrimination to which Kurds are still subjected to at the present day. This occurs despite the fact that the Kurds are one of the oldest peoples of the Middle East and can trace their lineage back thousands of years; the first mention of the existence of Kurds is traced to reference to ‘Karduchoi’ made by the classical Greek historian Xenophon in The Expedition of Cyrus.
Today, the actual size of the Kurdish population is very hard to establish because of the difficult circumstances in which the Kurds find themselves, but the number is usually estimated at approximately 40 million. The majority of the communities of Kurds are distributed unevenly between the four states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The borders of these contemporary states only came into being following the First World War with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the reshaping of the region by the imperial powers. Britain, France and the US share much of the responsibility for the denial of social, cultural, political and citizenship rights to the Kurds and which is still the condition of existence for the majority of Kurds today. Continue reading “The Kurds and Human Rights”
International Peace Initiative to be launched in Brussels
INTERNATIONAL PEACE INITIATIVE (IPI)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Monday 3rd December , 10h30, International Press Centre, Maelbeek Room
Résidence Palace, Rue de la Loi n.155, 1040 Brussels (B)
Launch of the International Peace Initiative and call from Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu for the Resumption of Dialogue on the Kurdish question in Turkey
The Secretariat of the IPI invites you attend a press conference to launch The International Peace Initiative on Monday 3rd December 2012 @10h30 at the Residence Palace in Brussels.
This initiative is launched with the support of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. To mark the occasion, he and a list of eminent signatories including Nobel Peace Prize recipients and former heads of state and of government from the United States, Europe and Asia, including East Timor and Tibet, have issued a joint call for a Resumption of Dialogue between Turkey and the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, for a lasting and peaceful settlement of the Kurdish issue in Turkey. This statement will be read out and distributed at the press conference. Continue reading “International Peace Initiative to be launched in Brussels”
The 33rd Day! by Memed Boran
This article appears in apogeeculture.blogspot.co.uk:
From Hunger-strike to ‘Death Fast’
On 12th September 2012, nine women prisoners in Diyarbakir E type prison began an indefinite hunger-strike. In the statement they made via lawyers they highlighted two demands: the right to use their Kurdish mother tongue in the public sphere, including court and the removal of obstacles preventing imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan from negotiating in peace talks with the Turkish state. Soon after, many other inmates, men and women, from prisons in every corner of Turkey began joining the hunger-strike; sometimes in groups and in certain prisons individually. Now there are 380 prisoners in 39 prisons who are on what has surpassed a hunger-strike and become a ‘death fast.’ This is their 33rd day.
IN THE GLASSHOUSE, by Norman Paech
NATO-member Turkey supports the rebels in Syria – yet persecutes the opposition movement in its own country
Norman Paech
Turkey is in a complex situation, which the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his AKP government, seem to want to cover up. The incontestable economic successes – whereby the completely under-developed rights of the working population have been accepted – make the country a power factor between East and West. The strategic location of Turkey for the transportation of oil and gas from the Caspian region and the Middle East into Europe provides the ever-assertive government with a comfortable negotiating position with the Europeans. This clearly allows Ankara to bring EU-membership into play without having to compromise on the biggest obstacle to its membership so far – the unresolved Cyprus question. Greece is weak and is having its sovereignty rapidly taken away, almost degraded to a protectorate. Why back down against the EU and the UN, when, evidently, a politics of “banging one’s fist on the table” is the only one honoured? This is also apparent in the fact that Erdogan can afford to pick a fight with a state, with which it not so long ago had a distinguished relationship – Israel, the EU’s most controversial protegé. Continue reading “IN THE GLASSHOUSE, by Norman Paech”