UK trade union support for Kurds has “parallels” with opposition to Apartheid South Africa and Pinochet’s Chile, says Freedom for Öcalan Director

10 February 2020|Peace in Kurdistan Campaign

Matt Nathan, Director of the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign, describes to Kurdish Journalist Aleddin Sinayic how key trade unions came to back the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign, after becoming aware of the siege of the Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Kobane imposed by Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State) and exacerbated by the Turkish state. Nathan, who is also Labour Party Councillor for Clerkenwell, discusses how UK-based trade unions came to see the libertarian socialist vision of imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan as representing a “fulcrum around which many issues that as trade unionists we would instinctively find solidarity with”.