Leader Ocalan: Lasting peace requires guaranteeing Kurdish rights, equal citizenship

Leader Ocalan sent a message today to the Democratic Confederalism Conference, held in the Italian city of Turin. The message reads:

“Dear friends,

I greet you from Imrali with a spirit of international solidarity and a longing for freedom. I hope your conference will contribute to building unity based on equality, achieving the freedom of peoples and establishing lasting peace in the Middle East.

The Middle East is going through a critical phase today. Wars, conflicts, nation-state-based solutions and security policies have failed to bring peace and freedom to the peoples. This has become clear. Therefore, our main task is to abandon the politics of war, adopt democratic politics as the foundation, organize society and build a new phase that guarantees the free and equal coexistence of peoples.

The perspectives of democratic confederalism and the democratic republic are among the main issues being discussed as part of this effort.

The dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the end of the armed struggle strategy should be viewed as the beginning of a new phase. This transformation also requires adopting a new approach and a new vision for addressing the issue.

We must state clearly that ending the armed struggle does not in itself mean peace. For peace to become lasting at the end of this process, the causes of conflict must be eliminated, Kurdish existence, language and culture must be guaranteed, obstacles to democratic politics must be removed, and equal citizenship must be legally guaranteed.

Democratic integration is neither a one-sided agreement nor an unconditional incorporation into the existing system. On the contrary, it must be a democratic transformation in which differences are not denied, rights are recognized and coexistence is built on the basis of equality.

The democratic republic is the guarantee of democratic politics, while law is the guarantee of a democratic society. Without legal safeguards, democratic politics cannot be sustained, and the peace process cannot succeed.

A solution to the Kurdish question cannot be considered separately from the democratization of Turkey. Likewise, Turkey’s democratization cannot be separated from the emergence of a political will that guarantees the free and equal coexistence of peoples.

This is also where the importance of the democratic confederalism perspective for the Middle East lies. The solution is not to melt peoples into a single identity, turn borders and diversity into sources of new conflicts, or establish a new authority that defends the state and revolves around it.

What we need today is democratic politics instead of the politics of war, recognition instead of denial, law instead of force, and free and equal coexistence instead of the fragmentation of society. This transformation requires states and political actors to assume their responsibilities, democratic institutions to be strengthened, and society to have a say and make decisions about its own future.

Dear friends: I hope this conference will discuss the perspective of democratic confederalism in light of current circumstances and propose clear pathways toward a democratic solution. The future of the Middle East does not lie in new wars and new power relations, but in building a democratic society. Liberation lies in the free unity of peoples and the strengthening of democratic politics.

Politics must replace weapons, law must replace distrust, and equality must replace denial. This is the path to lasting peace.

I greet your conference once again, guided by my belief in peace and freedom.”

A-H

ANHA