[Statement] From Imrali to Rojava, we will continue the resistance!

Today, October 9th 2020, marks 22 years since the beginning of the international conspiracy against Abdullah Öcalan, a conspiracy that on February 15 imprisoned the ideological leader of the Kurdish movement in order to end the resistance of a whole people, and it has kept him in prison until this day. However, ideas cannot be held within prison walls, and Ocalan’s ideas have continued to feed a movement for freedom that has managed to carry out a revolution in which women are the vanguard.

All these years of imprisonment, torture and isolation in the prison of Imrali Island show us that Abdullah Ocalan is much more than a person. He is also an idea. He is hope and he is resistance. He is an entire people who decided to be reborn and to rise up, to struggle against assimilation, racism, and imperialism, which want everything in just one colour and one form. He is all the women who decided to organise themselves to bring an end to patriarchy, to free themselves and the whole society.

The international conspiracy is not only a conspiracy against Abdullah Ocalan—it is also a conspiracy against the Kurdish people and all people who choose to fight for a different world. However, their plot did not manage to stop their worst fears from coming true: ideas of liberation have spread in Kurdistan and all over the world, and they can no longer be smothered. This is why the Turkish state, together with all the states supporting it, has continued to apply fascist policies of repression and annihilation that continue until today.

Today, October 9, it is also one year since the beginning of the Turkish military operation that brought about the occupation of the regions of Serêkaniyê and Girê Spî, which joined the occupied status of the region of Afrin, occupied since the previous year. More than 300,000 people were forced to leave their homes and those who did not are now living under extremely repressive and dangerous conditions in the hands of the Turkish-backed militias–many of which consist of the same jihadist fighters of the Islamic state or groups with similar fascistic ideology. To carry out their plot, and to carry on their occupation, Turkey counts on international silence and complicity—this facilitated the invasion.

But just as Abdullah Ocalan resists in prison, so too do the peoples of the north and east of Syria, who continue to advance the process of building a society based on the paradigm of the democratic nation, ecology and women’s liberation.

The revolution of these peoples and of women is an inspiration for all those who, all over the world, are resisting a system that wants us isolated and defeated. That is why we must strengthen solidarity: to put the brakes on the attack of the nation-states. and on the war they are waging in Rojava, which is not only a war for a territory, but a war against the organisation and liberation of all women and peoples of the world.

Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and all the political prisoners!

Stop occupation and genocide!

Jin, jiyan, azadi!