For 26 years, Kurdish peoples leader Abdullah Öcalan has been held in special isolation on Imralı Island. He issued a “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society,” declaring his historical responsibility to end the armed struggle and dissolve the armed forces, in order to create conditions that recognize the fundamental democratic rights and freedoms of both the Kurdish and Turkish peoples. He called on the PKK to convene an extraordinary congress to decide on this matter. According to this call, he stated that new practical steps could only be made through political and legal arrangements by the state and that Turkey could not solve its ongoing crisis without democratic changes and transformations.
As the MLKP, we maintain our unwavering position that the Kurdish people’s right to national freedom, equality, and national unity is indispensable, and we declare our support for the national democratic demands raised by the “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society.” We call on the oppressed millions of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples, along with the national communities of Arabs, Circassians, Armenians, Greeks, Bosnians, Pomaks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Albanians, Roma, Lazs, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis, as well as Muslims, Christians, Jews, Alevites, and Yazidis, to engage in the united struggle for the following demands: the immediate declaration of a ceasefire by the fascist colonialist government of Tayyip Erdoğan, the release of Abdullah Öcalan and all political prisoners, the end of colonial attacks, the end of the occupation of Rojava and Başûr, the constitutional and legal recognition of the Kurdish people’s right to national existence and the right to education in their mother tongue, and the repeal of the fascist colonial Anti-Terror Law.
We invite all revolutionary and consistent antifascist forces of our peoples to take a stand against the chauvinist TKP and other social chauvinists who greeted the demand for ending the armed struggle within the framework of the “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society” with jubilation. They label the fact that all achievements of the Kurdish people in North Kurdistan were attained through boundless sacrifices in the armed struggle, under the leadership of the guerrillas, embodied by tens of thousands of immortals, “terror,” and label the national democratic demands of the Kurdish people as “separatism.”
We strongly emphasize that the view in the “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society,” which states, “There is no path outside of democracy for system searches and implementations. There cannot be. Democratic consensus is the fundamental method,” is incompatible with the reality of polarization between oppressors and the oppressed, the rich and the poor, the rulers and the oppressed peoples in Turkey, Kurdistan, and worldwide. In a world where the ruling class, through their state apparatuses, hold the monopoly on violence, have access to the means of violence, are armed to the teeth, fascistize state apparatuses, and divide the world with blood and fire, it is impossible for the working class, women, oppressed peoples, and workers to achieve their basic demands, gain freedom, and create a just, humane world without armed struggle and revolutionary mass violence.
The MLKP will continue the fight for freedom against the fascist regime, denialist colonialism, the patriarchal system, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism, for the Union of the People’s Republics of Turkey and Kurdistan, for the Democratic and Socialist Federation in the Middle East, and for the war for socialism, using all means and forms of struggle.
March 2, 2025
MLKP
Central Committee