29 YEARS ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

"Our party's second phase, the phase of political development, was from 1978-1980. One of the most significant steps during this phase was the Founding Congress of November 26 and 27, 1978, when our party was formally established."
~ Party Program of the PKK.

"We were born in this land and we will die in it."
PKK: 29 years for a peaceful and democratic solution.

Yok edilmesi hedeflenmiş Kürt halkının ölüm uykunsundan uyanıp özgürlüğü ciğerlerindeki son nefese kadar haykırmasına vesile olan Özgürlük Mücadelemizin Diriliş Bayramı kadim halkımıza kutlu olsun.

For a read of the PKK's party program from the founding congress in 1978, check out Hevallo's place.

"With love," hevals, "with love!"


Late addenda:

Rock the Truth is rocking the truth about the Turkish state and the pro-DTP protest in Amed over the weekend, in a post titled,"Turkey's Kurdish Holocaust":

"The party says it rejects violence and wants to secure more political and cultural rights for Turkey’s large ethnic Kurdish population by purely peaceful, democratic means. But it has refused the government’s demand that it condemn the P.K.K. as terrorists."

Why should they?

Does the Turkish government accept the terrorist label it has so richly deserved?

From Australia, we have an opinion piece on America's "good" Kurd, "bad" Kurd dichotomy:

Kurdish life in Turkey has not been much better than in Iraq. Northern Kurdistan is located in the southeast of Turkey and is home to about 20 million Kurds, representing half the entire population of Kurdish people. Northern Kurdistan is therefore central to solving the Kurdish issue. The oppression of Kurds in Turkey by the current Turkish regime, and the lack of diplomatic intervention by the US Government, has resulted in the Iraqi Kurds no longer believing Washington’s rhetoric about protecting Kurds from terrorism or a possible attack by a future Iraqi government. Instead, the US Government has supported the Turkish regime in various ways against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the main opposition party.

The role of the PKK guerillas is to fight for Kurdish cultural and political rights regardless of the geographical location of Kurdish people. How can it therefore be reasonable and rational to implement a policy of friendship toward the Kurds of Iraq, but label PKK guerillas as terrorists? How and by what criteria have they become terrorists? Have they threatened the interest of the US or other Western countries, killed civilians or beheaded any Western people like the Iraqi insurgent militias? Despite the dissimilarities between the PKK and other guerillas, the US Government is now supporting a policy against the PKK due to pressure by Turkey, while also being pressured by Saudi Arabia’s hegemony and the bullets of former terrorist Sunni militias who killed thousands of civilians inside Iraq (nowadays calling them armed groups or insurgents).

The PKK and its leaders have needed to base themselves in the jagged mountains on the triangular border region of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. In addition to losing faith in the policies of the governments involved in the Middle East theatre, the exiling of their leader Abdullah Ocalan and his subsequent abduction and imprisonment following a joint operation with US, Turkish, and Israeli intelligence agents has removed any remnants of trust in the US. The PKK, too, relies on the famous Kurdish saying that Kurds have “no friends but the mountains".

And there's really nothing more to add to that.