BEHDİNAN, SOUTHERN KURDISTAN
Komalên Ciwan Coordination member, Özgür Şerker, answered the questions of journalist Ronahî Karahan during a special program on Medya News.
Evaluating the year 2019 from the youth front of the PKK, Özgür Şerker stated that the move ‘Break Isolation, Destroy Fascism, Free Kurdistan’ has steered the direction of struggle in 2019, and the enemy’s attacks were frustrated by this struggle.
Şerker started his observations by commemorating the comrades who were martyred in 2019 saying, ”The hunger strike insurgents showed what the youth should and could do. Just as the enemy had liquidation-attacks in every way, the resistance was led by the youth movement the women’s movement and in general everyone aged from 7 to 70.
In 2019, the PKK movement defeated all the plans of the enemy in its 41st year. The liquidation plan, which the enemy had planned sitting at home, was frustrated with the resistance of the struggle. And these plans were made one with the ground. In this respect, 2019 was a year of great resistance for our struggle.”
As of April 2015, there has been an isolation imposed on the People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan. Again, disciplinary punishment was reported in the last process. In general, the biggest resistance in 2019 was carried out in İmralı. How to evaluate İmralı’s struggle, and what should the youth’s stance be?
“First of all, the basis of our struggle is Leader Apo. This reality has not changed in any way since the beginning of the struggle. Perhaps over the agenda of hunger strikes in 2019, Leader Apo’s line of struggle on the axis of freedom became apparent. Then there was the resistance to freedom against the occupation in Rojava. But that’s what the enemy has targeted and centred the most, all year round.
The fascist Republic of Turkey has always tried to give a direction to the struggle through the leadership. Against this, the biggest struggle was carried out in İmralı. This has always been the main objective in the implementation of the isolation policy, including in all the processes of the fascist republic in recent times. The aim is to isolate Leader Apo from the struggle for freedom in Kurdistan, to leave the struggle without the leadership and to destroy the struggle completely after it.
But there is a reality: the struggle is growing with every breath of resistance which Leader Apo’s takes in İmralı. The line of the leadership has actually been the spirit of willpower that resists in all areas today. If there is a resistance in Rojava today, this is the spirit of Leader Apo. If today there is a resistance in the plains of the cities and the mountains of Bakur, this is the spirit of the Leader Apo. The conductor of the PKK struggle has always been the spirit of Leader Apo.
The enemy knows this very well and wants to eliminate it. It is trying to make us forget through isolation, the enemy wants us to forget, it wants the public to act like there’s no such reality. The enemy is now trying to impose this with special, psychological warfare and planning to do so with many policies so that the struggle can be carried out without leadership, but the 2019 struggle has shown that this is an empty struggle. The Leadership resistance continues to surpass all of Turkey’s plans.
Our leadership in Imrali knows that the absence of resistance will cost the whole of Kurdistan and the world. And today we can say that the revolutionary resistance led by the PKK struggle was limited to the Kurds until some time, but today it has become a global reality. In other words, Leader Apo is not only the leader of the Kurds, he is not only the leader of the peoples of the Middle East. It grew in this way. No one can conceal this reality, no matter what the fascism of the Republic of Turkey does. This reality is invincible. This is the fundamental fact that Turkish fascism cannot digest.
In terms of the youth movement, if a struggle is being carried out, if it has come to a point today that the young people flood to the mountains of freedom against all the oppression of the enemy, this is due to the Leader Apo. In this respect, it was the resistance of Leader Apo who left a mark in the 2019 struggle.
As the youth movement, the main point we have been based on is to live with Leader Apo in Free Kurdistan, we have no other goal, no other agenda.”
Another topic that was evaluated throughout the year was the special war concepts of the Turkish state. Many ways have been tried, and you have explained a lot of things in relation to this in your previous statements. In general, to what extent did the Turkish state achieve a result in the special war policies implemented in 2019? Can you assess how this struggle was carried out generally?
In fact, in the practice of this year, it can be said that the fascist genocide state’s private war and psychological war have also reached a peak. The most well-known processes in the 41-year struggle period was the Tahsun Çiler, Mehmet Ağar and Doğan Güreş gang. But this TR fascism already had special warfare in the mortar of reputation.
Since there is a state logic-mentality that builds itself through bullying, systematic torture and massacre, it is not in a position to carry out any other policy. The Turkish state cannot secure the state without private war. The Turkish state cannot survive even a day without basing its arguments on the grounds of psychological war, without waging a psychological war.
This is not just a matter for the Kurds. The enemy applies this to his people whether he sees them as his own people or if he sees them as his own state. This applies to all peoples in the Middle East. The enemy is a force that bases its existence on psychological warfare. They have no tradition other than a bullying despotism and dictatorship. This was the reality that emerged during this period.
Just as in the 90s, when the special warfare element Tansu Çiller played a role and was assigned to a mission, today the AKP takes its place.
In 2019, in this sense, it was this policy that they developed more in every aspect and tried to deepen in every way. At that time, there was Tansu Çiller, a kontra named Süleyman Soysuz, and a personality who carried out all the dirty works of the fascist TR, Erdoğan, who devoted his life to the private and psychological warfare.
Every time they open their mouths, they have a single agenda which is the PKK. It is in a position to assume the responsibility of the centre of private and psychological warfare that is actually carried out over the whole society. Everything that comes out of their mouths are lies. For instance, in late 2016, they declared that with April 2017, no one would ever hear the name of the PKK again. In the following processes, they have implied that they have finished the PKK, that there will no longer be an organization called the PKK. Then they asked the PKK to give up in 2020. What was the result? The PKK is stronger than ever.
The enemy intended to push the will of the people into submission in a very subtle way, to completely weaken the faith and to establish the mentality in the whole of society, that TR cannot be fought against. With a bombardment lasting 24 hours, the enemy tried to pump this psychological warfare through every kind of television, newspaper and mass media.
For a while they gathered some people in front of a political party’s building. Here, a notion was being fabricated as if the families want their children back from the PKK, while behind closed curtains the enemy was ideologically bombarding families to take back and collect their children. To the enemy; If you are so creative and capable, come and take them back yourself!
For the past 41 years, they come with the same fallacies before the nation. Now, as if they invented America again, as if these were methods they never tried before, those people have gathered there making some petty agitation propaganda, making dirty activities through it. A state that is trying to find meditations even from there.”
Bakurê Kurdistan was also one of the most evaluated parts of your movement, which was on the agenda of the people of Kurdistan during the intensive period. Bakurê Kurdistan spent a year in which trustees were appointed, occupation attacks and intense detention furs were being carried out. Against this, some youth units called themselves Revenge Units. Illegal activism developed. There was resistance against fascism, do you find these enough?
“The Bakur struggle was really important for 2019. In a period when fascism was trying to organize and institutionalize itself, one of the main determinants in the struggle against the ground of Bakur was the resistance entered against fascism.
The fascist Republic of Turkey not only carried out a physical attack, apart from this special war, psychological war and physical war, the fascist TR wanted to take the whole of society into a grater.
In the north, the enemy tried to tighten this grasp, perhaps incomparable with previous periods, and tried to subdue society in every way. All of Turkey and Northern Kurdistan was transformed into an open prison where people were tortured. Very serious projects are carried out on young people. Efforts were made intensively towards agentization and de-identification.
It was not only the activity of the Republic of Turkey, but the capitalist system itself has an attack policy that is carried out by itself.
The struggle carried out by the youth of Bakur was very important in terms of participation in this process. A level of resistance was revealed. Especially with the hunger strike resistance, a potential emerged. But there were inadequacies in the execution of this potential. The inadequacy of this potential being processed to a more organized struggle has led to a stable struggle.
But it can be said that indeed, the policies of the Turkish state on the struggle carried out in Northern Kurdistan are much more profound. It is not just what it seems. The enemy has efforts to control the family. In this respect, the struggle of the youth of Bakur is worth gold.
The Bakur struggle was not only a struggle on the public front but the guerrilla struggle, in particular, had a line that guided our entire struggle. It further expressed intense quests to end attacks. But the struggle carried out by the guerrilla gave the most courage to the people. It opened the way for the youth to struggle in Kurdistan, it has led to a more accurate and deeper understanding of the place of the youth in the struggle for freedom.
At least in 2019, the youth of Kurdistan realized that there is fascism, a fascist dictatorship regime, and there is no other way than to resist against it. It was established that the enemy doesn’t have the power it has exaggerated to have, that the enemy does not own every right as it expresses itself to have, and that it cannot control everything like it indicates it can.
This was the most important reality that emerged in terms of the Bakurê Kurdistan struggle. It was understood that no method, except the struggle, could reverse the fascism. The struggle of the youth of Kurdistan and the line of resistance will be the main determinant of the collapse of this fascism.”
Towards the end of the year, there was a great resistance in Rojava. After the Turkish occupation attacks there is a resistance that continues to this day. Since the first day of the process, Kurdish youth from both Bakur, Bashur and Europe have joined the mobilisation of the Cenga Rojava Resistance. This step taken by young people was an important step for national unity. Do you, as Youth, work for national unity?
The attitude of the youth of Bashur and Rojhilat, in particular, against the Rojava occupation attacks was indeed a celebration. They joined at the pioneer level.
The invasion attack on Rojava was actually introduced as part of that general purge concept. Although this concept has been predominantly used in other areas before, Rojava has entered into a period of war and resistance over the whole of Kurdistan.
Together with Rojava, the goal of Turkish fascism was not only to defeat one part, but to create a mindset that tried to end every field of Kurdishness and freedom. Notice that the attack was scheduled for October 9th. It was on the anniversary of the interstate conspiracy against our leadership.
Maybe we are evaluating in terms of youth groups, but since the history of the colonists’ attacks in Kurdistan the policy has always been to divide and conquer, and then to establish sovereignty. This strategy was crushed in the Rojava resistance. The national unity was actually in the highest ranks of the struggle, the attitude that the youth entered into was, in fact, an indicator of the national unity.
The youth fronts in all four parts have already proved that the youth of Kurdistan have met the values of freedom in the soul, and freedom in the truth. The practice of this has already been implemented. To make it stronger, to make it a really more organized attitude, to direct it to fascism as a sharper stance is our issue, and in the new year of struggle, our work as the youth organisation is to collect all of the Kurdistan youth under the roof of national unity.”
A busy year has been left behind. A new year of struggle is underway. How has the youth movement prepared for 2020?
Undoubtedly, the resistance line carried out in 2019 will continue. It will take its place in this struggle as the leading force of our youth movement and struggle. The ground that youth should focus more on in the future is the line that will organize and lead the whole struggle. It will be the pioneer in the overthrow of fascism.
The struggle of the Revolutionary People’s War in Kurdistan, as our line of struggle, has to carry out the struggle to organize itself accordingly in all areas of youth in order to achieve victory. Although the move launched in 2019 has had problems in the execution steadily over a period from time to time, we can easily say that with the 2020 struggle, the youth movement has prepared itself for a much bigger struggle.
It will bring itself to a much larger line of struggle, and most importantly, it will eliminate the fascism and strike the final blow to the enemy by developing a pioneering position wherever it is located, in the strategy of Revolutionary People’s War.
In this respect, the resistance that the youth have put forward has brought a lot of heavy sacrifices in itself. With no doubt, there is much work left to do. We are not in a position to limit our resistance to this point.
Just as there is a revolutionary character in our struggle which seeks to affect all areas of life, the Youth Movement is more valid now than ever. In the renewal of the struggle, it will lead to a more powerful, dynamic, insistent organization that creates success against all attacks of enemy forces. We have full faith in this matter and it is clear that great lessons have been learned in the process.
And we believe that by 2020, the Kurdistan Apoist youth will give the adequate answer to these fascist flocks who keep declaring that we will give up the struggle. And on this basis, we call all Kurdistan youth to the mountains of Kurdistan since it is a year that we will live in free Kurdistan with our leadership, where the revolution will be taken to victory, and we will meet our people.
