BEHDÎNAN – You PAJK coordination explains in a written assessment why the revolutionary people’s war is important and necessary and the strategy of the revolutionary people’s war.
“Enslavement begins where there is no self-defense.”
It says at the very beginning of the PAJK assessment. Further, the PAJK coordination stated:
“Assemblies and communes must be like war councils. Every neighborhood, every street, every village, every district should be organized with its own self-defense.”
People’s Revolutionary War
The assessment published by the PAJK coordination on its website reads as follows:
“First of all, it is important to try to properly define and understand the People’s Revolutionary War. As the oldest resistant people in history, we are still discussing the dimension of how the Kurdish people should defend themselves and we want to do it in the most correct way. There is nothing wrong with that, of course. But as people and women, first and foremost, we need to understand the situation we are in. Once again, we clearly see the situation that the capitalist system has brought humanity in the person of peoples and women. All the pains and practices of the system crisis and chaos affect us directly. The most naked state of this episode is Kurdistan.
Self-defense is necessary for every living and material existence. Since Kurdish society is a living and material existence, it is necessary to defend its existence for this society as well. The right to security and defense cannot be transferred to anyone. Just as every living being develops its own defense, all segments of society must also develop their own defenses. Waiting for an outside force to come and defend us is tantamount to death. Being vulnerable and allowing ourselves to be disorganized without a fight means surrendering to that power and accepting slavery. Enslavement begins where there is no self-defense. In other words, the inability to provide for one’s own safety and self-defense brings slavery and, in our reality, genocide. However, self-defense is a way of being. Just like nutrition and reproduction, it is a vital element. Self-defense is also the protection of the right to life, the defense of one’s existence against the reality of the genocidal and murderous nation-state. We evaluate and define self-defense as one of the forms of existence of the democratic civilization system.
The wars waged against society for five thousand years have been institutionalized as wars of aggression, massacre, exploitation and extortion. Faced with this scale of wars, societies must build their own defenses to protect themselves against these attacks, to secure their existence, to ensure their security and freedom. In such a time, there is not even a handful of countries in the world that have not been affected by war and therefore the etatist civilization has not touched and developed sovereignty. For this reason, the revolutionary people’s wars on the axis of self-defense for the whole humanity have become much more serious on the agenda and should be. Because the system of capitalist modernity has enslaved all humanity. It has massacred societies and subjected them to genocide. Especially for us Kurds, the process of genocide continues and as a people, a war of existence and non-existence is being waged. We have to take our struggle to the next level to withstand the genocidal attacks of the capitalist system and create our existence and freedom. For this reason, it is a very urgent situation for us, we must move to revolutionary people’s war.
Total resistance against a total genocidal war
In order to properly understand the revolutionary people’s war, it is necessary to briefly understand the periods we have gone through as a movement and the strategies of the war. It is known that the first strategic period is the period of becoming a party. It was the period of the creation of a resistance movement on the line of sacrifice, insisting on a free and democratic life, breaking those with collaboration, surrender and betrayal. With the breakthrough on August 15, 1984, the process to implement this strategy was developed. This was called the “Long-term People’s War Strategy”. This generally expressed the fighting strategy of the national liberation wars. The aim and purpose of the Long Term People’s War was to prevent the genocidal regime, the massacres of the September 12 regime and to protect the Kurdish existence by striking against the genocidal regime. The freedom of Kurdistan would be created by dismantling the fascist military regime of September 12 and the colonial genocidal regime on which it was based. A democratic state system would be created that would solve the Kurdish problem. That was our goal. At that time, the paradigm on which the PKK’s first program was based was the etatist paradigm. National freedom and emancipation, as well as social freedoms, were to depend on forming a suitably democratically defined state. The strategy of long-term people’s war was adopted to create an independent, unified and free Kurdistan.
This war was defined in three strategic phases: strategic defense, strategic balance and strategic offensive phases. The struggle of the strategic defense period was defined as guerrilla warfare. If an insurgency had occurred during the strategic balance period, a popular uprising would be initiated. If these conditions did not exist, the direct military dimension would come to the fore, larger armies would be organized, the enemy armies would be defeated and the colonial state would be destroyed by moving from defensive wars, guerrilla wars to larger regular offensive wars.
The main tasks of this period were given to the guerrillas. The guerrillas led the military warfare, made propaganda and trained and organized the people. The spirit of resistance created by the guerrillas destroyed the psychology of fear and surrender created among the people in 1980 and revealed the spirit of the National Insurgency Revolution. Thus, the guerrilla force grew and became an army. With the ceasefire in 1993, democratic and political methods to solve the Kurdish problem came into play. A new strategic period had begun to seek ways to solve the Kurdish problem with the Turkish state through political methods. The 1993 ceasefire was an expression of this. In other words, a solution based on compromise and democratic struggle was sought to pave the way for political struggle. This did not overcome the etatist paradigm, but rather started a new strategic process with the compromise method. The resulting provocations sabotaged this period and there was no such strategic change. There was a conspiracy and an attack of the line of the gangs against the approach of the party to enter into a new strategic process, to make strategic changes and to pave the way for the political process. The team of Süleyman Demirel, Tansu Çiller, Doğan Güreş and Mehmet Ağar came to the government as counter-guerrilla and gang. This period is also the period when Gladio attacked. In the face of these attacks, the Chairman mobilized the guerrillas and the people and made great resistance against them. Thus, between 1993 and 1998, there was a period of great war.
On October 9, 1998, the Chairman was forced by an international conspiracy to leave Syria and an attempt was made to liquidate and destroy the PKK and the Kurdish people. The response to the Chairman’s efforts for a peaceful and political solution, was liquidation and destruction.”
Further, PAJK makes it clear that after the Chairman was kidnapped by an international conspiracy on February 15, 1999, and held in the Imrali torture system since then, a liquidation process began that was supposed to destroy the movement in six months. However, due to the foresight of the Chairman, his resistance and the steps developed by him in Imrali, these plans could not be implemented by the conspiratorial forces and they relied on a different tactic that was to spread throughout the process. It further states:
“In contrast, the Chairman has developed the Third Leadership Development Process. The struggle in Imrali has begun. By deepening the change and restructuring, the Chairman has brought about a new birth by putting both strategic and paradigm shifts on the agenda and gaining great ideological and philosophical thinking power. The truth that the Chairman has lived and changed has surpassed it by decoding the fascist and cruel politics of the male-dominated system that plagues not only our movement but all of humanity. This birth was a new birth that developed with the democratic-ecological and women’s liberation paradigm. This was a radical change for us as well. It was based on the development of the freedom and democracy struggles of the Kurds and all peoples on the basis of the democratic confederal system, in which the solution of the Kurdish question would not be possible with the etatist paradigm. Strategic change was shaped according to this paradigm and program change. Thus, the democratic and political struggle was brought to the fore. This process was tried to be prevented by liquidating the efforts of our Chairman to develop the Third Strategic Period. It was a long period of struggle in which our search for a solution and the efforts of the state to liquidate us were intertwined. In this process, our movement has experienced a radical change, a paradigm shift and a program shift on this basis. In 2010, the fourth phase of the strategic struggle came to the fore. And such a decision was made in 2010. This strategic period was determined as the period in which the strategy of the People’s Revolutionary War would be carried out.
The war has deepened as the enemy aims at liquidating and annihilating the Kurdish people towards us under all circumstances. This reality of the war was expressed as the People’s Revolutionary War. People’s Revolutionary War became the name of the war in order to protect our existence and secure our freedom. Because our existence as human beings and women is threatened. Today, the genocidal attacks continue, the system of destruction and denial puts into play all the methods of fascism. The protection of our existence, the attainment of our freedom and the ending of the genocide can only be achieved through the revolutionary people’s war. The chairman said:
“You must be prepared for a total genocidal war, a total war of resistance, existence and freedom. They must be prepared not to be exposed to genocide, to get rid of genocide, to secure their existence and freedom, and they must act by making their preparations accordingly. My biggest concern is that they are not doing that. Because as a movement and as a people, they have not really prepared for the People’s Revolutionary War.
The people are ready for the People’s Revolutionary War. But in order to do that, they have to actually be organized and able to fight that war. We fight like we used to, we save things, that’s how we keep ourselves alive. To think like that is to understand nothing of me, of what I have said. My determination to “neither live nor fight as before” is a fundamental perspective. Each heval should determine his own situation and attitude accordingly. From now on, revolutionaries, militants must act with a sense of responsibility and duty. Ideologically, politically, morally and organizationally, they must put themselves in a position to be productive and not accept anything as success.”
The chairman spoke about the organization of everything after the war. People, society, society must be brought to the level of reality of the fighting people. The character of the reality of the warring people must be acquired. Whatever it is, it must be achieved. The war in Kurdistan is not just any war. It is a war of existence and freedom. In this form, a war is raging. By being captured by the genocide, the Kurds are to be completely destroyed by the genocidal war. The Kurds must win this war of existence and freedom in order to exist, to protect and preserve their existence. If they cannot, they will not be able to escape complete annihilation.
Powers other than the Kurds lose most of their greatest interests. But the existence of the Kurds is at stake. The Kurds will either experience the situation of gaining their existence and freedom or being subjected to genocide. They are far from understanding what kind of war they are facing and what reality they are in. There is no prediction of what will happen as a result. Accordingly, an understanding approach, an appropriate organization of the people and the war, the acquisition and exercise of war power in the proper sense, does not exist. This situation poses great dangers to the people and the movement. It can lead to a situation that leads to genocide and massacres. They are at war, but they cannot organize the people, the society, the people based on the reality of war. Instead of organizing everything according to the reality of war with all its dimensions, it is as if they were living according to a normal social and economic situation. This also shows how far they are from the reality of war, from the seriousness of war. But as people, society and individuals, they have to make their lives fit for war in all aspects. There will be no other way to protect and preserve their existence in the Third World War. This is not a choice, this is a necessity. They will either organize themselves on the basis of the reality of the warring nations and maintain their existence on that basis, or if they do not, they will face massacre, genocide and annihilation.
We are facing a massacre, a genocide, we say we have to organize our lives and everything after that. We are not saying this as a joke! We are saying what kind of war process you are in and what could happen. Can you live as if there is no war? Is it possible to act like that? Could there be such a thing as if there were no war, as if there were no dangers? Is it possible to say that as people, as a society, as individuals, we want to live the way we want to live? Can we say or do that we live as we please in spite of war? How the warring powers fought and what they did can be seen every day. Terrible situations are happening.
The Kurdish people, society, people will organize their whole life and relations after the war. Even if you are husband and wife, you will be able to control yourself even if they don’t touch each other for five years. They will be able to discipline themselves. If they do not organize themselves in all dimensions based on the reality of the warring peoples, they will not be able to maintain their existence. They will face massacres and genocide. Everything is very clear. There is nothing incomprehensible about it.
The chairman said that even family life should be organized accordingly. This means that our priority as a people and a movement is to develop the revolutionary people’s war and organize all our work with an understanding that serves this war. The work of social construction must also fit into this strategy.
Let’s develop the revolutionary people’s war with the slogan Freedom in life, victory in war.
The work of the assembly and the commune, which is the self-management of the people’s organization and the democratic struggle, is the basis of construction. Construction work is also the work of building a free society. To an unfree society, threatened by genocide and war, building in the classical sense is not possible. Assembly and communes must be like war councils and communes. Every neighborhood, every street, every village, every district should be organized through self-defense. Organizations are meaningless if a Kurdish person cannot defend his neighborhood, home or city. It is a requirement of patriotism that people who consciously defend their own place, who prepare, organize and train themselves accordingly, also volunteer to stand in defense of the country. Of course, people whose country is under attack and who face massacres cannot have the problem of being outside this war or being a mercenary. It is a basic duty of every Kurdish individual to organize self-defense, which he must do to defend his own existence. For this reason, it is inevitable for all people, considering their circumstances, to be part of this war in some way. It is also a duty to encourage the participation of young women in particular, so that they go beyond the classically ascribed role of women. It is the most obvious outcome of our past combat experiences that women can wage, lead, and command war, and moreover, determine the fate of war. Nevertheless, it is still questionable in our society that young women are kept out of this war and treated with classical understanding of society. Not sending women to war means leaving them at the mercy of men. It will leave the way open to rape and assault of all kinds. Women should also know this and we should explain it very well. We should know that those who want freedom fight. The way to freedom is through war. It is necessary for women to be self-confident and consider defense as their duty. The most vivid and painful example of what will happen to women if they do not learn to defend themselves is the reality of Şengal. For this reason, changing this reality, instead of surrendering to society’s perception and classical approaches, is a reason to create a mentality struggle and transformation.
The main problem is not grasping the reality of genocide. When fascism enters a place, it develops a massacre, it does not make a difference between civilians and soldiers when it kills. The êzidi reality is in sight. We have witnessed the massacres of IS and the Turkish state. We are not in the situation to hesitate whether we can still fight, whether we can develop the revolutionary people’s war. We do not have such an option. Our only option is to develop and fight the revolutionary people’s war. However, we must know that we can protect ourselves and defend our existence by fighting. To look for other solutions, to look elsewhere, expectations from outside, expectations from politics is to deceive ourselves and to invest in death. We should know that a solution can only be achieved through war. If we fight and succeed, there will be an opportunity to make politics. If we fight and are strong, we will finish, we can prevent genocide.
Let’s develop the People’s Revolutionary War with the slogan Freedom in Life, Victory in War. Let’s fight for the freedom of our people and the destruction of our enemy by putting the development of the people’s revolutionary war at the center of all our work.”
