A ceasefire has been declared by the Peoples Defence Forces (HPG), the armed branch of Kurdistan’s Societal Union (KCK, formerly known as the PKK), lasting until September 20^th. This gives us an opportunity to reflect and evaluate the roles we have been cast to play. But most importantly to assess our movement as a whole.

Positive images of the Kurdish revolution will not be printed, broadcasted or published by the media. It is up to the Kurdish revolution to embody those images. To be all that it can be. One of the major obstacles lying in the way of the revolution is doubtlessly the world system dominating the globe today: capitalism. But it is important to bear in mind that the revolution must not imitate certain predecessors. Blind ideology has never been favourable. Lessons should be learned from other anti-colonial struggles, rather than textbooks in Marxism. Instead of rationalizing the revolution one needs to feel the revolution, in order to achieve a change of paradigm.

Not developing a radical epistemology, serving as an antidote to the poison of European capitalist universalism, is a death sentence to any chance of a catharsis.[1] Be it manifested by free market liberalism or under the cloak of a paradoxical “Christian secularism”. Compartmentalizing the body of intellectual thought and discourse to fit with a current prevailing ideology will effectively cut of the oxygen to the movement. It has, in fact, done so already – but the Kurdish revolution looms closer nonetheless. Luckily the movement has not relied subserviently on the musings of great Kurdish leaders and thinkers. Detached from the lives of the people they have proven to block the people’s clear view of the horizon – instead representing the capitalist system and in extension their own petty class interest. The biggest impairment being they love their status and relative power more than the people.[2] A revolution not based on love, compassion and trust will always turn out to be a failed endeavour.

Past revolutions have failed for a great number of reasons. In some cases simply because they were not revolutionary enough. The enemies of the Kurdish revolutions have despite the difference of time, ideology and nationality usually followed a very predictable scheme. Denying the very existence of the issues the movement wants to confront is perhaps the first step. The second is to deny any legitimacy to the movement. Then comes condemnations and defamations. This is the followed by attempts to sabotage the movement through various judicial and diplomatic measures. Utterly common is actions aiming at infiltrating and corrupting the movement, often from the leadership. When none of this seems to gain the desired results, the enemy state funds or creates alternative organizations to compete with the radicals.

A random observer might casually utter the insignificance of the revolution: “It’s not my problem”. It is, as long as you are a human being. But that is precisely what capitalism does to us; robs us of our humanity a little at a time, supplanting it with greed and selfishness. An immediate counteraction is the bridging between Kurdish, as well as non-Kurdish, organizations and communities. Only by finding common ground can the revolution reach momentum. Concretely speaking a manifest of one sort or another ought to be formulated. This would be done so as to outline the program of the revolution, its goal and aspirations. High jacking the movement, sundering it, and leading it to a dead end might be more easily avoided. However, it must be acknowledged that a written manifest, just as much as any organizational structure, cannot by itself act as an immunity against derailment.

The ten point program set forth is not meant to be an absolute manifest. Neither is the professed demands intended to be used as bargaining chips to secure political leeway. Freedom will never be handed down to those who politely ask for it. Malcolm X succinctly made this point when he once said: “anytime you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something that you have to do for your selves.” That is the purpose of the following manifest, as well as to shine a light at the many injustices carried out on the Kurdish people.

The Ten Point Program

1. We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Kurdish Nation.

We believe that our people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We Want Full Employment For Our People.

We believe that the government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the bourgeoisie businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ its entire people and give a high standard of living.

3. We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Kurdish Communities.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The Turkish Kemalists have taken part in the slaughter of millions of Kurds and other peoples; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.

We believe that if the Turkish Landlords will not give decent housing to our Kurdish communities, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent Turkish Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people knowledge of itself. If a human does not have knowledge of herself and her position in society and the world, then she has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We Want All Kurdish Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.

We believe that Kurds should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other Kurds anywhere in the world who, like the Kurds in Northern Kurdistan, are being victimized by the Kemalist militaristic Turkish state. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Kurds.

We believe we can end police brutality in our Kurdish communities by organizing Kurdish self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our community from racist police oppression and brutality.

8. We Want Freedom For All Kurdish Political Prisoners Held In Turkish Jails.

We believe that all Kurdish political prisoners – men, women and children – should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We Want All Kurds When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Civil Court In Accordance To International Agreements.

We believe the courts should follow the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, so that Kurds will receive fair trials.

10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and humanity entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

These claims, although slightly edited by myself, were originally made by our brothers and sisters in the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.[3] Their claims were in all essence internationalist, raised against a global enemy: capitalism. A spectre that still persists in haunting our society. Even when capitalism appears to self-destruct, deteriorate from within, it is nothing but an illusion. The apparent death twitches of capitalism are in fact its metamorphosis, its way of adapting to the new socioeconomic climate entrapping it. Like a hydra, slay one head and two new will grow out in its place. This is the nature of capitalism. Therefore the sensationalism in exclaiming that “capitalism is dead!” (alternately liberalism) should be viewed with the outmost scepticism, or even with ridicule. Capitalism is as alive as it has ever been. Albeit shifting form the interior system remains intact, colonizing everything around it. More accurately would it be to exclaim: capitalism is death.

It is my observation that freedom contingent upon personal, regional or group belonging may well lead to inaction and aloofness from the Kurdish struggle. Instead, many factors underscore that freedom, or privilege, influences one to review rather than participate in the ongoing revolution. Aims and objectives converge making the individuals perception of power relations turbid and out of synch.

The Turkish state and its spokespersons have to recognize the origin of the so called Kurdish problem. Beginning with admitting that we are all facing a democratic problem within the Kemalist state structure. In other words; the issue has not been imported, sustained or facilitated from “conniving foreign powers”, it is a direct product of Turkey’s colonial project in Kurdistan. To overcome this conflict there is an urgent need to recognize and accept existing differences within the state system. It is time to the break the spell of mass hysteria and rhetorical dramaturgy that have been tailored so as not to dismantle the authoritarian state system. Persistence in demanding assimilation or a regulated “otherness” only leads to systematic racism. And the idea of unity results in an undemocratic fixation to avoid any signs of discordance. A genuine democracy can only be built upon the freedom of peoples, embracing differences rather than shunning them.[4]

This is the heart of the Kurdish revolution.

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