ICL Letter of Condolence to PKK

We reprint below a January 14 letter by the International Communist League to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) expressing condolences for the execution-style killing of three female PKK members who were found dead in their Paris office four days earlier. The letter was delivered to PKK representatives in Paris on January 15 at a commemoration for the Kurdish activists that was attended by thousands. Against the backdrop of renewed Turkish military air strikes against PKK mountain camps, tens of thousands of Kurds turned out for their funerals two days later in Diyarbakir, Turkey. The letter, now available in Turkish, was also distributed at Kurdish demonstrations in London on January 18 and in Toronto on January 21.

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The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) extends our sincere condolences to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on the brutal murder of their three women comrades in Paris last week. Whoever fired the shots that killed Sakine Cansiz, a founding cadre of the PKK, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Soylemez, responsibility for this gruesome killing lies squarely with the Turkish state, whose army has for decades waged a war resulting in the deaths of some 37,000 Kurds. We demand freedom now for Abdullah Öcalan and for the thousands of other Kurdish nationalists who languish in prison in Turkey and elsewhere. The blood of the Kurdish militants slain in Paris is also on the hands of Turkey’s imperialist backers. The U.S. and the European Union have labeled the PKK as “terrorists.” The NATO imperialist powers, who arm the Turkish state to the hilt, are in fact the most powerful and dangerous terrorists on this planet.

For many years our organization internationally has defended the PKK against state persecution in Germany, Britain and other countries, notwithstanding our political differences with the PKK. We believe that the Kurdish masses must look to an alliance with the proletariat in the countries of the region that oppress the Kurdish nation—particularly Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria—and in turn the proletariat in these countries must champion the right of Kurdish self-determination against their own capitalist rulers. From our perspective of workers revolution internationally, we look to Kurdish and Turkish workers as a key component of the proletariat in West Europe who can be a bridge to the struggles in Turkey. Our program is for a socialist republic of united Kurdistan, within a socialist federation of the Near East.