Freedom for Öcalan Campaign launched at Westminster

by Theo Russell

A NEW campaign  for jailed leader of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, to be released was launched on Monday 25^th April at a packed meeting at the House of Commons organised by Labour MP Kate Osamor, with full support from the unions UNITE, Unison and the GMB.

Öcalan has been held in solitary confinement on the Turkish island of Imrali since 1999, when he was arrested in Nairobi by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) with CIA assistance.

Öcalan’s niece Dilek Öcalan, an MP for the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which has 59 MPs in the Turkish parliament, said that the Turkish government ended two years of negotiations with Öcalan in April 2015 and since then “the isolation of Öcalan has intensified”.

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan then “launched an all-out war against the people of Kurdistan, and has not only supported Daesh (ISIS) but it has also increased support for jihadi gangs”.

She added: “The only way to end the current chaos in the region is to release Mr Öcalan and resume talks. The isolation of Öcalan is the isolation of peace.”

Reimer Heider, from the International Initiative Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, said: “Up to now the campaign for Öcalan was run by Kurdish people, but with the involvement of trade unions the campaign to free Öcalan is moving to a new level.”

He said: “People in Europe need to move their governments away from supporting warmongers and towards supporting peace in Kurdistan.”

Kamuran Yuksek, joint leader of the Democratic Regions Party, an ally of the HDP, said “The world is not a place where people fighting for justice and human rights are leading the way. The freedom of Mr Öcalan is essential for a democratic solution and peace in the Middle East.”

Stephen Smellie, Deputy Convenor UNISON Scotland, and trade union liaison officer with the Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, said: “This Government’s position is shameful, doing deals with Turkey to stop refugees coming while Turkey steps up its war on Kurdish people in Turkey, including aerial bombing.”

The meeting was also addressed by Tim Roache, general secretary of the GMB, Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite the Union, Bert Schouwenburg, the GMB’s international officer, Simon Dubbins, Director of UNITE’s international department; and a message of support from four Sinn Féin Westminster MPs was read out.

Stop Turkey’s war on the Kurds!

by New Worker correspondent

THOUSANDS of members of London’s Kurdish community gathered on Sunday 6th March outside the BBC headquarters in Portland Place for a mass march to Trafalgar Square and protest at the one-sided genocidal war now being waged by the Turkish government of Erdogan against the Kurdish people.

Turkey is a member of NATO and is an ally of the British government and David Cameron has publicly welcomed the Turkish Prime Minister to 10 Downing Street even as Kurdish civilians were being massacred in a basement in Cizre.

Britain and Turkey are working hand-in-glove – along with the United States and Saudi Arabia in doing their utmost to destabilise the elected Syrian government. Thousands of extreme Islamist terrorists from ISIS, al Nusra and other groups have been infiltrated from Turkey across the border into Syria.

Turkey has acted as a go-between to allow money, resources and weapons to flow from the western imperialists while they try to pretend they are opposed to ISIS and its barbaric tactics.

Kurds in Syria and Turkey have been fighting ISIS effectively but have to fend of attacks from the Turkish state as they do so.

In the South East of Turkey a full-scale military assault on Kurdish civilians is underway with 24-hour curfews for the last four months.

People are often shot at while carrying the white flag in search of water and food. Whole areas are turned into rubble with widespread crime against humanity being committed by the Turkish state.

The Kurdish successes against ISIS are astonishing; they are fighting mainly with Kalashnikovs and on two fronts – against ISIS and against the Turkish state.

The Kurds, led by their Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), have long campaigned for democratic autonomy within Turkey where they wish to form an egalitarian, gender equal society. But Erdogan wants to create and Islamic dictatorship throughout all Turkey.

The crowd that gathered in Portland Place last Saturday included many supporters including trade unionists, along with major anti-fascist and anti-racists organisations and London Turkish communists.

It was a colourful and exuberant crowd with many children present. But behind the smiles was the awareness that in the war zone young people not much older than these children are fighting on the front line, slowly winning the war but risking their lives to do so in the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Also on Sunday Turkish police in Istanbul broke up an attempt by Turkish Women to celebrate International Women’s Day, using rubber bullets to disburse the angry and defiant women.

Hundreds of women had turned out in response to an order from the governor of Istanbul, who banned the annual 8th March rally citing security concerns.

Hundreds of women filled the square in the Kadikoy district on the Asian side of Istanbul chanting slogans and carrying banners. Sporadic skirmishes between the demonstrators and plainclothes police erupted on several occasions.

Women’s rights activists criticize the Turkish government for failings on issues, such as eradicating domestic violence and gender inequality at work.

Protesters blame Erdogan for bomb horror

By New Worker correspondent

 

MORE THAN 10,000 people took to the streets of London on Sunday 11th October, mainly from London’s Turkish and Kurdish communities, to express shock and outrage at the bombing of an anti-government peace demonstration in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Saturday.

The bombing in Ankara killed 128 people and injured more than 200 – some very seriously. No organisation has claimed responsibility for the two blasts but the progressive Turkish and Kurdish communities are certain that the government of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is directly or indirectly responsible.

They accuse Erdogan of playing a two-faced game allowing Al Qaeda, ISIS and other anti-Assad forces to cross the Turkish border into Syria while at the same time, like the United States government, pretending to oppose ISIS.

Erdogan has used the conflict as an excuse to launch a new military offensive against the Kurdish community in Turkey and those just across the border in northern Syria, where the Kurds have been battling for their lives against ISIS.

Publicly Erdogan has dismissed both ISIS and the Kurdish fighters as “terrorists”.

The recent Russian interventions against ISIS in co-ordination with the Syrian government forces have been very successful and shown up the hypocrisy of both Erdogan and Washington for their failure to deal with ISIS, and undermined Erdogan’s support within Turkey.

Saturday’s peace march in Ankara was a huge rally to demand that Erdogan’s AKP stop its covert support for ISIS and Turkish air force attacks on the Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

The bombing of that march of unarmed civilians has shocked the world and led to a much bigger and angrier demonstration against Erdogan and the AKP in Ankara the next day by people who refused to be intimidated by the bloodshed.

Sunday’s hastily organised protest in London mirrored that demonstration and was also supported by London Stop the War and by the RMT union.

The protest had been called for Trafalgar Square but that was already pre-booked for a huge Indian celebration of Diwali so the Turkish atrocity protest assembled in Whitehall opposite Downing Street. It soon became evident that there was nowhere near enough space there to accommodate the huge numbers turning up, so the organisers led a spontaneous march to the BBC headquarters at the top of Regent Street.

Steve Hedley, representing the RMT, made a powerful speech calling for unity and solidarity between unions in Britain and Turkey, to stand together with a message for Erdogan: “You can bomb, you can burn and you can injure but you cannot win.”