Call to Action: Free Abdullah Öcalan! End U.S. Complicity in Turkey's War on Kurds!
Call for Rally February 15 in Washington DC
Free Abdullah Öcalan: End U.S. Complicity in Turkey's War on Kurds!
In coordination with the international campaign “Freedom for Öcalan, A Political Solution for the Kurdish Question,” the Emergency Committee for Rojava is calling for your participation in a Washington D.C. rally on February 15 – the 25th anniversary of the abduction of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is seen by millions of Kurds globally as their political representative. On this date in 1999, Öcalan was abducted in a U.S.-backed international intelligence operation.
Abdullah Öcalan has been kept in an island prison in Turkey ever since, barred from all contact with the outside world for years at a time. He has been subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment. Since March 25, 2021, Öcalan has been denied access to all means of communication and contact with the outside world, including his lawyers and family, a condition, known as “incommunicado detention/absolute non-communication,” that is a form of torture that violates Turkish Constitutional Law and the European Convention on Human Rights.
The international ‘Freedom for Öcalan’ campaign unites millions of Kurds worldwide with social movements, political parties, municipalities, unions, activists, and intellectuals around a shared goal: ending Turkey’s ongoing colonization and oppression of Kurds. It calls for Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s participation in a renewed dialogue for a just peace.
Turkey’s ability to wage war on Kurds across the region is the result of decades of unconditional support from NATO and the United States: Washington is Turkey’s primary arms supplier; and U.S. political and legal designations criminalize Kurdish politics worldwide.
In 1978, Öcalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in an attempt to liberate the Kurdish people from the systemic violence of colonial oppression. He later outlined a new vision of Kurdish freedom, one that broke with the statist pattern altogether and charted a path toward multiethnic grassroots democracy, women’s freedom, and social ecology. This vision is being put into practice in North and East Syria (also known as Rojava), where millions of people from different ethnic and religious groups live together under a democratic and peaceful system of self-governance.
Öcalan’s vision is a path to peace, and he has unilaterally declared ceasefires nine times. From 2013 to 2015, Öcalan also served as the lead negotiator in a historic attempt to resolve Turkey’s Kurdish question at the negotiating table. But Turkey’s increasingly dictatorial president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has cynically chosen to stoke anti-Kurdish sentiments to consolidate his own power. As a result, dialogue has been replaced with invasions, drone strikes, assassinations, mass imprisonment, and the complete dismissal of the rule of law in Turkey.
Turkey has consistently attacked the peaceful region of North-East Syria, targeting women's rights defenders, minority groups, civilians and civilian infrastructure including water supplies. In recent weeks, Turkish has bombarded Rojava’s electrical infrastructure depriving more than a million people of electricity. Its cross-border attacks into Iraqi Kurdistan and crackdown on dissent at home and abroad makes a political solution urgent now more than ever. Öcalan’s release and participation in peace talks is critical to securing the full rights of Kurds and other religious and ethnic minorities to live a peaceful existence in the Middle East. It is time to Free Abdullah Öcalan and end U.S. complicity in Turkey’s war on the Kurds!
– Emergency Committee for Rojava
Event Details:
Join us February 15 in Washington DC. Gather at 2pm on the South side of Lafayette Square next to Pennsylvania Ave NW. Bring signs and flags showing your solidarity with Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdish people.