+#SORTtopics PKK, kurdistan, interview, Rojava, Syria, Turkey, Komun Academy

+#source Retrieved on 2019-10-10 from [[https://komun-academy.com/2018/11/27/a-40-year-old-social-legacy-the-pkk-through-the-eyes-of-its-first-supporters/][komun-academy.com]]

+Forty years ago, on 27^th of November, 22 young people founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Fis village of Licê district of Amed (Diyarbakir). Anticipating the 1980 fascist military coup in Turkey, the party’s leader Abdullah Öcalan and other members traveled to Rojava on July 2, 1979. The following twenty years that the PKK leadership spent in Syria planted the seeds for the social, political and cultural revolution that we observe in northern and eastern Syria today. Let us hear about the social legacy of Öcalan and the PKK from the witnesses of that period: ordinary civilians, who were the first people to have opened their doors to the revolutionaries and whose lives were to politicize and revolutionize over the decades to come. In particular, the arrival of the PKK marked the beginning of women entering the public sphere to do political work. The women at the forefront of the struggle today say that their women’s revolution began with Öcalan’s arrival in 1979. Over decades, thousands of women and men from the villages, universities, and toiling masses in the towns, especially youth, joined the PKK from Rojava. Below are testimonies of people from Kobanê and Afrîn, two bastions of resistance in Rojava.

+----

+Hemîde Elûş: “He would speak about his childhood very often, about how he went to school and got into fights. One day, he had a fight with a boy in school. He started throwing rocks at the boy, who harassed him and eventually broke the head of seven people, including the teacher’s. He told us how his mother Üveyş adviced him to never leave revenge to someone else, about how he would run and hide behind his mother, because his father was a poor-fellow. His mother had a great influence on him, impacting his notions of revenge and patriotism. Öcalan would always speak about how the Kurdish people were tried to be annihilated. He spoke about the violation of our rights and the exploitation of our labour. Our purpose was to enable our people to benefit from their own labour. For this, he said, we needed a free country. One year, we went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to participate in the anniversary celebrations of August 15^th, the day that the PKK started guerrilla warfare in Turkey. Öcalan held a speech and made sure to devote attention to all of us. We stayed there overnight. Until the sun rose, he walked around, spoke with everyone and looked after each of us individually. He asked about whether everyone had already eaten or whether anyone was hungry. He responded to the questions of the community. ‘Even if my back is facing you, ask me questions, speak to me anyway’, he said. ‘Even if I don’t look at you in any given moment, my ears are still with you’. And really, sometimes hours would go by, but he was never tired of speaking to the people and addressing their concerns. When I look at our revolution today and remember those days, I am not surprised at all. Back then, when there was nothing concrete to be seen yet, I already had faith.”

+At that meeting, he spoke mainly about the preparations for August 15^th. The next day, we held the celebrations for the anniversary of the shooting of the first bullet. Öcalan stood on a rock, the comrades stood in the field in a militant fashion. The people sat around the comrades. The leader saluted the people, thanked them. Really, the people were full of morale. He spoke for two hours, after which the people were competing to take photos with him. The majority of the people had travelled illegally to get there. The group before us had been arrested. The friends had told us to come by foot, not by car, since the state had blocked the road. But the people didn’t care. They thought ‘Who cares about the Syrian regime and what it will do. We saw our leader after all!’ The fact that the group before us had been arrested didn’t bother us or our enthusiasm. The people had brought many things with them, photos of the leader or flags.

+Hemîde Elûş: “We knew about the situation when Öcalan wanted to leave for Europe. We were following the developments. Two days before his arrest, I had a dream and told my husband. A couple of days later, I saw him cry in front of the TV; our leader had been kidnapped. It was a dark day and it always will be. My son’s birthday is February 15^th, we were preparing to celebrate. But because Öcalan was taken hostage that day, we stopped celebrating his birthday ever since. We will celebrate again, when he returns to his freedom…”