Mustafa Karasu, executive council member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), shared his views with Medya Haber TV regarding the upcoming 27 November, the 43rd anniversary of the foundation of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Referring to the founders of the PKK as the “Apoist group”, led by Abdullah Öcalan, who is the jailed founder and the leader of the PKK, Karasu stated that “Since the Apoist group was founded in the Newroz of 1973, there has been a continuous struggle that spread over half a century. So much has changed with this struggle. So much has changed in Kurdistan, in Turkey and in the Middle East.”

Karasu defined the foundation of the PKK as the “Emergence of the Kurdish people’s will for liberation”.

“The PKK’s appearance on the stage of history should be understood as the emergence of the dedicated will, the emergence of the self power and power to struggle of the Kurdish people against genocidal colonialism and against these brutal enemies,” he said.

He stated that it was the PKK that turned around the Kurdish reality, which was deemed to be finished by Turkish authorities.

“When not a single leaf was able to be stirred, when the Turkish state was saying, ‘I finished them’, the PKK has brought the Kurdish people to their feet regarding the Kurdish reality,” he said.

“The PKK has destroyed the basic strategy of the Turkish state, which has lost all its ideological, political and psychological dominance.”

Karasu emphasised that the PKK has changed the fate of not only the Kurds, but of all the Middle East.

“The PKK has created the ‘free Kurd’, that is true. But it was not only the Kurds, who have been empowered by the PKK,” he said, “Peoples of the Middle East have been organised around the PKK’s struggle and vision.”

“We can say that by changing the fate of the Middle East, it has changed the fate of the peoples of the world.”

Karasu also shared his views on the reasons why the USA and EU governments take a position against the PKK.

The reason why international powers took part in the plot against Abdullah Öcalan, Karasu explained, “is because of the fact that the struggle, the vision of the PKK shakes the hegemony of international powers in the region.”

“The PKK aims for a Middle East where fellowship of the people is cherished and for the democratisation of the Middle East,” he said. “In this regard, the revolutionary, radical democratic vision is deemed dangerous by those powers who seek dominance over the region.”

“Has the PKK ever waged a battle against the USA or attacked anywhere in Europe?” Karasu asked, adding that no forces of the PKK has ever targeted any institutions in the USA or in Europe or in any other country around the world, except for Turkey, where the PKK has been waging an existential battle of life and death for over 40 years now.

“But the fact that the PKK demands democracy and freedom, that the PKK empowers people,” he said, “causes them to see it as a great danger to themselves.”

“The PKK aims to stop conflict based on ethnicity, religion or sects, this is the understanding of the democratic nation. That is why they want to liquidate the PKK.”

By aiming to liquidate the PKK, an international plot has attempted to eliminate Abdullah Öcalan since he was caught and jailed in 1999, as a result of an “international plot” as Karasu describes it:

“Once upon a time, they tried to impose an understanding ‘Yes to PKK, no to leader Apo’, but they could not achieve that. That was the desired aim of the international plot. Because, the PKK means the leadership of Apo.”

He shares his views on what awaits for the PKK now, having left 43 years behind and listed on EU’s list of “terrorist groups” as Western countries follow Turkey’s lead on criminalisation:

“International powers cannot achieve what the Turkish state failed to do. Because the PKK has a very strong ideology. PKK’s ideology, the paradigm suggested by leader Apo is so strong that it is not possible to distort it or to thwart it.”