Tomorrow, wherever there are Kurdish communities, the Kurdish Freedom Movement will take part in Mayday marches. As a movement of struggle against oppression, it is an integral part of the international worker’s movement; and both through ideas and through example, Kurds and others under Abdullah Öcalan’s leadership have provided a source of strength and hope for oppressed people everywhere.
For the Kurdish movement, all struggles against oppression are part of the struggle against Capitalist Modernity and for a free and democratic society; and the campaign for Öcalan’s freedom and Kurdish freedom cannot be separated from the struggle for justice for workers.
As the Democratic Society Movement in Rojava (North and East Syria) puts it in their May Day message (which refers to Öcalan by his honorific nickname, “Apo” or uncle): “Today’s global solidarity campaigns for Apo’s physical freedom and the resolution of the Kurdish issue stem from the legacy of Apo’s modern resistance, which revived the spirit of the power of the workers and labourers of the region and the world through the democratic nation-building project.”
What Öcalan calls the democratic nation is the antithesis of the nation state and focuses on power from below.