DURAN KALKAN
PART ONE
The August 15 Initiative expresses our second stage of party-formation, and at the same time it also expresses a strategic change.
In this sense, it is an ideologically, organizationally, and strategically integrated initiative. As for the strategic-change dimension within it, it expresses the transformation of the strategy of struggle based on revolutionary violence against the structures and institutions that had been infiltrated and recruited, into the strategy of a protracted people’s war against the fascist military regime that emerged after the September 12 coup. In other words, there is such a strategic change and development. At the same time, of course, it also contained our second stage of party-formation. But in which field was this party-formation? It was party-formation within the framework of national liberation. Leader APO expressed this clearly in his evaluations on the memory of comrade Mahsum Qorqmaz, saying: “It is party-formation in national liberation.” Thus, it expresses such an integrated stage of initiative.
As for the June 1, 2004 Initiative, it is undoubtedly the beginning of the third stage of party-formation. Here there is no strategic change. In reality, it contains the application of a new paradigm on the basis of the strategy of democratic politics that had previously been adopted. Party-formation here is party-formation on the line of democratic confederalism, party-formation for embodying democratic modernity on the ground. The strategic change took place on June 1, 2010. If we pay attention, we see that both dates are June 1; one is in 2004 and the other is in 2010. The ideological and organizational dimension is earlier and more essential in the June 1, 2004 Initiative, while the strategic and tactical dimensions remain more in the background. The real strategic initiative and change took place on June 1, 2010.
When the developments of 2004 and 2010 are taken together, they in fact express a new initiative that is ideologically, organizationally, and militarily integrated. In this sense, the June 1 initiatives of 2004 and 2010, which came twenty years after the August 15, 1984 Initiative, resemble it in terms of launching a new process of party-formation.
In the August 15 Initiative there were not major ideological problems; rather, organizational, strategic, and tactical problems were more present. If we examine the stage of withdrawal and work outside the country, we see that the focus was mainly on strategic and tactical issues. That is, a military strategy was developed on the basis of the book “The Role of Force in Kurdistan,” and efforts were made to find solutions to its practical methods and tactics. The ideological dimension, however, was deepened as the ideology of the nation-state.
As for the orientation toward June 1, 2004, the problem was essentially ideological. Leader APO, in the defense he wrote for the European Court of Human Rights in 2001, pointed to the existence of an ideological crisis. That is, it was not possible to reach a solution through the ideology of the nation-state, and therefore continuing on the same ideological line would not lead to a result. What, then, would be the ideological line capable of offering a solution? This search led Leader APO to a paradigm change.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party moved out of being a power-oriented and statist party, and became a democratic social party based on women’s freedom and social ecology. It transformed into a party based on democratic society, broke away from the paradigm of power and state, and became a party that takes as its basis the paradigm of democratic society founded on women’s freedom and ecology.
In reality, the third stage of party-formation was a stage that developed through a new paradigm, and the ideological crisis was overcome through a paradigm change. What did this change express? In fact, it resolved the contradiction between the aim and the means.
The aim was freedom, equality, solidarity, and communalism. For example, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party emerged as a socialist movement and saw its development on this basis, but it wanted to realize this through the instrument of power and state. Yet this instrument was an instrument of oppression, exploitation, and interest-seeking. In reality, one aspect of the state of non-solution in the Kurdish question stemmed from here. For the nature of the Kurdish question did not allow for such a type of solution.
In other movements, problems were solved within that paradigm, or at first appeared as though they had been solved, but later it became clear that they had not been solved. Rather, they practically returned to the previous situation and reconciled with the system. The Kurdish question, however, did not accept even that level of solution, and therefore it was necessary to achieve harmony between the aim and the means.
If the aim is based on freedom, pluralism, equality, solidarity, and the objectives of communal ideology, then the appropriate means can be democratic administration, democratic sociality, or the democratic system. These aims, however, could not be built through the instrument of power and state.
Accordingly, the paradigm change expressed a reality that made the means compatible with the aim. Thus, the June 1 Initiative was an initiative developed on the basis of this paradigm. For the third stage of party-formation differs ideologically and philosophically from the first and second stages of party-formation, and contains important changes.
The strategic change was realized on June 1, 2010. If we pay close attention, June 1, 2004 did not witness a major strategic change. The strategy was the strategy of democratic politics. What took place was the raising of the issue of removing the obstacles standing before the activation of this strategy and democratic politics through low-intensity armed actions. That is, the dimension of June 1, 2004 was of this form. It was the use of arms as required by the strategy of democratic politics. In this way, we can see the points of similarity and difference. Yet each of them also expresses a new stage of party-formation.
The August 15 Initiative was the second stage of party-formation; that is, party-formation in national liberation and party-formation in national resistance. National liberation had two basic instruments:
The guerrilla: first the HRK forces, then the ARGK, were formed as units of armed resistance.
The people’s resistance force, ERNK, was formed within the framework of national liberation.
As for the basic organizations of the third stage of party-formation, they were:
HPG, the People’s Defense Forces, which defined itself as the self-defense force of democratic confederalism and democratic politics.
The society that was built was democratic confederalism, which was defined under the name KCK, the Kurdistan Communities Union, meaning the union of democratic societies. It came into being with this organizational identity.
How was the June 1, 2004 Initiative reached?
Many matters can of course be evaluated, but what appears important in terms of the task at hand is to present the documents and make the appropriate explanations. A historical framework can be drawn as follows:
In reality, Leader APO declared the third unilateral ceasefire process on September 1, 1998. The system of denial and annihilation, that is, the system of genocide against the Kurds, responded to this with the October 9, 1998 conspiracy. It carried this conspiracy as far as establishing the system of torture and isolation in İmralı on February 15, 1999.
Although Leader APO foiled the process of annihilation that began on October 9, it was not possible to prevent his abduction to Turkey and his entry into the process of execution. This is what the date February 15 expresses.
However, the execution process was prevented thanks to the correct evaluation of the February 15 conspiracy, its effect on Turkish public opinion, and the realization of the unity of Leader and people. Those directing Turkey saw that carrying out the death sentence would be more dangerous for them. This was because the unity of leadership, organization, and people existed.
At first, they hoped that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party would be liquidated within six months, but the opposite happened; the party reorganized itself and united the people around the line of the leadership. At that point, the outbreak of an endless Kurdish-Turkish war would have come onto the agenda, and this would have harmed both the state and society.
On the basis of this evaluation, they saw that the policy of keeping the Leader in İmralı and subjecting him to slow erosion was more useful for their interests than execution. That is, through the İmralı isolation, they targeted placing the leadership under a heavy isolation that would make it incapable of doing anything, leaving the Kurdistan Workers’ Party without leadership, so that it would disintegrate, erode, and scatter over time, and the leadership would be defeated on this basis.
Thus, the process entered the stage we call the struggle of the İmralı process.
Despite all impossible conditions, Leader APO indicated that through work this process could be developed in favor of the revolution, took this as a basis, and asked for support from the organization and the people. Our organization and our people showed determination to shoulder their responsibilities.
On January 11, 2000, after the death sentence was not carried out, the stage we call the process of struggle in İmralı began within the framework of the international conspiracy.
The essence of this process was the evaluation of the past. Why was the ideology of the nation-state able to produce solutions in colonies and other countries, but unable to produce a solution in Kurdistan?
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party waged great wars, gave martyrs, carried out great actions, and fought as much as other peoples fought. From August 15, 1984 until 1998 it waged an uninterrupted war for fifteen years. Perhaps the Vietnamese people waged a long war, but many other peoples did not fight continuously for fifteen years.
That is, the duration of the war was not short, nor was its intensity weak. It was natural that all these efforts should have led to national liberation, but in Kurdistan they led to confrontation with the international conspiracy.
So there was something wrong, there was a state of non-solution, and it was necessary to know its source and remove its causes. Thus emerged the state that was called the ideological crisis, and Leader APO concentrated his efforts on it.
During 2001 and 2002, he focused on these issues and saw that the problem lay in the ideology of the nation-state. National liberation movements were also evaluated, and it became clear that even when they achieved victory in war, after five or ten years they would again be integrated into the system and enter the framework of the statist system.
They claim that they are fighting that system, shed all that blood, and give hundreds of thousands of martyrs, but after a few years they return and integrate into it again. In the end, they become part of its system.
Accordingly, those cases had not actually been solved; rather, a formal or false solution had emerged. It appeared as if it were a solution, but in reality it was not.
In Kurdistan, the Barzanis and the Kurdistan Democratic Party succeeded in producing such a solution within a limited area of Kurdistan and moved toward developing the nation-state project, but the system in Kurdistan did not allow more than this degree of nationalist-statist manifestation.
Thus, the ideology of the nation-state was not the solution. With which ideology, then, should the solution be?
The paradigm change is in reality an ideological revolution.
To be continued…