Labor Party of Turkiye Press Release

March 12, 2025

TO THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC

We share with the public the evaluations of our Central Executive Committee regarding the current developments, Abdullah Öcalan's call and the ongoing discussions.  

As it is known, Abdullah Öcalan called on all groups of the PKK to lay down their arms and dissolve the organization by convening a congress. The one-man administration and the People's Alliance consider this call as the basis for crossing an important threshold without taking any concrete steps towards the solution of the Kurdish problem. However, the fact that on the one hand, the appointment of trustees to the municipalities of the DEM Party and the municipalities won by the CHP with the City Consensus, and on the other hand, the HDK –(Democratic Congress of People)  operation was carried out and the signals that these operations (against HDK) would continue, also show that there is no change in the perspective of the palace-government on the Kurdish issue. Turning a deaf ear to the demands of the Kurdish people, the one-man government intends to use the call for the laying down of arms and the dissolution of the organization to compensate for the loss of altitude of its power and to gather strength.

Recently, there have been significant changes in the Middle East and within the country. The imperialist powers, which were engaged in a fight for division in the Middle East and ultimately agreed on the overthrow of Assad and after years of struggles, the appointment of the leader of a jihadist organization as a 'trustee' in Syria, also made the fate of the Kurdish formation in the region uncertain. For the rulers of Turkey, who want to take the initiative in the reconstruction and political order of Syria, the dissolution of the Kurdish formation there, or at least assuming its patronage, is a matter of high expectation and effort.

However, the one-man administration, which is drawn into the chaos in the Middle East by the imperialist powers and wants to take advantage of this chaos, has difficulty in staying in the position it was able to maintain until the recent past. One-man administration, on the one hand, is trying to digest the reaction of high inflation, low wages, absolute impoverishment, and rising unemployment by increasing the dose of repression, on the other hand, it is moving forward by trying to realign social forces, shape their relations with each other, and finally expand those who pledge allegiance to power.

The government, which calls for "strengthening the domestic front" by pointing out the dangers that the chaos in the Middle East will cause for Turkey, really wants to strengthen the circle of allegiance around the one-man rule. For this reason, it is doing its best to divide the opposition against it, to bind some of them to itself, and to suppress the struggles of the working class and the people. The dissolution, division and weakening of the political and social forces that make an open or covert alliance with the Kurdish political party in the elections or in the fields of struggle are among the main tendencies of this process.

However, the objective conditions that bring the Kurdish workers, who are under the same threat of poverty, unemployment and hunger as the Turkish workers and toilers, closer to each other, are developing more strongly today than the electoral mathematics calculations, political engineering efforts and pressures of the one-man rule. This undermines the one-man rule that wants to go to the elections with a fictional home front.

It is clear that the aggression in the fields of economy, domestic and foreign policy will increase in order to suppress the demands for humane working and living conditions, democratic rights, and freedoms, to prevent the growth of the struggle for this cause, to maintain its power, etc., with the domestic front policy established against the exploited and oppressed segments of the people. However, the internal dynamics of the struggle against these policies and the one-man regime are also developing.

Our Party points out that Öcalan's call which symbolizes the end of a long period of armed conflict which has been going on uninterruptedly for 50 years that sometimes reached the level of a "low-intensity war" and led to the death and suffering of countless people, is important in terms of increasing the development possibilities of the united struggle of the Turkish and Kurdish working class and toilers.

The struggle to defend and win the urgent democratic demands regarding the Kurdish question will continue on a new ground in the new period. The conditions of expectation and uncertainty that the one-man rule wants to keep alive will change to the extent that the struggle for democratic rights is advanced by the forces of labor and democracy and the Kurdish political movement  which is a part of it.

Our party is committed to the coexistence of Turkish and Kurdish people on equal terms; It will continue to work to advance the united struggle of the working class and toilers of all nationalities for the achievement of rights and freedoms.

LABOR PARTY

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE – CEC

March 12, 2025