In Northern Kurdistan, we are not masters of our day

Fuad Önen December 06 2025

Before anything else, in Northern Kurdistan, we are not the owners of today. We cannot determine our own day and walk according to it.
Today is determined by the state, and out of obligation, we hand our day over to it. Today, our day is: the Third World War, and the fronts of this war in the Near East and the Middle East.
In this war, on both of its fronts, what should the stance of Kurdish politics be? What opportunities does this create for Kurdistan? What dangers are there? We need to discuss these and not just take a position; we must call on our people.

But instead, at the beginning of another year, we are listening to our enemy. They are determining our day. For more than a year now, it has been: what did Bahçeli say? What did Erdoğan say? What did Öcalan say? The entire Turkish media is centered on this. And our people constantly listen to this.
When I sit downstairs in Derik, acquaintances and friends come, and we sit and talk afterwards. Someone says: yesterday on TV, so-and-so said this, the other one said that.
First of all, the Turkish parties cannot solve the Kurdish question. Their approach to our rights, to this state, and the political parties of Turkey, is an approach of hostility to our rights. Let no one, no leader of those parties, sweet-talk us. Their hands are in the blood of hundreds of thousands of Kurds.
Bahçeli says something, Erdoğan says something. They seize the agenda. One month, they say one thing. The following month, they say something else. Among the politicians and intellectuals of Northern and Western Kurdistan, no serious analytical intelligence remains. They just run after events.
Let me give an example. A few days ago, Bahçeli spoke at a meeting of his party’s group. He talked about many things. Later, a journalist from a newspaper asked him, “The European Court of Human Rights has given a verdict on Demirtaş; what do you think?” Bahçeli said that the release of Demirtaş would actually be a good thing for Turkey. Everyone stopped at this sentence of Bahçeli.
Yet only ten minutes earlier, Bahçeli had said in the same group meeting: in Syria, in Rojava, the SDF wants to become thoroughly integrated into the Syrian army. This is a danger for our country. We do not accept this, and our state must intervene. In crude, corrupt language, Bahçeli threatened the Kurds. No one stopped at that speech of his, and instead, people discussed how Bahçeli had suggested that the release of Demirtaş would be suitable for Turkey.

Whereas it is there that we should linger, that is the real issue. He is making threats. He is still threatening Rojava and insisting that a commission should go to Imrali. Imrali should issue a special call for the disarmament of Rojava. That is, for the SDF to fully join the Syrian army.
Now we must come out of this inner frame. We have handed over our daily agenda to the occupier, and every time he says something, we rush to follow it.
The matter of Demirtaş

When Demirtaş was the co-chair of the HDP, he was squeezed between three forces: one side, represented by Qandil, another by Imrali, and a third by Ankara.
Demirtaş did not have the leadership calibre of someone who has his own ideas and stands behind them. As a result, in the Imrali process of 2012–2015, he became the co-chair of the HDP. He wanted to move forward there. In Northern and Western Kurdistan, Demirtaş received strong support. But he was squeezed between all three forces. When he drew closer to Qandil, Ankara frowned. When he drew closer to Imrali and Ankara, Qandil frowned.
As a result, five small leftist Turkish parties are also inside the HDP. Their strategic allies are Kemalists. Together with them, Demirtaş sought to engage in politics with the CHP against the AKP. This did not align with Öcalan’s calculations or those of the AKP. His arrest, in my view, was a decision made by both sides. They threw him into prison, and he has now been jailed for nine years.
In the past, prison was like a school for revolutionaries. That is, when we entered prison and came out, we came out more serious and more convinced than before. Over the last 25 years, the prison system has undergone significant changes. They removed the communal system. They put three or four people in each cell. Those who stay long-term in prison are left there; in effect, prison has become a school for the state. It educates people there.

When I say this, I do not accuse all prisoners. Those who have been in prison for 20–30 years and remain in jail are, in their stance on Kurdistan and in terms of patriotism, mostly very firm. But the ones they specifically target, they educate.
In this Bahçeli–Öcalan process, Demirtaş sent two or three letters. Each of these letters, more than being an intelligent Turkish-style declaration, was a declaration of a Turkey-centric mindset. He said, our main frame is Turkey. Then he said, We must go back to the line of Mustafa Kemal, to the line of Alparslan Türkeş and Adnan Menderes. He did not say that the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) should preach in the mosques about the Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood. These articles are like documents of regret. That is, he said to both Imrali and Bahçeli that he no longer has any objection to Imrali or to this process.
The Kurdish people, the Kurdish public, do not trust this process. They want to bring out something else every time so that they can give the people hope. Sometimes they release some sick prisoners. According to Turkey’s own laws, Demirtaş must be released. But they will take this to such a level that, look, as a result of this Bahçeli–Öcalan process, prisoners like Selahattin Demirtaş were released. Whereas, according to their own laws, they are obliged to release Selahattin anyway.
If he gets out and continues politics along the line of these letters, in my opinion, he will have finished himself. Millions of Kurds still like Demirtaş. But unfortunately, he no longer has a stance that is Kurdistani, that is revolutionary.

His brother wrote an article. Basically, Bahçeli also said: “On the contrary, do not throw a bomb between Imrali and Edirne.” Yet the same Bahçeli, when this process first started, said this is a process between Imrali and the DEM Party; Edirne and Qandil are not part of it. We will walk through this process with Imrali and the DEM Party.
You know that at one time Erdoğan also said: the one in Edirne will be held accountable to the one in Imrali. That is, the one who has placed dynamite between them—if there is dynamite, he has placed it.
His brother probably wanted to protect both his brother and, even more, his own leader. He said Demirtaş has never claimed to compare himself with Öcalan. Those who say such things appear as if they are friends, but they are not doing something good for Demirtaş. The end of this story is not this. The Turkish state will never relinquish its hold.
The Turkish state, in crude language, says that as long as the SDF, YPG, YPJ do not become fully integrated into the Syrian army, we will never stop. For them, this is the measure. From the outset, this process has been essentially based on that. Not because a few thousand PKK guerrillas in Qandil are strong and the state is weak.

They directly say that if in Rojava, a Kurdish state is formed, for them, this is a question of existence and non-existence. Until that threshold is reached, there will never be any negotiations. And if negotiations do come one day, their framework will be clear.
When we speak of rights, there are individual rights and collective rights. The Turkish state does not recognise any collective rights for Kurds in Northern and Western Kurdistan.
Imrali and the DEM Party also do not raise the demand for collective rights. They increase the demand for individual rights. Change the execution law, release sick prisoners, release Demirtaş. Let them go and walk. That is, the Bahçeli–Öcalan process is built on the concept of individual rights. However, in practice, Bahçeli and Erdoğan are far removed from even individual rights.
The practical reality of the Bahçeli–Erdoğan coalition of the last 8–9 years is that wherever they go, they also restrict individual rights. They narrow the freedom of thought. Their elections are suspicious. No one knows how many votes they really get; they cheat by the thousands and are far away from any intelligent notion of human rights.
Their goal is clear. What must we do? In this narrowness, in this third world war, what can a Kurdish politician actually achieve?
In the South and in Rojava, the phase of partisan warfare has already passed. In the South, 6–7 million people are being led. In Rojava, there are two million Kurds, but the SDF leads 7–8 million people. What we need, I must say, is around this.

The Parliament of Kurdistan must convene. For 13 months after the elections, they still have not formed a government. The parliament must convene, form a national government, and call on the Kurdish people: in this war, what should be the position of the Kurds? The same should be done in Rojava: a few months ago, they held a Kurdish–Kurdish conference under the leadership of Masoud Barzani. Later, they formed a Kurdish–Kurdish committee. That committee is not active.
Mazlum Abdi says: When I go to Damascus, I do not go in the name of the Kurds. I go in the name of the peoples of North-East Syria. When did we solve the issue of North-East Syria, solve the problem of the Gulan region, so that afterwards a Kurdish delegation would go to Damascus and discuss the rights of Kurds in Syria with Damascus?
Whereas for us, the essential point is here. That is, the eyes of the Druze, the Alawite Arabs, Armenians, Syriacs, and Assyrians are on the Kurds, and the Kurdish delegation must be functional. It must come onto the stage. That is one thing.
Second, in all four parts of Kurdistan, Kurdish politics must say to the Turkish state: withdraw immediately from Afrin, Serêkaniyê, Girê Spî.
They have opened dozens of military bases in South Kurdistan. Since Nechirvan Barzani is also part of this process, and they say the party has become corrupt and laid down its weapons, then the regional government must ask Turkey to remove its military bases from Kurdistan and hand them over to the peshmerga.

These are the issues we must debate. The rest is like shepherd’s gossip. Every two months, they bring up a topic and ask us to discuss it.
The Kurdish reality (“Kürt olgusu”)
Öcalan’s last phrase—he called the Kurdish reality in Turkish “Kürt olgusu”; this is an essential concept in the terminology of Turkish intelligence. The Turkish state wants to atomise the Kurds. To strip them of their nationhood and even of their social existence.
Because of this, in his first message, Öcalan said that ideas like a separate state, federation, autonomy, and culturalism are not in harmony with historical-social reality. In other words, collective rights are fundamentally banned for Kurds.
For this state project, whose architect is the intelligence service, to succeed, the Kurds must be atomised. There can be individual Kurds, but there must not be a Kurdish people or Kurdistan. There is a Kurdish reality, but this reality must be diffused entirely among the Turkish people.
The question of integration
Here comes the topic of integration. Between two people, there is no such thing as integration. Whoever demands integration from a people and says, “go be integrated into another nation,” wants to strip that people of their nationhood. Integration within a society can exist as a small framework where some particularities have their space; if the state is democratic, it can recognise different characteristics and bring them together in the larger society. This is what integration is. In addressing national issues, there is no integration.
If you demand integration from the people of the North, you want to strip the Kurds of their nationhood.

Ziya Gökalp, 104 years ago, when he spoke of assimilation, called it “denationalisation”. That is, removing nationhood.
From this, we understand that the present project is the continuation of the project from a hundred years ago. They want to remove the Kurdish people as a people. To turn them into individual Kurds, citizens of the Turkish Republic, and a detached piece of the Turkish nation. The goal is clear; this project is a project of the intelligence service.
They are doing the same thing in Rojava: they say to become integrated with Damascus. Who is in Damascus? In Damascus, there is a government that was in Idlib; the whole world was calling it a terrorist government, and they took that Idlib government to Damascus and said: This is now the legitimate state.
The capacity of HTS and Gulanî to represent the peoples of Syria is far less than that of the SDF. In terms of military capability, weapons, and bases, Gulanî is significantly inferior to the SDF.
They say: go and integrate with HTS. They also want to strip the Kurds of nationhood and social being. This process has been ongoing for a year now and has yielded no results. In my opinion, the Kurdish people will not accept this submission; this process will break down at the start in Rojava and Syria. That is how I see it.

Our political class does not understand this war of the Turkish state
This process is a campaign of the Turkish state over all parts of Kurdistan. It is an offense. This process is neither a peace process nor a solution process. They want to conquer Kurdistan anew. This process will not stop only in Northern and Western Kurdistan. Rojava is also one of its targets.
They are preparing for a situation where Israel and America—I am convinced—will not easily topple Iran, but from time to time they will tighten the screws. They want to destabilise the Iranian regime. If the Iranian regime becomes destabilised, those who will be able to rise strongly against it will be the Kurds, not the Baluch. The situation of the Azeris is unclear; they have no clear stance.
The Turkish state is preparing itself so that if destabilisation happens in Iran, it can first block the Kurds through the Azeris. The northern dimension of this project is broad. One can even say they want to conquer Kurdistan for the fourth time. The first time, in the 16th and early 17th centuries, with the Battle of Chaldiran and the Treaty of Qasr-i Shirin, the Ottomans conquered and occupied two-thirds of Kurdistan. However, they did not abolish the autonomy of the Kurdish mirs (princes); instead, Kurdistan was governed through the mirs.

Between 1817 and 1847, for a period of thirty years, the Kurdish mirs waged war against the Ottoman state. In the end, the mirates of Bedirxan Beg and Xan Mahmud were also destroyed. Then, they created a new governorate called “Kurdistan” and stated that it would be ruled from Istanbul. Many Ottoman historians refer to this as the second conquest of Kurdistan.
The third time: from 1919 to 1923, neither the Istanbul government nor the Ankara government ruled Kurdistan. But they worked together with the imperialist states, and with Lausanne, they once again occupied it, and this time built a genocidal system.
Today, in the Near East, a political vacuum exists. Iran has partly withdrawn, and Turkey wants to fill this vacuum together with America and occupy it. The Ottoman state previously needed the Kurdish mirs and Kurds to advance into the Middle East.
The Turkish state has an imperial mindset and wants to be a sub-imperial power in the region. For this, it needs to subdue the Kurds. If it cannot fully subdue them, it will increase its hegemony over Kurdish politics. Especially over Rojava, the South, and later over East Kurdistan, they want to establish a new dominance.

This is war, and every Kurdistani patriot must see it as such. This is neither a campaign of PKK disarmament, nor a peace process, nor a solution process. It is a direct offensive by the Turkish state against Kurdistan. Just as in earlier conquests, some Kurdish mirs, some Kurdish intellectuals, and some Kurdish tribes were used, in this campaign too, under the leadership of Öcalan, they want to force the North to surrender and deliver Rojava through the North. Tomorrow, with the same perspective, they will hand over East Kurdistan and then South Kurdistan.
Unfortunately, our political class does not understand this war of the Turkish state. Our parties outside the DEM Party in Northern Kurdistan, when you talk to them, they say: Isn’t PKK disarmament a good thing? They think this process is only about PKK disarmament.
Yet the presence of PKK forces in Qandil, in these last twenty years, has been a perfect excuse for the Turkish state. Using their presence as a pretext, it launched an attack on the South. It attacked Rojava, it occupied Afrin, it occupied Serêkaniyê, it occupied Girê Spî. Unfortunately, our political class, because it is conformist, has not taken a revolutionary stance against this occupying and genocidal order. They want to name this process merely as PKK disarmament, and shamefully, secretly support it.
Our parties in the South are making the same mistake. Following the initiation of this process, PUK, KDP, and YEKGIRTU issued a joint statement. They said, ‘We support this process.’ Never before had these three parties been so united around any national question in South Kurdistan.
For example, for the unification of the peshmerga, for a unified economy, for unified security forces, our parties do not unite. But by what miracle is it that all three together said with one voice that they support the Bahçeli–Öcalan process?
We try to expose this occupying offensive and alert the Kurds that this is not a peace or solution process; it is an invasion, and we must stand against this attack with all our strength.

The Golani example

Now Golani is dancing. There was a government in Idlib; Russia was bombing it. Turkey initiated the Astana process with Russia and Iran to remove itself from the process.
Russian policy toward Turkey—from Soviet times until now—has always been based on Turkey’s interests. They have always used Turkey, both during Soviet times and under Putin.
Turkey uses them. They also try to distance Turkey from the Americans and the British. Those who planned the HTS scenario are essentially the British. That is, Turkey gives its approval, and Trump also approves of Erdoğan and says: You have cleared Syria. When the HTS government was in Idlib, Britain had relations with them, trained and prepared them.
Now, among many regional and global actors, Golani is dancing. A while ago, he sat with Putin; in the last month, he will probably sit with Trump. He sits every day with the Turks, with Saudis, Qataris, and others. Whoever he sits with, he does so because, at that moment, he needs them.
However, he lacks a genuine capacity for representation. These are terrorist gangs; they are not in Damascus. These states, on the surface, for their own interests, want Golani and HTS to be in Damascus for a time.
But I believe Golani and HTS will not remain in Damascus. It is not possible for ten to twelve extremist jihadist organisations, fundamentally savage, to govern a country in this region. They will not remain; they will leave.
Turkey, when it finds it useful, supports Golani. Turkey’s problem is to disarm the Kurds. Essentially, the Turkish state has now concluded that it must accept the self-government of the municipalities in Rojava. Turkey will accept this.
The problem with Turkey is the army. It says: Kurds must not be armed. What is the reason? The reason is the energy routes. That is, Turkey has stakes in almost all the major projects along the energy routes abroad.

They signed a development corridor project with Iraq and Saudi Arabia. No one paid attention to this. Kurdistan is both rich in energy resources and strategically located along key energy routes. If the Kurds are armed and have power, Turkey cannot exert influence along the energy route. Therefore, they want, at the start, to shrink the South, to disarm Rojava. Their second target will be the South and East. Ultimately, this process will collapse. After a hundred and five years of the national liberation struggle, the Kurdish people will not surrender to Öcalan and Bahçeli. That is how I think.
Regardless of the impact of Öcalan and the PKK, the Kurdish forces in Rojava will never surrender to the Turkish state.
How do we know that? Mazlum Kobanê became a general on the blood of 13,000 Kurdish youths; he knows this. We know that in the beginning, the war was organised by cadres, the best cadres of the PKK. However, the people of Rojava also played a significant role later on.
Now those in Qandil are professional fighters. If Öcalan says “leave there”, the Central Committee accepts and says “go to Fezzan”, they can go to Fezzan. No one can hold them back; they are independent.

But the people of Rojava are not like that. Behind them is the martyrdom of 13,000 Kurdish youths, and for ten years, they have been governing and leading in the region they call North-East Syria. That is, they see themselves as responsible to the people: they sell oil, get weapons, wage war. In that region, in North-East Syria, eight million people live—some even say ten million.
They cannot, like Qandil, say, ‘That’s it, the leader said we will go, and simply go.’ They know that disarmament for them is suicide. What HTS did to the Alawite Arabs on the coast and to the Druze is in front of their eyes, and HTS and Golani have killed thousands of Kurdish youths.
They cannot turn their backs on the people and secretly go somewhere. There are obstacles for them. For me, the biggest obstacle is North-East Syria and Rojava. As far as I know, two-thirds of the SDF fighters are Sunni Arab tribal fighters. One-third are Kurds. Yes, the leading, permanent fighters are YPG and YPJ.

However, if you consider the broader context, the number of Arabs is approximately twice that of the Kurds. There are eight million people in the region. Two or two and a half million of them are Kurds. The rest are Sunni Arabs. When Assad was strong, they could, under American protection, ally with the Kurds against the regime. Now their relatives are in Damascus. How long that alliance will last, we do not know.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are trying to undermine that alliance. For this reason, I think the Kurdish–Kurdish committee must become active and, for Rojava, they must decide what they want, not ask Damascus. They must form it themselves. They must create a national assembly of Rojava Kurdistan.

Based on this assembly, they must define their demands and engage with international actors in accordance with those demands. The key point here is the stance of the South. Mr. Masoud Barzani organised the Kurdish–Kurdish meeting; everyone thanked him. That is good; you held a conference, and a Kurdish–Kurdish delegation was formed. But what support do you provide to this committee? Of course, for the South to support Rojava, it may first need to create a government—a national government with a national program.
In front of us is war, and Kurdistan, in all its four parts, will be in the theatre of war. In Syria, the war has not stopped for ten years. Iran may also fall into war. America and Israel are pressing Baghdad, saying: Dissolve the Hashd al-Shaabi, otherwise we will strike.
In the South, our war with Baghdad has not yet come to an end. About 45–50% of our land is still under Baghdad’s occupation. In the North, our situation is clear. The years ahead of us are years of war. Our political class must make wartime politics. The world is in the middle of a great war. This war is hot in the Near and Middle East. On the other side, there is the war between Ukraine and Russia, which is essentially the war between Russia and NATO.

The war continues. Our political class, however, tells us peace stories. They talk about brotherhood. War is between enemies. There is no brotherhood between enemies. The occupying Turkish state does not accept the existence of the Kurds and Kurdistan. Not only in the North, but it also does not take it in Rojava either. The day comes, it will not be accepted in the South. It will not be accepted in the East. In these wars, our political class must understand the dialectic of war and shape its policies accordingly.

The influence of Qandil and Öcalan on the SDF
They certainly have an influence. However, I cannot say that Qandil and Imrali are always united and move in tandem on every issue. From Öcalan’s capture until now, they have often decided together, and then Qandil has continued its own work, while Öcalan has pursued his own. In this Bahçeli–Öcalan process, whether they will remain together until the end or not, I am unsure. I do not think, as some do, that Qandil is entirely under Öcalan’s control.
Their control over Rojava is still limited. There is control, of course. After all, the PKK fighters founded the YPG and YPJ. They trained them. In the war, they were in the front and fought. Whether you say it or not, that influence exists.

But a person in Qandil, a person in Qamişlo, a person in Imrali cannot think the same. The place where you are and the world you see from there change your thinking. Marx says a person in a palace and a person in a hut cannot think the same. The thinking in the palace and the thinking in the hut are not the same. This is similar.
So yes, they have influence. However, from day one, Ms. Ilham Ehmed’s statements have been very reasonable. She is probably a sympathiser or member of the PKK, I do not know. But she has not changed her line from the beginning until now.

That interview with Sipan Hemo tells the truth plainly. He speaks his truth clearly. He says: HTS will never come in, and we mean everyone who comes to us the same thing. Sipan Hemo points to the risk of war. He says, ‘We do not want war, but we must be prepared for it.’ I do not know how much these words will be followed, but to date, despite all the pressure and threats from Turkey, as well as the additional pressure from Öcalan, the leading cadres of the SDF and PYD have remained somewhat stable. Some have not surrendered to this Bahçeli–Öcalan line.
We will support all of them as long as they stand on a patriotic Kurdish line. We will support them. We will not say they are PKK cadres. No, they have the capacity to represent. They are among their people. As long as they do not turn away from the Kurdistani line and do not surrender to Bahçeli and Öcalan, all Kurds will support them.

Just as in the 1990s and 2000s, every Kurdish heart beat for the South, today our red line is Rojava. And for this reason, we call on them to activate the Kurdish–Kurdish committee day by day, so that it becomes a political actor in Rojava Kurdistan. It represented 42 parties; from these parties, independent cadres, intellectuals, and writers also participated in the conference. Make this committee active; I have opened the way for them. The stories the Turks tell each other or Trump tells them should not fool people into believing them.

In Syria, I do not believe Turkey’s influence is more than ten percent. Economically, Saudi Arabia and Qatar finance HTS. Britain supports HTS. France is on the surface; America is not. Israel has drawn the red line: it has told Turkey: do not go south of Aleppo, and has said HTS not to go south of Damascus.
The main alternative to Turkey was the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdoğan himself is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the thing Erdoğan wanted did not work; the state of the Muslim Brotherhood passed to HTS, and now you know HTS has not given any ministries to Muslim Brotherhood cadres.
Turkey is a state with capacities. It walks around, forming relations with European states, Britain, Germany, and the United States, including with Trump. It threatens Rojava, but if you ask me, if our political class has a joint national account, no one can remove us from this region.
All the states of the world have a plan for Kurdistan. We have no common national plan. The day we have such an account, neither Turkey nor anyone else will be able to uproot us from this land. We are the owners of this soil; they have come twice. We will not say we will leave, but we will not allow them to uproot us from our land.

The role of the South
The role of the South is central in all four parts of Kurdistan. If it conducts correct politics and advances the cause of Kurdistan, but if it continues with narrow regional and partisan politics, the damage will be felt in all four parts.
Therefore, we call on them. It is unacceptable that in these 13 months, Israel and Iran have been at war, and America and Iran have been at war. Israel bombards Lebanon every day, bombards Syria, and bombards Iran. The situation is like this. It hits Hezbollah, and what will happen to Lebanon is unclear.
In these 13 months, you held elections, but there is still no national government. The current government is a coalition; if it forms a new government, it will likely be a coalition as well. They will renew their coalition. It has been 13 months; Kurdistan is in the middle of fire, but still, after 13 months, they have not convened the parliament and formed a government. No national message comes out of that parliament.

For us in the North, in the East, in Rojava, when a national message comes out of the Parliament of South Kurdistan, we will all stand behind it. At a time when, for 13 months, there is no government, the parliament is not convened, so why did you hold elections? After that, there is nothing you can debate more.
You are partners to one another: PUK and KDP. You will renew this pact. Will the Ministry of Interior remain with the KDP or with the PUK?
Have some shame before these people: these individuals, in all four parts, are in the midst of a fire, and for 13 months, you have argued over a ministry without forming a government. For this, we call on them.
Their stance affects all four parts of Kurdistan. I have often said, and I will repeat it clearly. Now we have nearly 300,000 soldiers. But we do not have a national army. Our soldiers are party soldiers. One hundred thousand belong to the PUK, 100,000 to the KDP, I am unsure, 40,000 to the PYD and YPG.
The Kurdish people are a fighting people. For 150 years, they have been fighting against occupation. If from these forces a national army is formed and our leaders call upon the people, these 300,000 will become 500,000 within six months; it will become an army of a million. This potential exists, this strength of these people exists. Why does your focus not go beyond party and region?
The leaders in the South must understand that if the three parts of Kurdistan are occupied, no permanent solution in the South will be possible. We saw this in the Independence Referendum. All four occupying states attacked the referendum and broke it; the catastrophe of Kirkuk was heavy.
They must think better. A national line from there must extend to Rojava, and together the South and Rojava must pave the Silahaddin Eyyubi corridor. The Silahaddin Eyyubi corridor is the corridor of the dream of Kurdistan. Through this corridor, Kurdistan can reach the Mediterranean via Jordan and Israel.

In 1921–22, our political class of that time (we do not want to call them outdated, as we do not know what they were) went and sat with the British and said, ‘Support us, and we will reach the Mediterranean through İskenderun (Payas).’
Later, the Lausanne Convention was signed; the British helped build the state alongside the Turks. In 1924, Yusuf Ziya Beg and Xalit Beg Cibrî, when speaking with the Soviet consul, said, “Support us, and we will reach the Black Sea through Trabzon.”
That is, the strategy of our political class a hundred years ago was more strategic than today’s. They thought and went to speak with the big states, saying, ‘If you support us and we become a state, we will reach the Mediterranean; if not, the Black Sea.’

Our political class today does not have such a project in this tight situation. Those who can undertake such a project are primarily located in the South. They are known worldwide; they have a functioning economy, and they have approximately 200,000 fighters. They must take the initiative. But the support of Öcalan and Bahçeli holds you back, and this has trapped you into thinking that Bahçeli and Öcalan will free you from the PKK. The day you unite and form a national army of 200,000 peshmerga, the PKK will not be able to threaten you, and no one will be able to oppose you.
The work of unity in Northern and Western Kurdistan
In Northern and Western Kurdistan, efforts for unity had already begun even before the 1980s. After 2000, numerous attempts were made to establish a national initiative. From 2005 to 2013, the National Unity Movement of Kurds (TEVKURD) existed. Most people outside the PKK joined it. It did good work.
But internally, it was undermined and dismantled. No one dismantled it from the outside. After that, five-party and six-party cooperation were tried; however, they failed.
The problem for small parties in exile is that, unless they become independent political actors, even if they come together, no unified actor emerges. Unfortunately, there are ten to twelve parties in Northern Kurdistan. Six or seven are around the DEM Party. Outside them, there are PWK, PSK, and HAK-PAR. To date, no significant national initiative has emerged.
After this process began, parties outside the DEM also raised their hands and said, ‘Consider us interlocutors as well.’ They said this process is good, but we also need to be part of it. You must also listen to our opinion.

Lately, even among them, this debate has started, slowly, slowly. That is, supporting this process is not a Kurdistani stance. Three months ago, in Diyarbakir, a conference was held; cadres from all sides participated and spoke, but no results were achieved; only a committee was formed. Our friends are in it too.

At the end of this month, at the beginning of next month, a new conference must be held. Parties, exiles, and individuals must participate. But the problem is that in Northern Kurdistan, the feeling and hope of a Kurdish revolution no longer rests with our political class.
Over the last 10–15 years, among Kurdish youth, national sentiment and stance have grown stronger every day. The DEM Party and the AKP both point to this. They say a nationalist line is growing among Kurds; they point to it. This potential must be organised and freed from the Turkish mindset.
Conformist, reformist politics will take us nowhere. In Northern Kurdistan, our political class dominates the political landscape. The aim of this process (if it continues) is to create under Öcalan’s control a Social-Democratic party of “Kurds of Turkey” which will be directly controlled by Öcalan. This arena is in their hands. If you want to be a political actor, you must be Kurdistani, you must be for independence. You must not be a statistic. What use is a Kurdistani party that supports the Bahçeli–Öcalan process?

For example, if it had not been for this stance of those sides, when this process emerged, six or seven groups, independent personalities, and intellectuals came together, and we said, ‘This process is an attack against Kurdistan.’ Today, perhaps our numbers in the field are few, but at another level, something else would have emerged.
Finally, that conference must be held, and we will understand whether we can do serious work together or not.

My final words
Language is important. Yes, we also sometimes speak Turkish. We also sometimes write in Turkish. However, every Kurdish patriot and every Kurdish politician must strive to make Kurdish their primary language. Study in whatever language you want, become a scholar in whatever language. English, French, German, Arabic, Persian, Turkish—it does not matter. However, regardless of any other languages you know, your primary language must be Kurdish.
I am unable to express my feelings in Turkish as fully as I would like. It is not enough. Language not only conveys information and ideas, but it also conveys feelings at the same time.
May your home and gatherings be blessed. I extend greetings and wishes of success to every Kurd, and I hope that through continued dialogue, you will remain in joy.