Imprisoned since 1999, sentenced to death and then to life imprisonment, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is regarded by the French and international left and far left as a “libertarian”, “feminist” and “ecological” thinker.
Despite these accolades, the untouchable Ocalan nevertheless wrote, in April 2020, two articles in which his delirious antisemitism and conspiracy clearly appear : “In The Commemoration of the Holocaust “and “The Jewish Ideology, Capitalism and the Modernity “. These texts were published in English on the website of the Iranian Kurds (rojhelat.info), which promotes the writing of the PJAK, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, closely linked to the PKK. Since April 2010, these two texts haven’t provoked any reaction or any debate on this website, or elsewhere, as far as I know.
Even if these two articles have been poorly translated into English (and probably poorly written in their original language) their antisemitism is blatant .
Is this open antisemitism really new in Ocalan’s thinking and within the PKK ? I doubt it. Some comrades told me that they had been hearing about the rampant antisemitism within the PKK for years, but that they did not want to harm the struggle of the Kurds for their national liberation. A typical attitude in the left and far left, for many years.
But, even if Ocalan became an antisemite only in April 2010, that does not change anything to the problem.