COMMUNISTS, trade unionists and politicians across Iraqi Kurdistan joined forces on Saturday to demand the removal of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from international terror lists.

“This campaign is a national and humanitarian duty,” politician and organiser Muhammed Amin Penjweni said, urging people to join the growing international calls to delist the PKK.

He said the Kurdish resistance group’s inclusion on an EU terror list was a political decision made to appease Turkey after it had “used all its military capabilities to destroy the PKK, but it could not reach its goal.”

The ban on the organisation remains a barrier to peace both in Turkey and the wider Middle East, Mr Penjweni said, calling for a peaceful solution through negotiations.

Its continued application is used to criminalise all Kurds, supporters say, with activists targeted  across Europe and more than 10,000 members and politicians from Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party jailed, depriving millions of political representation.

Hundreds of prominent figures gathered in Khak Hal in Slemani and in towns and cities across Iraqi Kurdistan in a public show of support for the PKK as they signed a petition launched in Europe last year.

Senior representatives from the Kurdistan Communist Party-Iraq  political bureau were present at the event, signing up to the statement calling for the PKK ban to be lifted as a step toward resolving the so-called Kurdish question.

While the respective organisations have a number of political and ideological differences they maintain good relations.

The Kurdish communists favour Kurdish independence in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey — a policy opposed by the communist parties of those countries – but describe the PKK, which is fighting for autonomy, as a brotherly organisation which it has much in common with.

The international petition for the PKK to be removed from the EU list of proscribed terrorist organisations was launched last year and aims to gain four million signatures. 

“Under the global war on terror, states have used the designation ‘terrorist’ as a political weapon to delegitimise opposition and repress efforts for human rights and freedom, as the Turkish state has done in the case of the Kurdish people,” it says.

“The listing of the PKK has been used to justify attacks on Kurds everywhere – from discriminatory practices to military confrontations,” the petition states, citing the arrest of  politicians, the ban on political parties and closure of pro-Kurdish media organisations.

The PKK was added to the EU, US and UK terror lists in 2002 in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

But a legal precedent was set by Belgium’s highest court which found in January 2020 that the PKK was party to a non-international armed conflict with Turkey and is subject to the law of war, not criminal law.

The petition — initiated by Justice for Kurds — can be signed here.