Signatures collected for the PKK in Bordeaux

Signatures are being collected in front of Bordeaux city hall for the removal of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the list of terrorist organizations. The activists have announced that they will collect signatures every Wednesday at various activities.

The PKK has been on the terrorist list, which is regularly updated by the Council of the European Union, since 2002 at the request of the Turkish state. In France, a campaign was launched in May last year with the aim of decriminalizing the PKK. With the campaign, the Collectif Solidarité Kurdistan 13 appeals to the international community to assume its responsibility. “The resistance of the Kurdish people concerns us all. We owe it the legalization of the PKK,” says the appeal of the collective, which brings together under its umbrella associations, political and trade union organizations that support the struggle of the Kurdish people and other communities in Kurdistan for freedom, justice and democracy.

In November, 120 people from France, including members of parliament, trade unionists, activists, artists, journalists and academics, published an appeal to US President Joe Biden in the newspaper La Marseillaise. The appeal for the decriminalization of the PKK calls the Kurds “the only ally and bulwark against ISIS in the Middle East”.

In December last year, 1003 intellectuals and personalities from many different countries signed the call of the Justice for Kurds initiative for the removal of the PKK from the terror list and called for participation in the campaign. The initiative was launched by 29 personalities, such as the Nobel Prize winner for literature Elfriede Jelineck and the philosopher Slavoj Žižek.