Over half a million signatures collected in North and East Syria for campaign to delist PKK

At the end of 2021, the international initiative “Justice for Kurds” launched a campaign to remove the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from the EU and US lists of terrorist organizations. The campaign, initiated by more than a thousand internationally known people from 30 countries, calls for the decriminalization of the Kurdish freedom movement and aims to collect four million signatures for a petition to be presented to the European Union Council of Ministers, which regularly decides on the lists, and to the US State Department.

In Syria, the petition has collected over half a million signatures so far. North and East Syria entered the campaign in January. As a result, the PYD (Party for Democratic Unity) formed local committees that promoted the campaign in towns and villages. The members of the committees went from house to house, and signatures were also collected at all events. According to the preliminary figures, 526,295 people have signed the petition. The women’s association Kongra Star is also involved in the campaign, which is being conducted in Damascus as well as in the autonomous region of north-east Syria.

A particularly large number of signatures were collected in the multi-religious and multi-ethnic Tabqa. The city is about 60 kilometers west of Raqqa and was liberated from ISIS rule by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in May 2017. After the liberation, a process of stabilization and reconstruction began. The city became a refuge for displaced people from many other regions of Syria. According to Şeza El-Hisên, 136,520 people in Tabqa and the surrounding area have signed the petition so far.