Professor of Philology Marta Segarra has sent a message of support for Abdullah Öcalan’s Call for Peace and Democratic Society. Her message reads as follows:
“I fully support Abdullah Öcalan’s Call for Peace and a Democratic Society made on 27 February 2025. Öcalan, who advocates for a democratic social organisation where culture and language can flourish freely, promises Kurds not just Kurdishness, but life as a whole.
I believe that people have common gestures and expressions that cannot be reduced to any single identity. What else is democracy and peace but making these common gestures and expressions visible? However, commonality is only possible through difference. I am opposed to any form of chauvinism that reduces us to our differences or ignores them. For this reason, I fully support the equal and voluntary union of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples.
As a philologist, I believe that all restrictions on the Kurdish language must be lifted as a necessity of the Peace Process. I stand with your struggle.”
Segarra is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and a senior faculty member in the Gender Studies Department at the University of Barcelona. She is a founding partner and former director (1994–2013) of the Centre Dona i Literatura, and also served as director (2004–2015) of the UNESCO Chair on Women, Development, and Cultures at the University of Barcelona. In addition, she is the deputy director of the Laboratoire d’études de genre et de sexualité (LEGS, CNRS, University of Paris 8, University of Paris Nanterre), a member of the CNRS national committee, and a researcher at ADHUC—Research Center for Theory, Gender, and Sexuality. Segarra has published extensively and delivered numerous lectures on women writers, gender, and sexuality studies. She directs the Mujeres y Culturas collection published by Icaria Editorial and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Lectora and the Oxford Literary Review.
Title Photo: CCCB