The final declaration of the Party Assembly meeting held in Ankara on 15 January 2026 was released.
In the statement, the following assessment was made:“Turkey and the world are passing through a historical phase marked by the spread of wars, the strengthening of authoritarian regimes, and the severe destruction of social life under the growing aggressiveness of capital-centered policies and imperialism. While this picture represents a comprehensive siege aimed at suppressing peoples, the oppressed, and workers, it simultaneously reveals a historical moment in which the search for freedom, equality, and peace, along with resistance and social dissent, is growing and taking on new forms.”
Venezuela
The statement continued: “The attack carried out by the United States against Venezuela on 3 January, along with its intervention targeting the country’s head of state, once again exposed the true face of imperialism. This attack is not merely an isolated foreign policy move; it is part of a new strategic orientation by the United States that effectively suspends international law and universal human values. This approach, which legitimizes the use of force, is causing a profound rupture on a global scale. It is clear that democracy in Venezuela has structural problems. However, these problems cannot be turned into a justification that opens the will of peoples to external intervention. Democratic transformation is possible not through external pressure, but through the peoples’ own collective strength, self-organization, and determined struggle.
Gaza
The Middle East has today been turned into a geography where the harshest consequences of war policies are being experienced. The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for months, before the eyes of the entire world, represents a devastation in which civilians are systematically targeted and the right to life, international norms, and fundamental human values are being steadily eroded. This reality, once again, demonstrates that war and militarism bring nothing to peoples but death, poverty, and destruction.
The situation in Iran
This reality manifests itself in similar ways across different geographies. In the Middle East, particularly in Iran, the protests raised by women, young people, workers, and by Kurds, Baluch, Azeris, and other communities against an oppressive dictatorial regime are an expression of the demand for a free and dignified life. The violent suppression of these legitimate demands and the systematic targeting of civilians reveal that authoritarian and militarist policies of force do not resolve social problems but instead deepen existing crises. As the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), we stand with the people who resist oppression. At the same time, we openly oppose efforts to turn these struggles into instruments of imperialist calculations and interventions that would drag the region into new conflicts. The freedom of people cannot be won through external interventions or through the coercive apparatuses of authoritarian regimes; it can only be achieved through the peoples’ own collective power and organized struggle.
Aleppo attacks
The attacks carried out against the Kurdish people in the city of Aleppo by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham regime and Salafi-jihadist mercenary groups, along with the crimes against humanity committed during these assaults, constitute systematic attempts that block the path to peace and directly target the possibility of coexistence. These attacks are not directed solely at the Kurdish people; they are aimed at Syria’s shared future and at the will of its peoples to live together. At a time when Turkey has a historical responsibility to assume a constructive role that prioritizes peace and is based on the equality of peoples, its approach of providing active support to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham regime is unacceptable. A monolithic and Salafi mindset cannot be imposed on Syria’s multi-ethnic and multi-faith social fabric.
February 27 call
In Turkey, the period following 1 October 2024 has been marked by a fragile, tense, and struggle-laden process in which the former conflict regime has not been fully re-established, yet peace has also not progressed on its own. The most critical historical threshold of this process was the “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society” made on 27 February by Abdullah Öcalan. This call created a decisive rupture in a system of conflict and denial that had deepened for years, charting a new direction and powerfully demonstrating that peace and a democratic solution remain possible.
Physical freedom must be ensured
For this historic call to receive a genuine response, it is imperative that the working and communication conditions of Mr. Öcalan, who is the principal and central interlocutor of the process, are improved, and that a physical and political framework capable of enabling free and meaningful negotiations is established.
Concrete and irreversible steps must be taken
The peace process cannot be confined to abstract statements or narrow negotiation of agendas. At this point, we are issuing a clear and binding call to the political authorities: the requirements of peace must now be fulfilled not through words, but through concrete and irreversible steps. Necessary legal regulations must be enacted, and obstacles standing in the way of democratic politics must be removed. From the execution regime to freedom of expression, from political participation to local democracy, the reforms that will lay out the groundwork for a lasting solution must be implemented without delay. Peace is not built by postponement, but through political courage and historical responsibility.
Peace cannot be deferred to uncertainty
Likewise, peace cannot be deferred to external developments, regional agendas, or uncertainties stretched over time; the future of peoples cannot be surrendered to the strategic calculations of major powers. Peace is not a hostage to the external conjuncture; it is a historical necessity that must be built through the collective will of this society.
Lasting and genuine peace is possible only through the socialization of this will. It is essential that people become not passive observers of the process, but its subjects and founders. Parliament is an important component of this process. However, the true strength of peace lies in the organized will of society and its capacity for democratic struggle. For this reason, the struggle for peace cannot be separated from the struggle for democratization. Peace is a comprehensive political path that builds equal citizenship, freedom, and justice together, and that aims at profound social transformation.
The struggle for livelihoods and labor must be strengthened
Today, the conditions of destitution into which workers, retirees, and the public have been pushed are the direct result of war policies, a security-centered state mindset, and the deliberate choices of capital order. Precarity is imposed on workers; a life below the hunger line is imposed on retirees, and the labor and future of the people are sacrificed to a rent-seeking system. We rejected this order. As the DEM Party, we will continue with determination to expand the struggle for bread and labor, and to build a political path grounded in the organized power of the people against exploitation, poverty, and injustice.
The women’s struggle is indispensable
Women are at the forefront of the struggle against war and militarism, poverty and male-dominated violence, the expropriation of their labor, and the multifaceted domination imposed over their bodies and lives. The women’s freedom paradigm constitutes the founding basis of our party’s political existence. This paradigm offers a vision of a free society that fundamentally challenges the statist, militarist, and patriarchal order. No social system in which women are not subjects, where they do not participate equally and freely, can be democratic. For us, women’s struggle is indispensable; a new life can only be built based on women’s freedom.
In 2026, to build peace where war is imposed and equality where denial prevails, we stand together, organized and determined, on the path of bread, freedom, and peace. This path is not one of waiting, but of constituent struggle. No order in which peace is postponed, and justice is suspended can be lasting. We are determined to build, step by step, a democratic society grounded in the peoples’ own collective power, weaving equality and freedom together. We bring together, along this shared path, the labor of workers, the struggle for women’s freedom, and the hope of young people for the future.
Peace is not merely a demand; it is a life built through organized struggle, and it is a life we will win together.”