I don’t have a closing speech. Not only was I not able to write it, but also I guess this is not a closing. This is an opening of an immense struggle, not only against capitalist modernity, but at the same time together within us, against us in a very positive sense, to try and understand despite all our efforts for thousands of years, to fight off the exploitative, colonizing systems, why have we failed. Desperation or waiting for a savior is not cutting it. We Kurds learned it the very hard way. We were desperate. Nobody heard our voice. And it still maybe this a case. So through the sacrifice of 50,000 people and so many more, tortured, lost their homes, became refugees. Not only resisting, but also thinking with the guidance of Abdullah Öcalan, what are we doing wrong, what are the utopias and how are they right or wrong? Is it just the colonizers? Is it just the imperialists?
What is truth? For a long time, Kurds could not find their place in this truth that has been spoken about by social scientists, by politicians, etc. What is the truth of women? Why isn’t it there in the social sciences? Why isn’t it there in the politics of the left? Of the men who are the leftists? Or the women who are also left? So what is truth then? How do we reach it? What is the connection, as Andrei was saying, between truth and freedom? Can we reach there without questioning ourselves? So in that case, how do we then, like today, bring the different parts and elements of life, of different struggles, all that they have unearthed in sociology, in anthropology and all those people who sacrificed themselves for all this to be recovered?
But as I said, can we stop here?
I think what Abdullah Öcalan and 50,000 martyrs and the Kurdish society doing together at the moment is in the middle of a war zone, to try to imagine a different life. This is why they take the lead of Öcalan Because he allows them, he paves the way, he pushes away the clouds, he makes a free life within reach. And for that he is returning philosophy, intellectualism to the people. Not only for the academics in universities. And this is why this academy makes sense. What this academy builds upon is not only the knowledge of the Kurdish freedom movement and the women’s movement, but also, of course, it builds upon all the freedom movements around the world. What gathers us here today is not just our refusal of this system, but our quest to bring truth and freedom together. Because freedom without truth is just liberalism.
So I am very happy with all our differences and all our discussions that will continue to take place and this is why it’s not a closing speech, but an opening speech, to try and understand the paths that different movements have taken to come here. It’s not about me, you or that, but it’s about how this experience and the theory that comes from it, how we reach there. This is so important. It’s not about just the results. It’s about how we got there, and of course, where do we go from here?
How do we, because everybody talked about it, we can critique Trump and everybody only like, but how do we make sure the society does not become lesser and lesser free and more and more of the society, of the state, and not the communal society based on women’s freedom, ecology and democracy. So we are working very hard to talk together, discuss together, to find ways of making this possible. How do we reach? How do we bring together? How do we change our ways of thinking? To what? Because if we were doing it right, we wouldn’t have been here. I find the worth of the Academy in this. I find the worth of Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdish movement in this.
And I find that all this knowledge turns the times of capitalist modernity as not a times of hopelessness, but Abdullah Öcalan says it’s the time of hope. We know more than we ever did. We have to find ways of exploring what a free life means and how do we, in the midst of warfare, in our daily relations and beyond that, weave, so we can find the exit here and now and implement its politics, its philosophy, its social science.
So thank you for being here and we hope to develop the music, the aesthetics, the philosophy, the ways, the tools of how to live not only in this Academy, but further and all together.
Thank you for being here and we are going to continue our discussions tomorrow and further with all of you. Thank you very much.
