Finland Must Not Serve Turkish Repression

We are here today because Kurds living in Finland, political actors, and solidarity activists are being persecuted.
We are here because Kurdish people have been arbitrarily arrested on charges related to terrorism.
We are here because freedom of opinion and action is no longer guaranteed to everyone in Finland, but can be restricted arbitrarily.

The Communist Party of Finland considers these cases to be the result of political opportunism.
The EU shamefully accepted Turkey’s political demands to secure its strategic support and added the PKK to the list of terrorist organizations — a list on which it does not belong.
In the same cowardly manner, Finland accepted Turkey’s political demands in order to join NATO.

This is now the price of those choices: Kurdish political activity is being criminalized here in Finland as well.
The Turkish state has for decades branded Kurdish liberation movements as terrorism.
It has done so to strip away the right to speak one’s language, to suppress culture, to block political participation, and to make democratic self-government impossible.
This is not about Turkey’s security — it is about Kurds’ right to live a life of dignity.

Finland must not be part of this persecution or act as an errand boy for Turkey’s criminal ambitions.
Finland claims to be a rule-of-law country where no one is detained for their political opinions — a country where individual fundamental rights are respected.
But if Finland abandons those principles in the case of the Kurds, what is it defending then? What can its promises be trusted to mean?

We are not here to justify violence.
We are here to defend the right to resist oppression.
The right to organize.
The right to one’s language and culture.
The right to build democratic self-government — free from persecution.

Criminalizing these rights is not justice.
It is part of a global rise in authoritarianism and the arbitrary rule of the powerful.

Therefore we demand the release of those arbitrarily imprisoned for political reasons, an end to the persecution of Kurds, and respect for the fundamental rights of all people.
Supporting Kurdish democratic self-government is not terrorism — and neither is solidarity.

We will not accept Finland’s principles being sold as geopolitical currency.
We are here because justice belongs to everyone.
We are here because this is our common struggle — against oppression and for freedom.


Tiina Sandberg
Chair person of Communist party of Finland