Italian philosopher Donatella Di Cesare expressed her support for the peace process in Turkey that began following Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s Call for Peace and Democratic Society on February 27, 2025. Di Cesare delivered her letter to the İmralı Delegation to be forwarded to Öcalan.

“I have wanted to write to you for a long time”

In her letter, Di Cesare said that she had long followed Öcalan’s struggle and ideas, writing the following:

"I have wanted to write to you for a long time, and having the opportunity to do so now moves me deeply. Your name has accompanied an important part of my political and intellectual life. In Italy, for me, as for many of us, you have never been a distant or foreign figure. We have followed your struggle, your imprisonment, your ideas, and the struggle of the Kurdish people with admiration, concern, and solidarity.

“I have always felt close to the Kurdish people”

I have always felt close to the Kurdish people. Their long struggle for freedom, dignity, and recognition has been, for me, one of the most important political issues of our time. And your name can never be considered separately from this history. Over the years, perhaps what has affected me most deeply has been thinking about your imprisonment on İmralı, and particularly the prolonged periods of isolation to which you have been subjected.

“No prison has been able to prevent your words from crossing borders”

It is extremely difficult even to imagine more than twenty-seven years of imprisonment. Isolation, however, is more than imprisonment: it is an attempt to sever the relationship between a person and the world, to deprive a voice of those it addresses, and to separate thought from the community to which it speaks. And yet, your voice could not be silenced.

That is what has always struck me. Under conditions intended to separate you from the world, your ideas continued to circulate from an island prison; they were discussed, translated, criticized, and embraced. No prison has been able to prevent your words from crossing borders.

I therefore want to tell you something very simple and deeply personal: throughout all these years, you have been a figure of extraordinary importance to me. I have admired not only your resistance, but also your capacity to rethink political struggle itself—your questioning of nationalism, the nation-state, and sovereign power, and your search for other forms of democratic coexistence.

These are questions that are also extremely close to my own philosophical work. How can we imagine a community that does not close itself within the boundaries of identity? How can different peoples live together in a shared political space in which none dominates the other? How can we think of democracy beyond sovereignty, borders, and exclusion? Today, these questions have become even more urgent.

“The possibility of peace gives me hope”

The possibility of peace that has opened up in Turkey gives me hope. After so much death, so much suffering, and decades of conflict, the possibility that another history may now begin is of immense importance. But I must also tell you very clearly what I feel: I cannot imagine a genuine peace without your freedom.

There is a profound contradiction in a peace process that has been made possible in such a decisive way by your words and political initiative, while you yourself remain imprisoned. Can a new democratic era truly begin if the person who helped make that era possible is still deprived of his freedom?

“There can be no peace without your freedom”

For me, your freedom is not a peripheral or secondary issue that can be addressed once peace has been achieved. Your freedom is part of peace itself. Genuine reconciliation cannot be possible as long as you remain imprisoned and separated from the political and human community you have continued to address throughout all these years.

After more than twenty-seven years of imprisonment and the prolonged periods of isolation you have endured, I believe your freedom would carry immense political and symbolic significance. It would be a sign that a genuinely new era has begun. That is why, for me today, the hope for peace and the hope for your freedom are inseparable. There can be no peace without your freedom.

I wanted you to know that, from Italy, I have followed you for many years with admiration and solidarity. And today, in this new and extremely delicate period, I feel more strongly than …