AMED – German sociologist Hauke Brunkhorst said, "Abdullah Öcalan’s call for peace and a democratic society from İmralı Prison on February 27 was one of the rare moments of hope in a world order that is becoming increasingly authoritarian, fascist, and violent."
Messages continue to arrive from renowned figures around the world regarding the Peace and Democratic Society Process initiated by Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. German sociologist Hauke Brunkhorst sent a message to the Mezopotamya Agency (MA) for the process.
Brunkhorst message reads: “Abdullah Öcalan’s call for peace and a democratic society from İmralı Prison on February 27 was one of the rare moments of hope in a world order that is becoming increasingly authoritarian, fascist, and violent. There can be no peace and no democracy without diversity. To homogenize society means the extinction of democracy and perpetual war. Reason achieves unity only through a discord of its voices that never stops, just as individual and collective self-consciousness find unity only through conflict and contradiction.
‘A CRUCIAL STEP’
Democracy exists only insofar as it enables robust, non-violent, and productive contestation among social classes, genders, and cultures (religions, ethnicities, races, etc.)—a contestation aimed not only at overcoming the inhumane conditions of life under authoritarian regimes through democratic ones, but also at overcoming the inhumane conditions (including incarceration) that persist within all existing democracies through more democracy. The call for peace and democracy is a crucial step in that direction—indeed, the most important one in decades in the Middle East.”
WHO IS HAUKE BRUNKHORST?
Hauke Brunkhorst (born 24 October 1945, Marne/Holstein, Germany) is a German political sociologist and social scientist. He was a professor of sociology at the European University of Flensburg, where he worked on topics such as European constitutionalism, political theory and the evolution of international law. He completed his doctorate at the University of Frankfurt in 1977 and taught as Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social Research from 2009 to 2010. His notable works include Adorno and Critical Theory and Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community, and he is a renowned academic in the fields of contemporary critical theory and legal social sciences.