Abdullah Öcalan

Abdullah Öcalan

Abdullah Öcalan (b. April 4, 1948) also known as Serok Apo 'Leader Apo' (or just Apo meaning Uncle in the Kurdish language) among his supporters and often referred to as Teröristbaşı 'Terrorist-leader' in Turkey, is the leader of the armed militant group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), by many considered a terrorist organization. Öcalan himself has been labelled a terrorist by several states and international organizations such as the United States, European Union, Turkey, Syria, Canada, Iran and Australia [1][2][3][4].

Biography

File:Cypruspassportofocalan.jpg

Öcalan was using a Cypriot passport

Abdullah Öcalan was born in 1948 in Ömerli, a village in Halfeti, Şanlıurfa Province, in the southeast of Turkey. After leaving his village after secondary school he studied Political Sciences at the University of Ankara but dropped out and entered the civil service in Diyarbakir.[5]

Influenced by the situation of the Kurdish people who wanted a piece of land from the Turkish state, Abdullah Öcalan became an active member of the Democratic Cultural Associations of the East, an association promoting the rights of the Kurdish people. In 1978, two years before the military coup in 1980, the Kurdistan Workers Party was founded with Abdullah Öcalan as its leader. He currently retains this post.

In 1984 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) initiated a campaign of armed resistance comprising of military attacks against government forces and civilians [6][7] [8][9][10][11] in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey in order to create an independent Kurdish state. Approximately 30,000 people died as a result of these attacks between 1984 and 2003 and after 2003 PKK (aka Kadek) still maintains their attacks in Turkey. Various ceasefire attempts between the PKK and the Turkish government have failed thus far.

Capture and Trial

Until 1998 Syria was harboring the leader of PKK. As the situation got worse in Turkey, the Turkish government openly threatened Syria over its support for the PKK. As a result of this, the Syrian government forced Öcalan to move out of the country instead of handing him to the Turkish authorities.

Öcalan went to Russia first and from there he moved to various countries, including Italy and Greece. In 1998 while in Italy the Turkish government requested the extradition of Öcalan. He was at that time counselled by the high-profile German attorney, Britta Böhler. The Netherlands based attorney argued that he fought a legitimate struggle against the oppression of his people. He was eventually captured in Kenya on February 15, 1999, while been transfered from the Greek embassy to the Nairobi international airport, in a joint operation between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT). He was then flown back to Turkey for trial. His capture led thousands of protesting Kurds to seize Greek embassies around the world [12].

Öcalan has been held under solitary confinement on the Imrali Island in the Turkish Sea of Marmara since his capture. Though initially sentenced to death, this sentence was commuted to life-long aggravated imprisonment when the death penalty was conditionally abolished in Turkey in August 2002.

Current Situation

File:Ocalan right after capture.jpg

Abdullah Öcalan right after capture.

Since his arrest, Öcalan had been campaigning for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict inside the borders of Turkey, and in this document he asks for a border free confederation between the Kurdish pieces of Turkey (called North Kurdistan by Kurdish nationalists), Syria (West Kurdistan), Iraq (South Kurdistan) and Iran (East Kurdistan). In this zone, three bodies of law would be implemented: EU law, Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi/Iranian law and Kurdish law. Meanwhile, the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, has recently released the Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan