Abdullah Öcalan
Abdullah Öcalan | |
|---|---|
| File:Ocalan-Apo11.jpg | |
| Born | April 4, 1948 |
| Political party | Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) |
Abdullah "Apo" Öcalan (born April 4, 1948) is a Kurdish leader, who founded the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 1978. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by a number of states and organizations, and has been leading an armed campaign inside Turkey since 1984, with the intent of creating an independent Kurdish state. Öcalan has been imprisoned by the Turkish State since 1999 on İmralı Island in the Turkish Sea of Marmara. [1]
Biography
Abdullah Öcalan was born in Ömerli a village in Halfeti, Şanlıurfa Province, in Eastern Turkey. [2] After graduating from a vocational high school in Ankara (Turkish: Ankara Tapu-Kadastro Meslek Lisesi), Öcalan entered the Amed Title Deeds Office. In an unusual turn of events, he was [3]relocated one month later to Bakırköy, Istanbul. Later, he entered Istanbul Law Faculty but transferred after the first year to Ankara University to study political science. His return to Ankara (normally impossible given his [4]condition students can only transfer between like departments, otherwise the student must retake the university entrance exam. Moreover, Öcalan was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Finance, despite being ineligible due to his age, and the [5]fact that he had participated in political demonstrations. He had also been tried and acquitted by a martial law court. The public prosecutor had asked for the harshest possible sentence was facilitated by the state in order to divide [6]a militant group, Dev-Genç. President Süleyman Demirel later regretted this decision, since the PKK was to become a much greater threat to the state than Dev-Genç. By 1973, Öcalan had organized APOCU's, a Maoist group that sought a socialist revolution in Turkey. In 1978, in the midst of the right- and left-wing conflicts which culminated in the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, [7]Abdullah Öcalan founded the PKK, and launched a war against Turkey in order to set up an independent Kurdish state. Journalists Uğur Mumcu and Avni Özgürel allege that Öcalan and his first wife Kesire whom he married on 24 May 1978, are members of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). Abdullah Öcalan has an elder brother, Osman, who was a PKK leader until defecting with several others to establish the Patriotic and Democratic Party of Kurdistan. Öcalan is linked to Kurdish recognition of the Armenian genocide.
Turkey-PKK conflict
In 1984 the PKK initiated a campaign of armed conflict comprising attacks against government forces in Turkey in order to create an independent Kurdish state. PKK soon acquired a reputation as an effective force for Kurdish rights, and also for social justice within the Kurdish communities Its violent methods have caused United States, European Union, NATO, Syria, Australia, Turkey, and some others to include the PKK on their lists of terrorist organizations.
Capture and trial
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Until 1998 Öcalan was based in Syria. As the situation deteriorated 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 leave the country, but did not turn him over to the Turkish authorities. Öcalan went to Russia first and from there moved to various countries, including Italy and Greece. In 1998 the Turkish government requested the extradition of Öcalan from Italy. He was at that time defended by the high-profile German attorney, Britta Böhler, who argued that he fought a legitimate struggle against the oppression of ethnic Kurds. He was [8]captured in Kenya on February 15, 1999, while being transferred from the Greek embassy to Nairobi international airport, in an operation by the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilâtı with debatable help of CIA.
Speaking to Can Dündar on NTV Turkey, Deputy Undersecretary of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency, Cevat Öneş, said that Öcalan impeded American aspirations of establishing a separate Kurdish state so he was handed to the Turkish authorities, who then flew him back to Turkey for trial. His capture led thousands of protesting Kurds to seize Greek embassies around the world. After his capture Öcalan was held under solitary confinement as the only prisoner on the İmralı Island in the Turkish Sea of Marmara. Despite the fact that the other prisoners formerly at İmralı were transferred to other prisons, there were still over 1,000 Turkish military personnel stationed there guarding him. He was sentenced to death, but this sentence was commuted to life-long aggravated imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished in Turkey in August 2002.
In November 2009 the Turkish authorities announced that he would be moving to a new prison on the island and that they were ending his solitary confinement by transferring several other PKK prisoners to İmralı, and that Öcalan would be able to see them for ten hours a week. They began building the new prison after the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited the island and objected to the conditions in which he was being held. In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had violated articles 3, 5 and 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights by granting Öcalan no effective remedy to appeal his arrest and sentencing him to death without a fair trial.
Proposal for political solution
Contradicting his pre-capture policy of the use of power, Öcalan has, since his arrest in 1999, campaigned for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict inside the borders of Turkey. in which he asks for a border free confederation between the Kurdish regions of Turkey (called "Northern Kurdistan" by Kurdish nationalists. Since his incarceration he has significantly changed his ideology, reading Western social theorists like Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel on the history of pre-capitalist Mesopotamia and Abrahamic religions.
Öcalan had his lawyer, Ibrahim Bilmez, release a statement 28 September 2006, calling on the PKK to declare a ceasefire and seek peace with Turkey. Öcalan's statement said, "The PKK should not use weapons unless it is attacked with the aim of annihilation," and that it is "very important to build a democratic union between Turks and Kurds'. With this process, the way to democratic dialogue will be also opened".
Current situation
In April 2009, the lawyer for Nelson Mandela visited Turkey and spoke publicly of Nelson Mandela's support for the Kurdish people's Freedom Struggle. Essa Moosa, visiting Turkey on official business, denounced the criminalisation of the Kurdish Freedom Struggle and compared Abdullah Ocalan to Nelson Mandela. Expressing Nelson Mandela's support for the Kurdish Freedom Struggle he said,"Both Mandela and Öcalan have struggled for their people!" He added that they had been arrested in similar circumstances and held on island prisons and noted that the Kurdish leader was even more isolated than Nelson Mandela had been. In 2007, lawyers acting for Öcalan, claimed to have produced results from laboratory tests on his hair which appeared to show high levels of toxic metals. The Turkish government has sent a medical team to the imprisoned Kurdish separatist leader amid these claims and the tests found no indication of toxins or abnormalities. on March 6, 2008 the Committee for the Prevention of Torture declared that they didn't find any proof for an intoxication of Abdullah Öcalan. In December 2008, Öcalan sued Greece for 20,100 Euros in compensation for their negligence is his getting captured; his indictment specifically stated that Athens had assured him of protection. The Greek government previously rejected Turkey's criticism on support of Öcalan. Turkey also blamed Greece for supporting PKK insurgents. Greece claimed that it acted humanely and denies it has helped the rebels. Greece later granted asylum to two of Öcalan's aides.
Bibliography
Abdullah Ocalan is the author of more than 40 books, four of which were written in prison. Many of the notes taken from his weekly meetings with his lawyers have been edited and published, notably:
- Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation (2007) ISBN 0745326161
- Defending a civilisation
- Sumer rahip devletlerinden demokratik uygarliga volumes 1 and 2
- Translation of his 1999 defense in court