A group of some 20 Kurdish activists held a protest during the European Parliament’s plenary session on Wednesday, holding up posters of Abdullah Öcalan and chanting slogans calling for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader’s release from prison in Turkey.
The civil disobedience action comes on the 24th anniversary of Öcalan’s capture in Kenya, following a series of relocations as he left Syria in search of an international base from which he could pursue a political solution to the Kurdish issue. While the PKK had been fighting against Turkey for some two decades at the time, the Kurds’ plight goes back centuries, to Ottoman times.
Öcalan has been cut off from the outside world for 23 months, unable to communicate at all with his lawyers or family. Activists pointed to European institutions’ responsibility in the incommunicado imprisonment of the PKK leader, saying the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) was not fulfilling its duties due to political pressure from Turkey.
“With this action, we as Kurdish youth demand that Europe abandon this dirty policy against Abdullah Öcalan,” Kurdish news agency ANF cited the activists as saying in a statement. “Until we hear from him and until his physical freedom is guaranteed, our actions will continue.”
The CPT held an impromptu visit to İmralı Island, where Öcalan and three other inmates are held, to check on the conditions in the isolated prison. The committee has received backlash for not making a public statement on the health and safety of Öcalan.
MEPs left the chamber as the session was halted for three hours, Agence France-Presse reported.
Parliamentary Speaker Roberta Metsola spoke as the session resumed, saying the EP “stands proudly for freedom of expression and the right to protest, but any demonstration must always respect our rules and procedures and public safety, and not disrupt our democratic debate”.
“This is not the way to get the attention of the European Parliament,” Metsola added.
Swedish-Kurdish MEP Evin İncir and Bulgarian Turkish MEP İlhan Kyuchyuk were among those who spoke with the protesters.
Far-right Italian MEP Susanna Ceccardi said in a tweet that the response to the protest was “embarrassing”.
Activists were led away and out of the EP building by security guards.
