Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s last contact with the outside world was on 25 March 2021 in the form of an interrupted phone call with his brother. Since then, the absolute and aggravated isolation of Öcalan and the three other detainees, Hamili Yıldırım, Ömer Hayri Konar and Veysi Aktaş, in Turkey’s İmralı Island Prison has continued.
We asked lawyer Raziye Öztürk from the Asrın Law Office about the extent of the unlawfulness in İmralı. While summarising the current situation, she called on the European institutions whose duty it is to protect human rights to fulfil their duties and to use their legal power against the isolation conditions in İmralı Island Prison which is a violation of international law.
Could you give us some insights into the İmralı Island Prison?
As you know, Mr Öcalan was brought to İmralı Island Prison in 1999 after being captured by an international conspiracy. İmralı Prison was previously a semi-open prison before it was emptied in February 1999, the time of Öcalan’s abduction. It was then re-engineered as a high-security and one-person prison. With Öcalan’s arrival, the area around the island was declared a forbidden zone from air, land and sea.
Since its establishment, İmralı Prison has been governed discriminatingly, extraordinarily, and inhumanely, with direct international ties and indefinite administrative statutes.
Moreover, there have even been certain laws that were legislated in order to prevent Öcalan from benefiting from his rights. These “Öcalan laws” were brought into force all over Turkey.
Right now, Mr Öcalan still remains imprisoned in a cell-type room in İmralı. Along with him, we have three other clients in this island prison. They are also kept in separate cells and included in this isolation policy with Öcalan. So much so that our clients, who were brought to prison in 2015, have not been allowed to see their lawyers even once for 8 years.
Can you tell us how strict the isolation we’re talking about is? For example, when was the last time Öcalan got to see a lawyer?
Mr Öcalan has had only five meetings with his lawyers in 12 years since 2011, all of them concentrated within a single year; 2019. The last meeting was in August 2019. According to Turkish laws, in fact, lawyers can meet with their clients at any time during working hours and without being subject to any permission.
During his 24 years in İmralı, Öcalan could use his right to communicate with his family on the telephone only twice. The first call was in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic at the time. The second call, which came after the social media posts that raised concerns about his life and well-being, lasted only two minutes before the phone disconnected.
In this phone call, Mr Öcalan objected to the reduction of his rights to communicate into a single phone call and stated that “the law should be enforced and the lawyers should be allowed to come” to meet with him, before the disconnection of the telephone. Since this last phone call on 25 March 2021, we have been unable to receive any information from Mr Öcalan and the other prisoners, with no lawyer or family visits, no phone calls, not even a letter…
So, what can be done in the context of international law to end this absolute isolation?
To put an end to the incommunicado detention and inability to receive information that cannot be resolved despite our efforts, we applied to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (OHCHR) on 29 July 2022 as a last resort due to the exhaustion of domestic remedies, including the Turkish Constitutional Court (AYM). In our application, we also requested an injunction against the restriction that has prevented receiving any type of information from our clients, Mr Öcalan and the three other prisoners, despite all the persistent attempts of their families and lawyers since 25 March 2021.
The OHCHR urged the State party to end the incommunicado detention to which the applicants were subjected and to allow the applicants immediate and unrestricted access to a lawyer of their choice. However, the Turkish government authorities did not comply with the Committee’s injunction either. On the contrary, the government’s response to this decision was further prohibitions of family and counsel visits, and instead of repealing the ban on phone calls and meeting with lawyers, it openly defended these prohibitions with no legal grounds in its responses to the Committee.
As Mr Öcalan’s lawyers, we still continue to take all legal initiatives. But we are also still prevented from seeing him, and also seeing the documents of the unlawful and arbitrary bans and disciplinary punishments given to him, which are being unlawfully smuggled from us to prevent us from examining their content. Thus, our clients’ files are finalised and implemented before we can object. Twenty-four years of legal practices in İmralı clearly reveals that it is an environment that is completely governed by politics where universal law is not applied at all. Besides, the silence and ineffectiveness of institutions such as the CPT and the ECHR further encourage Turkey.
What exactly do you mean by silence and ineffectiveness? Can you expand on this?
For example; the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has our application regarding the isolation. Although we made this application in 2011, the ECHR has not delivered a judgment on this file for the past 12 years.
The ECHR stated that the aggravated life sentence given to Mr Öcalan in 2014 is against the prohibition of torture and that some amendments should be made in the law on the execution of sentences. It is the Committee of Ministers, an institution of the Council of Europe, which ensures and monitors the implementation of ECHR decisions, however, Turkey did not implement this decision in 2014. Likewise, the Committee of Ministers only put this issue on its agenda in 2021, seven years later, and has not reached an effective decision so far.
Another Council institution is the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). In 2019, a CPT delegation visited İmralı Island. It announced its report in August 2020, describing the situation in İmralı as incommunicado and underlining that the Turkish government’s reasons for isolation are deceptive. The CPT emphasised that aggravated life imprisonment, which means imprisonment until death, is torture and should be changed. Despite the evaluations on providing family and lawyer visitations, ending disciplinary punishments, and increasing the right to have fresh air outdoors and social activities, the Government took a step further regarding the isolation and intensified it even more.
And then, during the last two years of an absolute lack of communication with Öcalan, the only incident was the CPT announcing that they visited İmralı Prison on 22 September 2022.
However, in our meeting with them following the visit, CPT officials refused to give us any information and avoided making any statements.
In fact, the CPT is entitled to initiate a procedure against states that do not comply with their recommendations and make its observations public without government approval. Nevertheless, despite the two years of no communication with İmralı and the fact that the CPT is the only international authority that is allowed to visit the island, they did not share a single piece of information, citing the procedures to justify their attitude and even treating what goes on in the İmralı Island Prison as if it were normal. As such, the CPT has regressed to a repetitive, diplomatic, inactive, idiosyncratic body that does not catalyse any changes in the island.
These examples show that, in addition to Turkey’s “National İmralı Policies” implemented by the country alone, there is also a comprehensive and systematic İmrali policy which is undercover in the context of the US, Turkey and EU relations in the international arena.
