If Turkey’s opposition wins the elections on 14 May, the newly established government should take steps to end the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), one of Öcalan’s lawyers told Mezopotamya news agency on Saturday.
According to the latest polls, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the opposition, is ahead of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The votes of the Kurdish people will be critical in the upcoming elections, which could mark the end of the more than 20-year rule of Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), which in recent years is in an alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
“Besides, I do not think that other steps for democratisation will come from a government that does not end isolation, a severe violation of basic rights,” said lawyer Mahmut Şakar. “For the Kurdish people this will be an issue that will serve as a test to understand the seriousness and the approach of the new government,” he added.
Şakar said Kurdish people have been loudly voicing their demands for the freedom of political prisoners, particularly for the end of Öcalan’s isolation.
“This will be an important indicator not only in terms of Kurdish people’s demands but also for removing the destructions caused by the AKP-MHP government and making a new start. I believe it will be the basic measure for Kurds to understand the difference between the old [government] and the new,” he said.
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 in Turkey’s İmralı prison has continued despite the United Nations Human Rights Committee ordering the Turkish government to put an end to the incommunicado detention of the prisoners and provide them with immediate and unrestricted access to a lawyer of their choice.
According to a report produced by a January 2023 delegation of around 40 European lawyers, plus MPs and political party representatives, Öcalan’s detention conditions are “the most extreme for any political prisoner in Europe”.
