Stephen Smellie, a prominent Scottish trade unionist and a member of the Unison National Executive Council, is a key advocate in the campaign for the freedom of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) founder, Abdullah Öcalan. In this interview with Medya News, Smellie discusses the ongoing isolation of Öcalan, the significance of his democratic philosophy, and the global impact of his ideas.
Smellie draws comparisons between the Freedom for Öcalan campaign and the historic efforts to free Nelson Mandela, highlighting the role of UK trade unions in pressuring the government to cease arms sales to Turkey and support Kurdish rights. Additionally, he addresses the need for international solidarity, particularly from the European Union, to hold Turkey accountable for its human rights violations.
The full interview is below:
Stephen Smellie, Scottish trade unionist and member of Unison National Executive Council, thank you for joining us today.
It’s a pleasure to be here, Erem.
Thank you, Stephen. We’ve done many interviews with you before. The situation regarding Mr. Öcalan remains unchanged. It has now been more than 41 months since he has been held in isolation. He hasn’t seen his lawyers or family members, so this is our main topic today. But first of all, I’d like to ask: what are your concerns about the current treatment of Kurdish leader Mr. Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı Prison Island?
My concern will be the same as everyone else, he’s a man of senior years who deserves to be looked after. But since nobody knows, nobody’s heard from him, you’re concerned for his health, concerned for his welfare, concerned about how he’s been treated. Is he getting the right kind of care that he’s entitled to? So, yeah, until such times as Turkish authorities allow access to him, then we’ll be very concerned about Mr. Öcalan.
Thank you. Secondly, what has been the impact of his ideas, as contained in numerous books, on the politics of Turkey, the Kurdish movement, the wider Middle East region, and the international arena? How important are his ideas, and how do they affect the whole world?
I can speak from an international perspective. Abdullah Öcalan’s teachings and the actions of his supporters in Kurdistan have been an inspiration to trade unionists and other people throughout the world. As far as I can certainly hear in Scotland and the UK, we have learned from the example of his supporters, but also from his writings, his books, his teachings, I suppose, that he has laid before us. We are inspired by the ideas of essentially democracy, of a radical democracy which talks about equality, particularly female equality, but equality of all peoples and ensuring that that equality is not just a token gesture. Actually putting it into practice.
In his writings he talks about how to do that and obviously that has been put into practice by Kurdish people in various different parts of Kurdistan and in fact has now [been put into practice], I think in other parts of the world. People are trying to apply these kind of teachings here so it has been very influential. Hugely influential I would say, internationally. Clearly you can see on the ground in Kurdistan, whether it’s in Turkey, in Syria, Iraq, people who have organised around his ideas have been able to achieve a great deal of his ideals and put them into practice. That’s the mark of a significant teacher, a significant leader, and therefore he’s in a higher echelon of influence, I would say.
You’ve already mentioned that Mr. Öcalan is a significant leader for his people as well. Many people in Europe and around the world say Mr. Öcalan is not just a political figure but also one of the thinkers of our age, one of the philosophers of our era. Why is Abdullah Öcalan such an important figure? Let’s talk about his influence.
Abdullah Öcalan’s philosophy is, I think, one of the most prominent philosophies that has been talked about in the world. This idea that people can work together in equality, that we don’t have to worry about exerting power over other people, that we can actually find ways to work alongside. These are lessons which I think can apply everywhere we see conflicts throughout the world – that the solutions to them are not always clear because if you just simply do it on one side’s got to win over the other then there’s always going to be a loser. And if there’s going to be a loser, then the conflict continues and goes on.
Whereas what Öcalan’s philosophy teaches is that coexistence, that democratic confederalism is a much better way forward than the traditional nationalist or even socialist way of looking at the future. So as a philosopher, as somebody who’s pointed the way ahead, I think that is hugely influential. It’s new to many people on the left, certainly here in the UK, and it’s been taken up excitedly by many people who look at that as an inspiration and look at the practice of it as an inspiration, particularly women’s freedom and the achievements that have been achieved in that regard.
We’ve talked about his ideas and philosophy. Does Turkey fear Öcalan and his democratic ideas? If so, why do you think Turkey and Western powers are worried about Mr. Öcalan’s democratic ideas? Do you think Mr. Öcalan’s peaceful ideas are a threat to Turkey and the West?
I don’t think they should be. I’d say, first of all, there’s nothing to fear in the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan at all. You can’t fear people because they believe in democracy and because they believe in freedom, because they believe in equality. Why would anybody be fearful of that? However, people who are in power, and don’t want to give up that power to anyone. Yes, these [people] can be fearful of that, particularly when those ideas are grasped by the population, and people start demanding democracy, start demanding freedom, start questioning the right of the people – the powerful people – to rule over them without question.
So there shouldn’t be any fear of that, we should welcome those sort of things. But yes, clearly the regime in charge in Turkey fears that because it threatens their hegemony. It threatens their power over the state, over culture, over everything else. Because once people get to understand that they can work things out for themselves, they don’t have to fear each other, then they don’t really need that kind of authority to tell them what to do. So it’s fearful for people in power. people who don’t believe actually in democracy. But nobody else should be fearful of it.
You’ve been leading the Freedom for Öcalan campaign for quite some time, and you’re also on the steering committee of the campaign in the UK. You’re doing very well in Scotland, and Unison, as a trade union organisation, along with nearly 26 other trade unions in the UK, is supporting Freedom for Öcalan and the campaign. We’re going to talk about what else needs to be done to improve the situation. But first, how do you think UK trade unions are doing on this Freedom for Öcalan campaign? It reminds us of the Freedom for Mandela campaign, in which UK trade unions played a significant role. When you compare the two, what’s missing? What else needs to be done? Can the UK help to have any impact on Turkey to break the isolation? How important is international solidarity with the Kurds and Mr. Öcalan?
When we reflect back on the Freedom for Nelson Mandela campaign, which was not just about that one individual, just as the Freedom for Öcalan is not just about Abdullah Öcalan, it’s about, in South Africa’s case, the overthrow of apartheid and the bringing about of democracy. The Freedom for Öcalan campaign is looking at freeing Abdullah Öcalan because that is a step forward. That is the key to the freedom for Kurdish people and other people in the region. It’s about ensuring there’s a democratic solution, a peaceful democratic solution to what is euphemistically known as a Kurdish question. I think it’s important, therefore, that we don’t think about it just as an individual. It is about a wider movement.
And the Mandela campaign focused on Mandela as a symbol, but it was backed up by personal boycotts. I remember as a child refusing to buy the oranges that came from South Africa. We campaigned to get the banks to withdraw funding from the apartheid regime. We campaigned for a sports boycott. We need to broaden out all of these aspects of putting pressure on Turkey as part of the Freedom for Öcalan campaign. And therefore, calls have been made in trade unions here in the United Kingdom to call on the government to stop selling arms to Turkey, where they are using that against their own population and the neighbouring populations in Syria and Kurdistan. So we need to build a campaign which is wider than that. And I think the Freedom for Öcalan campaign, the Freedom for Öcalan movement, linked up with other forces in the trade unions and elsewhere, needs to bring pressure to our government to do that.
Now, we have got a new government in the UK, you’ll be aware. We elected a Labour government, which we would hope would be more supportive than the previous Conservative government. So the trade unions, many of whom including my own union, are affiliated to the Labour Party, should be called upon to put pressure on the Labour government to put pressure on Turkey and to start questioning whether it’s right that we continue to sell arms to Turkey when they’re using them against their own population. Whether it’s right to continue the diplomatic relationship with them when they’re imprisoning Abdullah Öcalan in isolation for years and years and years, and clearly in breach of several international human rights obligations. We should not have Turkey as a partner when they are guilty of those kinds of crimes.
Thank you. It was really important that you mentioned the arms sales to Turkey by the UK. As you know, one of the biggest arms dealers to Turkey is the UK, and many believe that BAE Systems is producing weapons for Turkey in its operations to occupy northern Kurdistan and Syria as well. While the UK might not have a direct impact on Freedom for Öcalan, it could stop these arms sales. How important do you think the UK’s role is in taking these small but significant steps towards bringing peace to the Middle East?
Absolutely right. I think the question of arms sales to regimes like Turkey has come to the fore with the situation in Gaza. I mean, there’s a lot of demands now to stop providing arms to Israel. And I think we are… beginning to question, people are beginning to question, why are we producing and selling arms to countries who oppress their own people? And Turkey is part of that agenda. At the Scottish Trade Union Congress this year, a motion was passed along those lines to look at our military expenditure, to look at who we sell our weapons to, and to be clear that we should not be selling weapons to regimes. And it specifically mentioned Turkey as well as Israel.
We shouldn’t be selling arms to those regimes because these are not peaceful regimes. These are not democratic regimes who respect human rights and respect their own citizens. So we should not be arming them to oppress people. And we need to build a campaign around that. BAE and other companies who are part of that supply chain need to be held to account. They shouldn’t be getting any public funds, for example. They should be, you know, put on a blacklist of saying that we are not [doing business with them], the government should be saying we are not going to support these organisations until we get a ban in place. Until such time as Turkey comes to the table, sits down with Abdullah Öcalan, negotiates his freedom and starts to respect the rights of their own people and their neighbouring countries.
I would like to ask you an extra question about the European Union (EU) and the EU constitution’s position on the isolation of Mr. Abdullah Öcalan. As you know, the European Council, also the European Parliament, as well as the ECHR, has made the decisions that the isolation is torture. The CPT, the Prevention of Torture Commission, also mentions that the isolation is a torture, but there is not any action against Turkey to stop this isolation. Why do you think this double standard still continues, and lasts more than 41 months?
I think this is to do with people in power and their relationship with Turkey. There’s a whole complicated relationship there, which is about, on the one hand, Turkey’s influence in the region, their control of refugees flowing into Europe. There’s a lot of anti-refugee sentiment in Europe and governments want to keep Turkey on side, so they don’t want to upset Turkey. In that regard, there’s obviously lots of trade in this profit. This is about a capitalist world. And at the moment, the profits that are being made from selling Turkey arms and supplying other goods to Turkey and using Turkey as a source of cheap labour suits the capitalist European Union and other states as well.
So they’re not putting pressure on it because their interests have not been… well, it’s not in their interest to cut off that kind of relationship at this point in time. That’s why we need more progressive governments, more progressive politicians under pressure from trade unions and movements, human rights movements to put pressure on our governments to say that we don’t want to profit from that kind of relationship, we want to end that kind of relationship… so I think it’s all about power play, it’s all about money, it’s all about who’s in control of the economy and everything else. We need to transform society and it’s part of that [process] where we achieve human rights.
Lastly, if you can comment on it, what can be done to compel the institutions to carry out their mandates to investigate, monitor and hold Turkey fully to account?
As I say, I mean part of that is the government. We have to get governments to take action so things like the arm sales, withdrawing diplomatic relationships and other things like that. But in order to get governments to do that we need to build a movement to put pressure on the government. That’s where, I think, trade unions, they come into it. Trade unions have – in this country – millions of members and we are influential in a whole variety of ways and we need to start holding our governments to account for these kind of actions and therefore there’s no substitute for building that kind of movement.
What we in the trade union movement here have to do is to once again get our organisations taking up this issue. My own union, Unison, works very closely with some of the trade unions in Turkey, for example, and we’ve called for the freedom of all political prisoners and we’ve supported trade unionists in particular who have been in court and in jail. And we’ll continue to do that. But we can use those as examples to our governments and to our membership as to why it is important that we focus efforts to get our government to call for the release of Abdullah Öcalan and, until two such times as they do that, to take steps to isolate Turkey.
Thank you, dear Stephen. Stephen Smellie, of Scottish Trade Union Congress (STUC) member of the Unison National Executive Council. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for your valuable comments.
Thank you very much.
