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The deadline given to Turkey by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE) in relation to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings on aggravated life sentences of certain political prisoners, including Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, is nearing, but Ankara is yet to provide any information on the issue.
The CoE in December of last year requested that Turkey implement measures in the case of Öcalan and others to eliminate prisoner rights violations and demanded Ankara submit a progress report by September of this year.
Despite the international body’s deadline approaching, Turkey has refrained from taking the necessary steps on the issue and rather has imposed further disciplinary punishment on Öcalan in various instances, in addition to continuing to keep him in isolation in İmralı Prison, Mezopotamya Agency reported.
The process began when Öcalan’s lawyers took their client’s case to the ECHR in 2003 on the grounds that the aggravated life sentence given to him violated Article 3 which bans torture and mistreatment. The court on 18 March 2014 ruled in favour of a rights violation claim since he wasn’t provided with the right to conditional release. The ruling dubbed “Öcalan 2” was also issued for prisoners Hayati Kaytan, Emin Gurban and Civan Boltan in the following process.
Speaking to Medya News concerning the process, Öcalan’s lawyer İbrahim Bilmez said that under normal circumstances, the country that the ECHR ruled against in such a case should have implemented legal changes.
“The court basically said, ‘You can’t keep a person behind bars without the hope of release. If you imprison someone in that manner, the way that this sentence is implemented includes torture and mistreatment,’” Bilmez said, adding that Turkey failed to make the necessary changes and the CoE didn’t take action on its own.
Following years of inaction on the issue, various rights groups and Öcalan’s lawyers asked the CoE’s Committee of Ministers to bring it on to their agenda. The Committee, ahead of its meeting in November of last year, asked Turkey to provide information on the cases and Turkey claimed that there hadn’t been any rights violations in İmralı since 2009.
The Committee, however, then asked Turkey to provide a progress report on the right to parole by September of this year. It also asked Ankara to share information about the number of prisoners serving aggravated life sentences.
According to Bilmez, Turkey tried to stall the process and the aggravated life sentence ruled against by the ECHR has been handed to thousands of prisoners.
With the deadline approaching, no progress seems to be in sight. No information on Öcalan has been obtained for the past 16 months since he is being kept in total isolation. A total of 271 applications, including 70 from his family and 201 from his lawyers, were made to meet him since 25 March 2021, but all to no avail.
One of the aforementioned applications to urgently meet with him was made on 22 Nov. 2021 by his lawyers, which resulted in the lawyers finding out that a six-month lawyer meeting ban had been imposed on Öcalan on Oct. 12 of the same year. He was also banned from seeing his family for three months, according to another decision dated 18 August.
After the ban on meeting with his lawyers was lifted on 22 April, the lawyers, on 29 April once again formally requested to meet Öcalan. The authorities then told the lawyers that yet another six-month ban was imposed on 13 April. Bans on family meetings followed a similar process, with authorities citing “disciplinary action” in a response to an application on 8 June.
Lawyers from the Asrın Law Office, which represents Öcalan, then took the bans to the Constitutional Court, while 775 lawyers registered with 29 bar associations and filed applications between 10 June and 17 to meet with the PKK leader. They are yet to receive a response.
Bilmez called on Turkey to act in line with international law.
“The aggravated life sentence is torture. We expect Turkey to do what’s necessary,” Bilmez said, while also criticising the silence of the public in the face of Öcalan’s case.
