Scores of lawyers from across Europe have applied to the Turkish Justice Ministry for access to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned in total incommunicado detention on the high-security prison island of İmralı, detention conditions deemed by the legal experts as contrary to international human rights conventions on torture and the right to access legal counsel.
The petition, to lift the ongoing and uninterrupted lawyer access ban in İmralı Prison against Abdullah Öcalan and other detainees, was the outcome of a European Parliament conference on isolation, torture, and ill-treatment in prisons, attended, in April, by over 100 legal professionals.
A Brussels press conference this week, presented by top legal experts including Yves Oschinsky, Brussels Bar Association and the Human Rights Institute of the Brussels Bar, highlighted the application to the Justice Ministry, stressing that governments and institutions, particularly the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) had failed to respond or apply sufficient pressure on Turkey to adhere to requirements as a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and allow access to the prisoners.
Speaker Oschinsky laid out Turkey’s legal commitments, noting specific articles in the European Convention on Human Rights, including the ‘Nelson Mandela’ rules on the treatment of prisoners, and Turkey’s domestic commitments on fundamental rights and freedoms as set out in its constitution.
The ECHR Article 6 cites the right to a fair, impartial and public trial and to defend himself with legal assistance, Oschinsky said.
Öcalan’s trial, after his abduction as leader of the separatist militant PKK in 1999, concluded in a death sentence, which was later commuted to aggravated life imprisonment when Turkey abolished the death penalty. On appeal, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that Öcalan was not tried by an independent and impartial court. A retrial was denied by Turkey.
Oschinsky also cited the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, which state that prisoners should be allowed ‘adequate opportunity, time and facilities to be visited by and to communicate and consult with a legal adviser of their own choice or a legal aid provider, without delay, interception or censorship’ and ‘to communicate with their family and friends at regular intervals’.
Nevertheless, Öcalan, who has spent 25 years in isolated imprisonment, has been denied any contact with lawyers or family since a brief phone call in March 2021.
The UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, Oschinsky pointed out, states that governments shall ensure lawyers ‘are to perform all of their professional functions without hindrance’. Meanwhile, repeated applications for legal visits by Öcalan’s lawyers at Asrin Law Office are denied or ignored under arbitrary ‘disciplinary’ bans.
Regarding Turkey’s domestic law, Oschinsky quoted claims from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of ‘comprehensive reforms’ in the country since 2000 to ‘ensure full respect for fundamental rights and freedoms taking into account the provisions of the ECHR and the case law of the ECtHR, the conventions of the Council of Europe (CoE), the main UN human rights conventions to which Türkiye [Turkey] is a party.’
However, Turkey has repeatedly failed to act on ECtHR rulings in the cases of political prisoners, including Öcalan, the other İmralı inmates, and other high-profile cases including ‘Kobani case’ defendant Selahattin Demirtas and Osman Kavala.
A judicial coup d’Ètat erupting in Turkey this year, with the Court of Cassation’s refusal to recognise the Constitutional Court’s (AYM) decisions, is widely viewed as a result of a prolonged ‘state of lawlessness’ in the country, characterised by the state’s refusal to adhere to the ECtHR’s decisions and wider international conventions.
Öcalan’s isolated detention and the absence of any mechanism to review his ‘aggravated’ life imprisonment sentence will be addressed at a hearing at the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers in Strasbourg on 17 September. Alleged infringements on political prisoner cases in Turkey, including claims of impunity, the silencing of detainees and prisoner treatment, will also be considered. Stay with us for updates on the event.
