Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been held completely incommunicado for almost two and a half years. The Turkish authorities have imposed a series of disciplinary measures on the PKK leader and three other detainees in the prison on the island of İmralı in north-west Turkey, and banned them from all legal and family visits.
Öcalan’s legal team, from the Asrın Law Office, have made regular applications for meetings, it is almost 30 months since any such meeting has been permitted.
The last time Öcalan and the three other prisoners were able to meet with their lawyers was on 7 August 2019. Since then, all requests for legal meetings have been denied.
Rezan Sarıca, one of two lawyers who saw Öcalan during his last permitted legal visit four years ago, spoke to Medya News about the extent of isolation in İmralı Prison.
Turkey’s criminal enforcement system and unlawful isolation
In June, journalist Merdan Yanardağ was arrested for saying that Öcalan’s isolation violated Turkey’s own criminal laws. You are one of the last lawyers to meet with Öcalan in İmrali Island Prison in 2019. What are the main features that make this continued isolation unlawful under Turkish law? In this sense, can you compare the most severe conditions of imprisonment as defined by the Turkish sentencing regulations with the conditions of isolation specifically imposed on Öcalan?
There is a criminal enforcement system in Turkey that goes beyond the de facto situation and is carried out by means of illegal decisions involving administrative and judicial institutions, and as a state policy in the broadest sense. So it would be more accurate to address the main features of the practice of isolation that make it unlawful through this system, because the basic feature of the isolation regime is based on an understanding and on a policy. It is not the result of the individual or specific behaviour or attitude of a prison officer. It is a system of torment in which the deprivation of liberty is only the beginning, and which is built on the results of enforced isolation, wearing down, suffering, weakening, will-breaking and dehumanisation in the intellectual, physical and spiritual dimensions, every day and every moment of every day. No impact is permitted as a result of any development from the prison cell to the outside world or from the outside to the prison cell. One of the other goals with these methods is to deprive Mr Öcalan of any connection with life and society, and society from drawing strength from Mr Öcalan. Another more important aim is to prevent Mr Öcalan from intervening in the ongoing historical developments from the perspective of freedom, equality and justice, and to ensure that the capitalist system, which acts to push peoples to a life outwith society, continues without interruption. So we have to say that there is a paradigmatic conflict going on in İmralı.
Merdan Yanardağ has thrown a spanner in the works of state policy by exposing the crimes and rights violations in İmralı to a wide public. His arrest is also a manifestation of the unlawful nature of the İmralı regime. When it comes to İmralı, the state can take away the freedom of expression, the freedom of the press and the right to freedom in one fell swoop. If telling the truth about İmralı is grounds for arrest, you can only imagine the regime of repression in İmralı itself.
The most severe sentencing regime in Turkish law is the aggravated life imprisonment regime which was in any case designed for Mr Öcalan. It is dealt with in articles 25, 107 and others of Law No. 5275. Its main characteristic is that the sentence is to be served until death. At the same time, it is a regime imposing the most limited rights and the severest conditions. It grants the right to meet with family once a fortnight, alternating between open and closed visits. It grants the right to one phone call a fortnight. It grants the right to meet freely with lawyers during working hours. There is also the right to correspondence by means such as letters. Although this severest of regimes includes these rights, none of them have been applied to Mr Öcalan in practice. The following statistics are striking details in terms of the severity of the isolation:
- Although he is entitled to at least 24 family visits per year, he has been permitted only five visits since 6 October 2014, instead of a minumum 216.
- Although he has the right to meet with his lawyers every weekday, he has been permitted to meet with his lawyers only five times, for a total of eight hours, since 27 July 2011, that is, in over 12 years.
- During his 25 years of imprisonment in İmralı, he should have had the right to make at least 650 phone calls, but he has only been permitted to make two. The first phone call he was allowed was after 21 years.
- Our other clients in İmralı have not seen a lawyer since the day they were taken to the island (17 March 2015). They have not had more than two or three family meetings.
- Since Mr. Öcalan’s second and last phone call on 25 March 2021, which was suddenly interrupted, there has been no word from him of any kind!
The conditions in İmralı, which has been in a state of absolute non-communication for more than two years, can sometimes create the illusion that there was no isolation before March 2021. However, just as an example, Öcalan was not allowed to meet with his lawyers for eight years before your first visit in 2019. How did Öcalan’s isolation progress from the beginning of his detention up to two and a half years ago? Had there been periods before when Öcalan was in a state of absolute incommunicado? Aside from the severity of the isolation, are there any similar examples in the history of law where a prisoner has been held in incommunicado conditions for such a long period of time?
The system of isolation began with Mr Öcalan’s incarceration in İmralı. The island was then declared a military prohibited zone. The choice of the island as a place of detention meant that it was isolated from social life, and family and legal visits, which would provide a link with life, were difficult. The boat trips to the island were entirely under the control of the state. So from 1999 to 2016, family and legal visits were continuously obstructed on grounds such as “broken boats” and “bad weather”. Although they had their right to see a lawyer on weekdays, in practice this was limited to one hour, one day a week. However, even these de facto rules were never regularly observed. There has never been a period in which Mr Öcalan has regularly met either with his family, or similarly, with his lawyers. His contact with the outside world has always been severely restricted.
By 2011, a ban on lawyers had started that would last for eight years without interruption. Then, after five limited meetings in 2019, there was a further ban on lawyers that would last for another four years, again without interruption. From 1999 to 2014, family visits were always irregular. Family visits, the legal right to which was stipulated to be once a fortnight, here sometimes held once a month and sometimes once in two months. In 2003, there were intervals of up to three months, in 2005 up to six months. The last nine years have been still more severe. There was only one face-to-face family meeting in 2016, and only three in 2019. The last face-to-face family meeting was on 3 March 2020. For the last three and a half years, no face-to-face family meetings have been allowed at all.
Considering this, the periods closest to absolute incommunicado have been from April 2015 to September 2016, and from 11 September 2016 to 12 January 2019. There were no visits during these periods, but for example, in the first period, we were able to exchange letters with our other clients [at the prison], and in the second period we mentioned, it was possible to obtain some information about the conditions of detention. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) also produced a statement on their visit in 2016, and the report of their visit was published in 2018. However, there has been no period like the period since 25 March 2021. First, the phone call on 25 March was suddenly interrupted and not reconnected. Why was the telephone disconnected, and what happened afterwards? No-one knows. This is a worrying development in itself.
There have also been some earlier United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) decisions concerning persons in “incommunicado” conditions. In the Benali/Libya case, the UNHRC recognised that incommunicado detention ranging from a few weeks to two years constituted a violation of the prohibition of torture. Similarly, in the Polay Campos/Peru case, incommunicado detention for one year was considered to be inhuman treatment. However, there is no other example like that in İmralı in the legal history of the United Nations or Europe.
Coming back to the beginning, whether it is the illusion you mentioned or not, I think it is still not fully understood what it means and what it signifies, not to receive any news. It seems that the isolation system in İmralı aims for a slow death*, spread over time. We know that the system of isolation is a very conscious choice, as the reactions to sudden events are not the same as the reactions to systems spread over time. It’s as though we experience this slow death in the “heat” of isolation without realising it, like the “frog in hot water” experiment. But the current state of absolute incommunicado causes absolute uncertainty and ignorance about the lives, health conditions and conditions of detention of our clients. It is accepted that such a closed, unpredictable and uncontrollable situation carries with it the risk of violations of all rights, including the right to life.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee also states that the use of isolation goes hand in hand with incommunicado detention practices, as well as enforced disappearance or secret detention. This is enough to explain the gravity of the process.
Decades of isolation: Struggle in İmralı Prison
As the 25th anniversary of his detention approaches, if Turkey does not take steps in line with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that Öcalan’s right to hope has been violated, can the ECtHR impose sanctions?
Before the ECtHR, the Committee of Ministers (CoM) of the Council of Europe (CoE) needs to examine and supervise this process more seriously. The Committee has placed the issue the on the agenda of its meetings only once since the ECtHR judgment was delivered on 18 March 2014, and only once made it the subject of its interim decisions (December 2021). In those resolutions, the Committee found that Turkey “has not yet brought life imprisonment into conformity with the ECtHR judgment” and requested Turkey to take immediate legal steps for a permanent mechanism to re-evaluate imprisonment, to inform the committee on this issue by September 2022, and to provide the committee with general information and statistics on prisoners in similar situations. However, Turkey has neither taken any steps in accordance with these resolutions, nor has there been any attempt by the Committee to follow up on the interim resolutions shared with us and published.
We have previously asked the Committee to refer the issue of ‘failure to fulfil the obligation’ stipulated under Article 46/4 of the ECHR to the Court. We have asked the ECtHR to determine that Turkey has not fulfilled the requirements of the Öcalan judgement and to issue a new violation decision. The ECtHR’s decision to determine that the previous judgement has not been fulfilled will lead to a discussion of the membership of the member state within the Council of Europe and the relevant sanctions. However, the Committee is not including the judgement on the right to hope in its agenda, and is not taking the relevant initiatives. As we have just mentioned, it is also not carrying out the procedure of referring the current stage to the ECtHR.
The Committee needs to abandon its cumbersome bureaucratic functioning; take a more active role and state in diplomatic relations and through public warnings that the commitment to comply with the ECtHR’s final judgement must be fulfilled; keep it on the agenda of every meeting and make it the subject of interim decisions, and issue periodic warnings to Turkey that the ECtHR procedure and other sanction mechanisms will be applied in the supervision process. Following these developments, political and administrative sanctions may come onto the agenda, and the fulfilment of the ECtHR judgement may be ensured. Otherwise, or if the Committee goes to a final decision without making legal arrangements as required by the ECtHR judgement, the court mechanism developed within the framework of the convention will have worked on behalf of states, not on behalf of democracy and freedoms.
Resilience beyond bars
The isolation also leaves many questions about the conditions of detention and living conditions in İmralı unanswered or prevents the public from updating existing information. How did your experiences and observations during your five visits in 2019 (albeit within the limits set by the state) give you an insight into these unknown dimensions of the İmralı isolation?
It is well-known that the conditions in İmralı have never improved since 1999, and have have in fact been made consistently more severe. We have also observed that Mr Öcalan and our other clients are being held under the most extreme extraordinary conditions, in places and social and sensory conditions that are incompatible with human beings and human dignity.
The system is not simply to prevent our attempts and efforts as lawyers and those of the families from reaching the island. There is a form of spatial and administrative management built especially for Öcalan. Because of things like the island being a military zone, its remoteness from nature, unhealthy seasonal conditions, the narrowness of the building’s interior, the vertical height of the walls and other administrative styles, there is a system in which the individual is forced to protect himself mentally, spiritually and physically at all times, and it is not possible to remain human without moment-to-moment resistance.
What we were more curious about was of course Mr Öcalan himself. We were impressed by his energy, his hope, his reassuring attitudes, his foresights despite the conditions he was in and his determinations on the current course of events. His smiles that preserved the hope of life on the one hand, and his seriousness in approaching the slightest problem experienced by society on the other, had an effect that shook us to the core. We could see that he was in search of a revolutionary way out in the face of serious problems. Öcalan spends every moment in a struggle with himself and the system, protecting his humanity with a sharp consciousness and insistence on the truth, and waging a great battle of wills to bring freedom to peoples who are ignored and oppressed.
Breaking the chains of misrepresentation
How and to what extent do you think the end of isolation has been effective in the search for a political and peaceful solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey?
There has been a false, artificial narrative of history in Turkey through the years. Peoples, their cultures and beliefs, including the Kurdish people in particular, who are all part of the history of this land, are always either discussed as if they do not exist, denied or described at odds with their reality, polarised and marginalised. In this way, the monist mentality that manifests itself with the concept of one identity and one language is the main source of all problems. This is why the Kurdish problem has been left unresolved for at least 100 years.
The İmralı isolation system and the ideas and character of Mr Öcalan are also reflected falsely to the public, especially in Europe and Turkey. Merdan Yanardağ opened a gap in this smokescreen for a second, but it was immediately covered up. Because isolation leads to the further insolubility of the Kurdish question. Neither a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question nor democracy in Turkey can come onto the agenda until the state’s policy of deadlock is changed and the isolation system is ended. Of course, the lifting of isolation alone will not mean a democratic solution to the Kurdish question. But as it will lead to the disintegration of the order of lies and the revelation of the truth, it will be able to solve the problems.
The current order ties people’s hands by pushing them into pessimism and despair, leaving them grappling with problems and crises. If the isolation of Mr Öcalan is lifted, the system of false perception will be disrupted, the climate of fear will dissipate, there will be an increase in solidarity in society, and it will be able to regain hope and gain the power needed for solution. In particular, politics that deceive, mislead and exploit the people will cease to function. In this case, I think that the system will not be able to sustain itself and will have to change.
During the 2013-2015 [peace] process, in which Mr Öcalan was clearly the main actor, the support in society for a democratic solution rose to at least 80 percent. The area of freedoms in society was at its widest and the belief in a lasting social peace was stronger than ever. The whole world was focussed on what Mr Öcalan would say. In 2019, we were able to observe again Mr Öcalan’s confidence in himself and his political power, and his hope in favour of freedoms. At the moment, not only Turkey, but the entire geography of Mesopotamia and the Middle East needs his power of thought and solution. So opening the channels through which Mr Öcalan can express himself will lead to a brand new atmosphere.
