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Major Kurdish organisations have come together to organise a march on 15 February, the anniversary of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s capture and eventual imprisonment.
The march will start from Mardin (Mêrdîn) and Hakkari (Colemêrg) on 6 February and conclude in Gemlik, the northwestern Turkish town that boats to Öcalan’s prison on the İmralı Island leave from.
Organisers, including the Democratic Communities Congress (DTK), Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), held a press conference in a DBP office on Wednesday to promote the march.
“We reject this absolute incommunicado state imposed on Mr Öcalan, who is seen as a will for solution by Kurds and peoples of Turkey and the Middle East, and we demand that meetings between Öcalan and his lawyers start at once,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Öcalan last had contact with the outside world in an interrupted phone call with his brother in March 2021, while his last counsel with his lawyers was in 2019.
Kurds have been protesting the state of absolute isolation since it came to light that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had held an ad-hoc visit to the İmralı Prison in September to carry out its duties of inspection, but made no public statement on the wellbeing of the PKK leader.
“At this critical junction, the democratic public wants to hear from İmralı, and is concerned about Öcalan’s wellbeing – rightfully so, after nearly two years of no contact,” the joint statement read.
On 9 October 1998, Öcalan was forced to leave his base in Syria after Turkey, supported by NATO member countries, threatened to wage war on its neighbour. He travelled to Athens, and from there to Moscow.
On 20 October 1998, Turkey and Syria signed the Adana Protocol, which formed the basis of a rapprochement between the two countries in which Syria agreed to cease support for the PKK.
Öcalan travelled to several countries looking for somewhere to base himself until he arrived in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, where on 15 February 1999 he was abducted and transported to Turkey.
Öcalan was sentenced to death on 29 June 1999, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment without parole when Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002.
