Over 1,500 lawyers from more than 30 countries have applied to Turkey’s Justice Ministry to allow them to visit the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan in prison, challenging the conditions of his solitary confinement as a form of “discriminatory isolation.”
On 16 September, a press conference in Brussels will address this call for access to Öcalan, who is held in İmralı Prison, Turkey. Lawyers argue that the conditions in İmralı, where Öcalan has been detained for over two decades, violate basic human rights. “Clearly, therefore, solitary confinement on its own potentially raises issues in relation to the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” warned the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).
The Brussels event, organised by the Brussels Bar Association, the Human Rights Institute of the Brussels Bar, the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH) and others, will feature speakers such as Heike Geisweid, Co-president of the Association for Democracy and International Law (MAF-DAD). Geisweid, along with other legal experts, emphasises the importance of their demand in the broader context of upholding international human rights standards.
The lawyers have submitted their request under Turkish domestic law, highlighting the urgent need for transparency and legal access in cases involving allegations of human rights violations. They maintain that without such access, there is a risk of further deterioration of rights within the Turkish prison system.
