Fréderike Geerdink
How often do you think about Selahattin Demirtaş? It’s a question that came to mind after Turkey’s top appeals court confirmed the life sentence without parole for another high profile political prisoner in Turkey, businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala. Demirtaş and Kavala have more in common than that they are locked up for life for political reasons: the state is trying to let them sink away in oblivion. Rest assured: that will not happen.
The devil is in the detail of this week’s ruling by the Turkish Court of Cassation to uphold the aggravated life sentence against Osman Kavala, and the lengthy prison sentences against five other activists. Now that the sentence is final, Kavala’s access to the prison yard will be limited to one hour per day, Amnesty’s Milena Büyum said.
He will be allowed fewer visitors: lawyers without power of attorney won’t be able to visit him any longer. In other words, his contact with the outside world, which is already very limited, will be further, and severely curtailed.
We will hear less from him. But from his friends, we will hear more. Some activists were released, and one of them said: “We left our loved ones behind. We need to get them out of there immediately”. The anger and love and dedication in those words are almost tangible.
Comrades
We haven’t heard from Selahattin Demirtaş for quite some time. Remember how actively he was using social media, especially Twitter, from jail, via his lawyers? In May this year, he announced that he was withdrawing from active politics. Not indefinitely, the words ‘at this stage’ indicated, but he’s been silent ever since. Good for Erdoğan, you would think, since he wants to break the connection between Kurdish leaders and the Kurdish people and keeping them locked up is a very effective way to do that. This applies not only to Demirtaş but to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan as well.
In a way, that assessment is right. Letting political opponents and advocates for democracy and human rights rot in prison and fully controlling the connection they have with their supporters, gives the state great power. But there is a tipping point. There is a balance between trying to render the political prisoner fully ineffective and making them actually more effective exactly because they remain imprisoned. The prisoners turn from politicians into icons.
Symbolic value
The same goes for the effects of another punishment that dictators have at their disposal against political opponents: the death penalty. It was abolished in Turkey but when Öcalan was captured in Kenya in an international conspiracy and brought to Turkey in 1999, he was initially sentenced to death. This was later commuted to a life sentence without parole, but maybe the state wouldn’t have hanged him even if the death penalty had still existed. Because sentencing political opponents and especially political leaders to death only increases their symbolic value for their supporters.
Demirtaş is becoming an icon, a leader solidified in what he achieved when he was still free. A symbol of hope: him being set free will mean there is space to work politically on the solution of the Kurdish issue. Öcalan has become an icon too, instead of having sunk into oblivion, as the state would have loved. He is even more of an icon than Demirtaş because when he is freed, it won’t mean there is space for political progress but that the Kurdish issue has been solved democratically.
The state – not just Erdoğan, but his predecessors too – have locked their opponents up, but over time, the state has actually cornered itself. They can’t hang Kavala, Demirtaş, Öcalan and others any more, they can’t release them without losing face but they can’t keep them locked up forever either, if only because any of these people dying in jail will cause an immense uproar they won’t be able to control.
Reflections
So, what to do? I checked what Demirtaş said about that in the interview in Artı Gerçek in which he announced his withdrawal from politics: “Orders to release me have already been given [by the European Court of Human Rights – FG], I guess this order will only be implemented on the day law is implemented. Our struggle will determine when that day will come.”
This quote has so many layers of truth. Death penalties, lengthy prison sentences, but also exile, are all reflections of the injustices done to the people together with whom these leaders are struggling for freedom. And none of these punishments have the power to stop that struggle, just as none of these punishments can lead to oblivion. The prisoners remain important participants in the struggle. Until yet another tipping point – freedom – is reached.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan
