Nikolaj Willumsen, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) representing the Left Group, condemned Turkey’s unlawful and torturous policy of isolation imposed on Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and called for his release, to pave the way for resolution of the Kurdish issue and peace in the Middle East.
“The isolation of the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan is totally unacceptable,” Willumsen said, in a recent interview with Medya News’s Erem Kansoy.
“It is a blockage of a potential peace process that we need to resolve the Kurdish question in a democratic, peaceful way that will be to the benefit of all peoples of Turkey and the Middle East.”
Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was captured in 1999 and has been held in absolute isolation for the last 38 months of his 25-year detention on Turkey’s Imrali prison island. As the pioneer of the contemporary Kurdish movement, and having initiated a short-lived peace process abruptly halted by the Turkish government in 2016, Öcalan’s liberation is widely viewed as key to renewed peace talks.
Willumsen’s comments came as news broke that the Imrali prison administration had issued yet another arbitrary ban on legal visits. Legal teams have been prevented from visiting the prison for four years.
The MEP stressed that the practice of isolation is considered to be a violation of international humanitarian law. Lawyers worldwide have condemned the practice of isolation as torture, and called for action from international institutions, such as the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee, who are responsible for holding governments to account for humanitarian law.
“The isolation and not least the new disciplinary penalties against the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan are totally unacceptable, and a clear violation of international law and basic human rights and that needs to be undone,” Willumsen said.
He further emphasised that the isolation of Öcalan was not a one-off human rights violation in Turkey. Isolation tactics are used across Turkish prisons and are prevalent in cases against political prisoners, to repress the Kurdish opposition. Referring to the country’s high-profile Kobani (Kobanê) case, which saw 108 Kurdish politicians on trial and came to a close just last week, Willumsen said the guilty verdicts against 24 leading politicians were “unacceptable”.
After almost a decade behind bars during the trial, the jailed Kobani defendants refused to attend court to hear the verdict, boycotting the proceedings over Turkey’s treatment of the Kurdish leader Öcalan, whose isolation, the political prisoners said in a statement made to lawyers, is a deliberate attempt by the Turkish government to foil a democratic resolution to the Turkish–Kurdish conflict.
As the elections for the European Parliament approach in June, Willumsen called on Europeans to stand “alongside the DEM Party and all democratic forces in Turkey” for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue. Turkey’s long-standing EU accession negotiations have been stalled over criticism of Turkey’s dire human rights record.
