Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek has said that Abdullah Öcalan is “the great liberation figure for the Kurds”, whose release from prison would be “the basic condition for a peaceful future” for Kurdistan and Turkey.
The Austrian playwright and novelist, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of 69 Nobel laureates to sign a recent letter expressing deep concern about the conditions in which Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan is being held during his 25 years of imprisonment on the Turkish island of İmralı.
Highlighting why she added her voice to the cause, Jelinek said:
“Abdullah Öcalan, who is seen by the majority of the Kurdish population as a legitimate political representative, must finally be released after almost a quarter of a century of total isolation, during which he was not even allowed to speak out.”
“It is unbearable for me to only ever hear the supposed ‘killer arguments’ of terrorism, insurgency, fighting militias, destroying PKK positions, operation to oust etc. in connection with Kurdistan and the Kurds,” Jelinek said, adding, “As if this Kurdish people, who are only striving for autonomy and freedom, were the super-terrorist of Europe, indeed of the world.”
Turkey and other states have used these arguments to “brutally respond with extermination and bombs, even targeting the dead in the cemeteries, as if this oppressed people could be persecuted and silenced (and of course literally killed),” she stated.
Highlighting that the Kurdish people “must finally be allowed to live autonomously and freely”, Jelinek called for the release of Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on the Turkish island of İmralı since 1999. His last contact with the outside world was in March 2021.
The letter that Jelinek signed along with the other Nobel laureates criticised European and international bodies for failing to take meaningful action on Öcalan’s rights, which are guaranteed under Turkish, European and international law. “Although his rights are guaranteed by the Turkish constitution and domestic legislation, by European Union statutes and regulations, and by international law, none of that seems to matter,” the laureates said. They also noted that although the United Nations Human Rights Committee has urged Turkey to end Öcalan’s incommunicado detention and allow him access to his lawyers, the Turkish government has failed to comply.
Elfriede Jelinek has previously voiced her support for Kurdish rights, penning a joint letter with German singer-songwriter Konstantin Wecker in honour of the International Day of Peace on 1 September 2023. This statement, initially published in the German weekly newspaper ‘Der Freitag’ and distributed online in Kurdish and Turkish, expressed solidarity with the ongoing International Kurdish Cultural Festival in Frankfurt.
