The Freedom for Öcalan campaign teamed with signatories from Norway, including members of parliament, academics and public figures, to demand Europe’s anti-torture committee visit the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan on the Turkish high-security prison island of Imrali and press Turkey to comply with human rights law in his case.
The campaign, launched last autumn, advocates for the release of Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), so he can restart dialogue with the Turkish state for a democratic political solution to the long-standing Turkish-Kurdish conflict.
The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT), a Council of Europe (CoE) body, must send a team of experts to Imrali, be granted unrestricted access to where Öcalan is held “captive” and interview him in private “so that he may communicate freely”, the Norwegian letter stated, according to ANF.
Only last week news broke that Öcalan’s legal team had been issued yet another ban on visits to their client. The repeated bans enforced by the Turkish prison administration are deemed arbitrary, and appeals against them are routinely dismissed. The total incommunicado detention has been ongoing non-stop for the past 38 months, exasperating the isolated tactics used by the Turkish authorities against the Kurdish leader since his capture and subsequent incarceration on İmralı island in 1999.
Turkey’s compliance with international law and the granting of Öcalan’s human rights would pave the way for a peaceful resolution of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict and open the door for renewal of the peace talks with Kurdish forces that were abruptly halted by Turkey in 2015, the letter stated.
The Norwegian campaign closely follows similar action by Italian institutions and leading figures, signatories to a letter penned by the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign Committee to the CPT, demanding Turkey be held to account for the torturous conditions in İmralı, including the absolute isolation of Öcalan.
Pressure has been mounting against the CPT to take concrete steps to end the inhuman isolation practices used in Turkish prisons, in particular with regard to the treatment of Öcalan.
The CPT conducted an inspection at İmrali in 2022 but failed to release a report on prison conditions and the welfare of Öcalan or the three other inmates on the island. It requires the permission of the state in question to release inspection reports, and in this respect the Turkish government has gagged the anti-torture commission, now widely accused of losing its credibility over this inaction which appears to endorse human rights violations in member states.
