Turkey’s main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is increasingly criticised for its failure to respond to the continued isolation of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan. Despite significant support from Kurdish voters in recent elections, the CHP has been accused of neglecting Öcalan’s extended solitary confinement, which has now endured for more than three years, as highlighted by poet and journalist Müslüm Yücel in a Yeni Yaşam article published on Sunday.
In a scathing critique, Yücel argues that the CHP’s failure to seek legal redress or even request a meeting with Öcalan signifies a shared responsibility for his isolation. The author highlights the historical context of ethnic and political discrimination in Turkey, suggesting that the CHP’s actions reflect a continuation of this legacy.
Yücel draws attention to the broader implications of this issue, linking it to the Turkish government’s longstanding policies towards Kurds and other minorities. He also questions the sincerity of CHP’s engagement with Kurdish voters, citing their indifferent approach to Kurdish political prisoners and the lack of a coherent prison policy.
The article calls for the CHP to adopt a more democratic and inclusive stance, emphasising the need for dialogue and understanding. “If Özgür Özel can request a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, why not with Öcalan?” Yücel asks, pointing out the inconsistency in CHP’s approach to political engagement.
Yücel concludes that addressing the isolation of Öcalan is crucial for Turkey’s political and social stability. He urges the CHP to take a proactive role in seeking justice and equality for all citizens, regardless of their ethnic or political background.
Below is the translation of part of Müslüm Yücel’s latest article for Yeni Yaşam Newspaper, published on Saturday:
Isolation, arrogance, and cold contact
The CHP last prepared a small, mediocre report on prisons in 2017. Political prisoners were almost non-existent in the report. CHP members do visit some Kurdish politicians and Gezi detainees, but there is no sincerity in it. In Turkish films, instead of a refrigerator or expensive glass being broken, a large Kurdish man is found and beaten. This is usually Yadigâr Ejder. He was stabbed to death on the street, a strong young man, a good theatre and cinema actor.
The CHP has no prison policy. Apart from Social Democratic Populist Party’s (SHP) Kurdish Report, there is still no work on the Kurdish issue. Until now, they have not made a statement about the hunger strike in prisons due to isolation, nor have any CHP MPs gone to the Ministry of Justice or a prison to listen to the detainees because of the hunger strike. Detainees are not meeting with their families or using their phone rights due to isolation. Their families outside are in despair; there is no sound, no news. Holidays have come and gone. During the holidays, CHP visited detainees close to them, but when it came to Kurds, they were filled with arrogance. This is overt discrimination. If a party discriminates among detainees, it is not just looking for Kurdish supporters or being pragmatic; it is also a case of power intoxication. Self-confidence and pride tell us this: they see what they are not entitled to as their right.
Everyone knows, the CHP was a marginal party; even Ecevit, who raised it, had broken away. It had hit rock bottom with Baykal’s tapes. It gained some strength with the Istanbul elections, but now, instead of making serious opposition, it has adopted a dual governance approach, leaving internal/external policy to the AKP as if it had taken over local administrations, thus becoming a partner in the benevolent state.
When Özgür Özel met with Erdoğan, a trustee was appointed to Hakkari, but the CHP did not even show a symbolic stance against the trustee. Neither Özel, nor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, who are seen as future presidential candidates, went to Hakkari; they did not go beyond press statements and declarations. What was expected from the CHP was to hold rallies and to organise concerts in stadiums with Kurdish, Turkish, Armenian, Greek, and Arab musicians in the municipalities they won.
Deniz, Mahir, İbrahim, Öcalan
I think the CHP does not understand the Kurds and socialists. They are not aware of the socialism that developed with the Kurds. They think we are in a play by Henrik Ibsen, where key events are moved offstage and reached only through hints rather than being dramatically staged. Isolation and the conditions of prisoners in jails are not issues to be hinted at. There is nothing to leave to the future with a promise to solve it “when I come to power.” In urgent situations, time is not past or future; time is now, and now is conquered through the present. Only in this way can words and the full presence of symbolic visits be captured.
By postponing and sidelining isolation, both the government and the opposition are instilling hopelessness. Hopelessness comes from false consciousness; it is, as Kierkegaard puts it, sometimes “noticed with hope,” but it is nothing if it does not turn into a common state of humanity. There is something beyond hope and hopelessness; Kurds and socialists together are subjected to the prison of oblivion; they even build some symbols by pretending to embrace our values. Deniz, Mahir, and İbrahim are our values; these three are declarations of comradeship: no one can imagine İbrahim without Ali Haydar, Deniz without Avni Gökoğlu, Battal Mehetoğlu, Mehmet Cantekin, or Mahir without Sabahattin Kurt. It is impossible to cut Öcalan out of this picture. I need to mention a book here. The Istanbul Municipality published a book titled “Turkey’s ’68: Streets Leading to Deniz.” This book does not mention Öcalan, nor the Dawn Declaration that embodied the spirit and protest of ’68 distributed by Öcalan; Doğan Fırtına, whom Öcalan took to the pharmacy to bandage his head after being injured while distributing the declaration, is not mentioned either. Nor are the heated discussions among the youths at that time, debating whether to go to Palestine or Southern Kurdistan. The Kurds are absent. Fırtına and his mother are a part of history: Leman Hanım, along with Didar Şensoy, was not only a pioneer of feminism but also of human rights. Kurds and socialists are even reluctant to mention the names of these women. An era cannot be expressed through the eulogies of fifth-rate poets and writers.
Today, the CHP may or may not agree with Öcalan’s ideas, and this applies to all people. I need to continue with a quote attributed to Voltaire, which has been on the lips of democrats for almost a century: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That is all.
The CHP should meet with Öcalan
The Kurds have the right to demand this from the CHP. If the CHP is the opposition, and in the presidential elections, the CHP received more votes from Şırnak than İzmir, and if the Kurds supported the CHP candidate in cities like Istanbul and İzmir, and if the CHP is doing nothing for Öcalan, who has been isolated for more than three years, then there is a problem. Isolation has no legal basis, and if the CHP is not seeking a legal solution, it means it shares in the isolation. They can go and meet with Öcalan themselves and express this as a demand. If Özgür Özel requests a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, why not with Öcalan? Özel is not meeting with Assad because he agrees with him, but because there is a problem, and he wants to address it as a party to the problem.
A person or a party with democratic standards seeks equality in everything and for everyone, whether it is a desire to create a space for oneself or to solve a problem. The result does not change; if the aim is equality and justice, and peace, the rest is detail.
What does it mean to have rights? In short, you will defend the rights of others; you will bring the rights of others into the realm of your own responsibilities.
Öcalan is a political prisoner with ideas; if the CHP is open to all views, Öcalan cannot be excluded. This will be beneficial for everyone. Even Erdoğan, who said “We put the resolution process in the fridge,” might find his hand strengthened, leading to a genuine thaw.
This is present in one of humanity’s first political books, Plato’s Politics: in democracies “where a large number of people have to go to the fields,” the Assembly should not convene “in the absence of those who have gone to the fields, even if the Agora is crowded.”
The CHP is lagging behind in defending thought: they are not aware that the key to the most talked-about issues, “Syrians and the economy,” is the Kurdish issue.
When the resolution process was on the verge of ending, Professor Daron Acemoğlu openly stated this: “The end of the resolution process would be a disaster for the political system and the economy,” he said. Acemoğlu said this on August 4, 2015. The process ended, and the economy worsened daily. The CHP approached Acemoğlu for a while, but it did not last. How could the “economy and Syrians issue” be explained any better than this?
The Syrian issue is not just about the Syrians coming to Turkey. It is also a Kurdish issue in Syria. A tragedy is being produced over the Syrians, thus obscuring the Kurdish issue. The Syrians are a tragedy, a state of humanity; the Kurdish issue and the current burning issue of isolation are issues of justice, equality, and freedom. Moreover, Öcalan has no personal vendetta; he is proposing a solution.
We should not fear tragedy either; the hero of John Webster’s *The Duchess of Malfi*, Basola, said in his thin, delicate voice: “Things that are bad begin to mend.” For Terry Eagleton, this meant that facing the bad could be redemptive. Wasn’t Walter Benjamin building his utopia on this? Neither the kingdom of God nor the victorious goals of history, utopia is in the ruins: frustrated hopes, trampled bodies, will one day, surely say something.
Isolation is a knot that justice has tied for the Kurds, and the only force that can untie this knot is politics and politicians. The rest is a separate matter, but during this period, Erdoğan has acted courageously; he explained the process in places like Kayseri and Yozgat and convinced his base. Today, the CHP has no strategy for a solution. It is still living with the concern of the Turkish Anthropology Magazine (1925): “To find the Turk!” As Nazan Maksudyan puts it, this can only be real “in the realm of fairy tales.”
Kurdish poet and journalist Müslüm Yücel was born in Urfa in 1969. He published his first poetry collection, ‘Kalbimizin Kuyusunda Kardeştir Yaralarımız’ (Our Wounds are Siblings in the Well of Our Hearts), in 1994, followed by “İpek Yolu” (Silk Road), “Ahuzin” and “Ölü Evi” (House of the Dead). Yücel began his career in journalism at the Yeni Ülke newspaper and later contributed to the Özgür Gündem, the Özgür Ülke and the Yeni Politika. He is also renowned for his research on topics such as the history of the Kurdish press, death and suicide among Kurds, and Kurdish imagery in literature and cinema. Follow him on Twitter.
