Abdullah Öcalan


Abdullah Öcalan, also known as Apo, is a Kurdish leftist political theoretician, political prisoner and one of the founding members of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Öcalan helped found the PKK in 1978, and led it into the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in 1984. His leadership style was often ruthless, and many of his opponents in the PKK were killed on his orders. For most of his leadership, he was based in Syria, which provided sanctuary to the PKK until the late 1990s.
After being forced to leave Syria, Öcalan was abducted in Nairobi in 1999 by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency and taken to Turkey, where he was sentenced to death under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code, which concerns the formation of armed organisations. The sentence was commuted to aggravated life imprisonment when Turkey abolished the death penalty. From 1999 until 2009, he was the sole prisoner on İmralı Island, in the Sea of Marmara.
Öcalan now argues that the period of armed warfare is past and a political solution to the Kurdish question should be developed. Öcalan's prison regime has oscillated between long periods of isolation during which he is allowed no contact with the outside world, and periods when he is permitted visits. In 2012, he was involved in negotiations with the Turkish government that led to the Kurdish–Turkish peace process.
From prison, Öcalan has published several books. Jineology, also known as the science of women, is a form of feminism advocated by Öcalan and subsequently a fundamental tenet of the Kurdistan Communities Union. Öcalan's philosophy of democratic confederalism is a strong influence on the political structures of Rojava, an autonomous polity formed in Syria in 2011.

Family

Öcalan was born in Ömerli, a village in Halfeti, Şanlıurfa Province in eastern Turkey. While some sources report his birthday as being 4 April 1948, no official birth records for him exist, and he himself claims not to know exactly when he was born, estimating the year to be 1946 or 1947. He is the oldest of seven children. According to some sources, Öcalan's grandmother was an ethnic Turk and his mother was also an ethnic Turk. The mother was rather dominant and called out his father to blame him for their dire economic situation. He later explained in an interview that it was in his childhood he learned to defend himself from injustice. According to Amikam Nachmani, lecturer at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Öcalan did not know Kurdish when he met him in 1991. Nachmani: "''He told me that he speaks Turkish, gives orders in Turkish, and thinks in Turkish."
As his sister Havva married a man from another village in arranged marriage, he felt regret. This event led Öcalan to his policies towards the liberation of women from the traditional suppressed female role. Öcalan's brother Osman became a PKK commander until he defected from the PKK with several others to establish the Patriotic and Democratic Party of Kurdistan. His other brother, Mehmet Öcalan, is a member of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party. Fatma Öcalan is the sister of Abdullah Öcalan and Dilek Öcalan, a former parliamentarian of the HDP is his niece. Ömer Öcalan, a current member of parliament for the HDP is his nephew.

Education and early political and revolutionary activity

He attended elementary school in a neighboring village, and developed the aim to serve in the Turkish army. He wanted to enter the military high school but failed in the admission exam. In 1966 he began to study at the vocational high school in Ankara, where he also met others with interests for an improvement of Kurdish rights. After graduating from a vocational high school in Ankara, Öcalan started working at the Diyarbakir Title Deeds Office. He was relocated one year later to Istanbul where he participated in the reunions of the Revolutionary Cultural Eastern Hearths. Later, he entered the Istanbul Law Faculty but after the first year transferred to Ankara University to study political science. His return to Ankara was facilitated by the state in order to divide a militant group, Dev-Genç, of which Öcalan at the time was a member. President Süleyman Demirel later regretted this decision, since the PKK was to become a much greater threat to the state than Dev-Genç. In 1972 he was detained due to a participation in a protest held against the killing of Mahir Çayan. For 7 months he was held at Mamak Prison. In November 1973 the Ankara Democratic Association of Higher Education, was founded and shortly after he was elected to join its board. In December 1974 ADYÖD was closed down.
In 1978, in the midst of the right- and left-wing conflicts which culminated in the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, Öcalan founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which launched a war against the Turkish government in order to set up an independent Kurdish state. In July 1979 he fled to Syria, where he remained until October 1998, when the Syrian government expelled him.

Kurdish–Turkish conflict

In 1984, the PKK initiated a campaign of armed conflict by attacking government forces in Turkey as well as civilians in order to create an independent Kurdish state. As a result, the United States, European Union, Syria, Australia, Turkey, and many other countries have included the PKK on their lists of terrorist organizations. In the early 1990s, interviews given to both Doğu Perinçek and Hasan Bildirici he mentioned his willingness to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict. In another given to Oral Çalışlar, he emphasized the difference between independence and separatism. He articulated the view that different nations were able to live in independence within the same state if they had equal rights. Then in 1993, upon request of Turkish president Turgut Özal, Öcalan met with Jalal Talabani for negotiations following which Öcalan declared a unilateral cease fire which had a duration from 20 March to 15 April. Later he prolonged it in order to enable negotiations with the Turkish government. Soon after Özal died on 17 April 1993, the initiative was halted by Turkey on the grounds that Turkey did not negotiate with terrorists. On 7 May 1996, in the midst of another unilateral cease-fire declared by the PKK, an attempt to assassinate him in a house in Damascus, was unsuccessful.

Capture and trial

Until 1998, Öcalan was based in Syria. On at least one occasion, in 1993, he was detained and held by Syria's General Intelligence Directorate but later released. As the situation deteriorated in Turkey, the Turkish government openly threatened Syria over its support for the PKK. As a result, the Syrian government forced Öcalan to leave the country but did not turn him over to the Turkish authorities. Öcalan went to Russia first and from there moved to various countries, including Italy and Greece. In 1998 the Turkish government requested the extradition of Öcalan from Italy. He was at that time defended by Britta Böhler, a high-profile German attorney who argued that the crimes he was accused of would have to be proven in court.
He was captured in Kenya on 15 February 1999, while being transferred from the Greek embassy to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, in an operation by the Turkish National Intelligence Organization reportedly with the help of the CIA. George Costoulas, the Greek consul who protected him, said that his own life was in danger after the operation.
Speaking to Can Dündar on NTV Turkey, the Deputy Undersecretary of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, Cevat Öneş, said that Öcalan impeded American aspirations of establishing a separate Kurdish state. The Americans transferred him to the Turkish authorities, who flew him back to Turkey for trial. His capture led thousands of Kurds to hold worldwide protests condemning the capture of Öcalan at Greek and Israeli embassies. Kurds living in Germany were threatened with deportation if they continued to hold demonstrations in support of Öcalan. The warning came after three Kurds were killed and 16 injured during the 1999 attack on the Israeli consulate in Berlin.
A state security court consisting of three military judges was convened on the island to try him. Öcalan was charged with treason and separatism and sentenced to death on 29 June 1999. He was also banned from holding public office for life. In 1999 the Turkish Parliament discussed a Repentance Bill which would commute Öcalans death sentence to a 20-year imprisonment and allow PKK militants to surrender with a limited amnesty, but it didn't pass due to resistance from the far-right around the Nationalist Movement Party. In January 2000 the Turkish government declared the death sentence was delayed until European Court of Human Rights EU reviewed the verdict. Upon the abolition of the death penalty in Turkey in August 2002, in October of that year, the security court commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. The Kurdish Human Rights Project may have aided this case's decision.
In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkey had violated articles 3, 5, and 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights by refusing to allow Öcalan to appeal his arrest and by sentencing him to death without a fair trial. Öcalan's request for a retrial was refused by Turkish courts.

Detention conditions

After his capture, Öcalan was held in solitary confinement as the only prisoner on İmralı island in the Sea of Marmara. Following the commutation of the death sentence to a life sentence in 2002, Öcalan remained imprisoned on İmralı, and was the sole inmate there. Although former prisoners at İmralı were transferred to other prisons, more than 1,000 Turkish military personnel were stationed on the island to guard him. In November 2009, Turkish authorities announced that other prisoners would be transferred to the İmralı island and that they were ending his solitary confinement by transferring several other prisoners to İmralı. They said that Öcalan would be allowed to see them for ten hours a week. The new prison was built after the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited the island and objected to the conditions in which he was being held. From 27 July 2011 until 2 May 2019 his lawyers have not been allowed to see Abdullah Öcalan. From July 2011 until December 2017 his lawyers filed more than 700 appeals for visits, but all were rejected.
There have been regular demonstrations held by the Kurdish community to raise awareness of the isolation of Öcalan. In October 2012 several hundred Kurdish political prisoners went on hunger strike for better detention conditions for Öcalan and the right to use the Kurdish language in education and jurisprudence. The hunger strike lasted 68 days until Öcalan demanded its end. Öcalan was banned from receiving visits almost two years from 6 October 2014 until 11 September 2016, when his brother Mehmet Öcalan visited him for Eid al-Adha. In 2014 the ECtHR ruled in that there was a violation of article 3 in regards of him being to only prisoner on İmarli island until 17 November 2009, as well as the impossibility to appeal his verdict. On 6 September 2018 visits from lawyers were banned for six months due to former punishments he received in the years 2005–2009, the fact that the lawyers made their conversations with Ocalan public, and the impression that Öcalan was leading the PKK through communications with his lawyers. He was again banned from receiving visits until 12 January 2019 when his brother was permitted to visit him a second time. His brother said his health was good. The ban on the visitation of his lawyers was lifted in April 2019, and Öcalan saw his lawyers on 2 May 2019.

Legal prosecution of sympathizers of Abdullah Öcalan

In 2008, the Justice Minister of Turkey, Mehmet Ali Şahin, said that between 2006 and 2007, 949 people were convicted and more than 7,000 people prosecuted for calling Öcalan "esteemed".

The Kurdish question

From armed struggle to a peaceful political solution

After his capture in 1999, Öcalan called for a halt in PKK attacks, and he has advocated a peaceful solution to the Kurdish conflict inside the borders of Turkey. Öcalan called for the foundation of a "Truth and Justice Commission" by Kurdish institutions in order to investigate war crimes committed by both the PKK and Turkish security forces. A similar structure began functioning in May 2006. In March 2005, Öcalan issued the Declaration of Democratic confederalism in Kurdistan calling for a border-free confederation between the Kurdish regions of Southeastern Turkey, Northeast Syria, Northern Iraq, and Northwestern Iran. In this zone, three bodies of law would be implemented: EU law, Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi/Iranian law and Kurdish law. This proposal was adopted by the PKK programme following the "Refoundation Congress" in April 2005.
Öcalan had his lawyer, Ibrahim Bilmez, release a statement on 28 September 2006 calling on the PKK to declare a ceasefire and seek peace with Turkey. Öcalan's statement said, "The PKK should not use weapons unless it is attacked with the aim of annihilation," and "it is very important to build a democratic union between Turks and Kurds. With this process, the way to democratic dialogue will be also opened".
On 31 May 2010, however, Öcalan said he was abandoning the ongoing dialogue with Turkey, as "this process is no longer meaningful or useful". Öcalan stated that Turkey had ignored his three protocols for negotiation: his terms of health and security, his release, and a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey. Though the Turkish government had received Öcalan's protocols, they were never released to the public. Öcalan said he would leave the top PKK commanders in charge of the conflict, but that this should not be misinterpreted as a call for the PKK to intensify its armed conflict with Turkey.
In 2013, Öcalan initiated new peace negotiations. On 21 March of that year, Öcalan declared a ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state. Öcalan's statement was read to hundreds of thousands of Kurds in Diyarbakir who had gathered to celebrate the Kurdish New Year. The statement said in part, "Let guns be silenced and politics dominate... a new door is being opened from the process of armed conflict to democratization and democratic politics. It's not the end. It's the start of a new era." Soon after Öcalan's declaration, the functional head of the PKK, Murat Karayılan responded by promising to implement a ceasefire, stating, "Everyone should know the PKK is as ready for peace as it is for war".

Political ideological shift

Since his incarceration, Öcalan has significantly changed his ideology through exposure to Western social theorists such as Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Abandoning his old Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism beliefs, Öcalan fashioned his ideal society called democratic confederalism, heavily inspired on Bookchin's libertarian socialist idea of communalism.
Democratic Confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city. All are welcome to partake in the communal councils, but political participation is not mandated. There is no private property, but rather "ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land, and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them to private enterprises". The economy is in the hands of the communal councils, and is thus 'neither collectivised nor privatised - it is common.' Feminism, ecology, and direct democracy are essential in democratic confederalism.
With his 2005 "Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan", Öcalan advocated for a Kurdish implementation of Bookchin's The Ecology of Freedom via municipal assemblies as a democratic confederation of Kurdish communities beyond the state borders of Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. Öcalan promoted a platform of shared values: environmentalism, self-defense, gender equality, and a pluralistic tolerance for religion, politics, and culture. While some of his followers questioned Öcalan's conversion from Marxism-Leninism to libertarian socialist and social ecology, the PKK adopted Öcalan's proposal and began to form assemblies.
In early 2004, Öcalan attempted to arrange a meeting with Murray Bookchin through Öcalan's lawyers, describing himself as Bookchin's "student" eager to adapt Bookchin's thought to Middle Eastern society. Bookchin was too ill to meet with Öcalan. In May 2004 Bookchin conveyed this message "My hope is that the Kurdish people will one day be able to establish a free, rational society that will allow their brilliance once again to flourish. They are fortunate indeed to have a leader of Mr. Öcalan's talents to guide them". When Bookchin died in 2006, the PKK hailed the American thinker as "one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century" and vowed to put his theories into practice.

Honorary citizenships

Several localities have awarded him with an honorary citizenship:

Publications

Öcalan is the author of more than 40 books, four of which were written in prison. Many of the notes taken from his weekly meetings with his lawyers have been edited and published.