Yet another disciplinary penalty has been imposed on the Kurdish People’s Leader, Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned in the Turkish high-security prison on Imrali Island, Mezopotamya Agency (MA) reported on Saturday.

The Istanbul-based Asrin Law Office, which represents Öcalan and his three fellow prisoners, has recently applied for a visitation permit for family members. The Bursa Court of Execution responded by stating that on 16 October, a three-month disciplinary sanction had been ordered against Öcalan. No information was provided regarding the grounds for the sanction. The law office intends to appeal the order.

Abdullah Öcalan has been held incommunicado on the prison island of Imrali since his illegal abduction from Kenya to Turkey in 1999. The last contact with him was a visit by his nephew, Ömer Öcalan. The 37-year-old politician, who is a member of parliament for the DEM Party in the Turkish parliament, was able to talk to his uncle for about an hour and a half on 23 October and subsequently announced that he was in good health and sending his regards. Previously, due to the strict ban on contact, nothing was known about his condition. During the visit, Abdullah Öcalan told his nephew that he was theoretically and practically able to contribute to a political and legal solution to the Kurdish question if given the opportunity.

Öcalan's last contact with his lawyers was in August 2019. After an eight-year interruption, a hunger strike led by the imprisoned politician Leyla Güven had resulted in a total of five visits by lawyers. Since then, the isolation in Imrali Prison has been taken to the level of total incommunicado detention.

Öcalan's three fellow prisoners Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş, who were transferred to the island prison in 2015 as part of the dialogue process, are also affected by the isolation on Imrali. Arbitrarily imposed ‘disciplinary measures’ against the Imrali prisoners serve as the legal cover for the injustice on Imrali, including the prevention of visits by lawyers and families.

In most cases, disciplinary sanctions on Imrali are justified by the ‘Roadmap for Negotiations’ written by Öcalan in 2009, which was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as a defence – but also by the bizarre argument that Öcalan ‘walks up and down in the prison yard during official sports time’. This form of sanction is renewed every three months for applications for family visits and every six months for applications for lawyer visits. The Turkish judiciary has ordered this type of ‘punitive measure’ thirteen times since 2016, most recently last May. Contrary to European case law, repeated calls from the UN Human Rights Committee and a resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Turkish state is still not willing to end the isolation practised on Imrali.