Lawyers submit request to visit Öcalan

Abdullah Öcalan's team of lawyers has again applied for a visit permit for their client, who is imprisoned on the prison island of Imrali.

The Turkish state's treatment of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan is seen as a yardstick for a solution to the Kurdish question. Just as the AKP/MHP government is currently focusing on war against the Kurds and their freedom movement in all four parts of Kurdistan, Öcalan's isolation is just as absolute.

Öcalan's lawyers Newroz Uysal, Faik Özgür Erol, Cengiz Yürekli and Mazlum Dinç from the Asrin Law Office have again applied for permission to visit the Imrali island prison tomorrow.

After 8 years of interruption, lawyers met with their clients on 2-22 May, 12-18 June ad 7 August 2019.

Öcalan's fellow prisoners Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş are also denied the right to legal assistance. Family members were last able to visit the Imrali prisoners on 3 March. For the first and only time so far, telephone conversations with them were also made possible on 27 April.

This practice was also the subject of criticism of the Imrali detention regime by the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). In a report published in August on the situation in the island prison in the Sea of Marmara, the Committee called for a "balance to be struck between security considerations and the basic human rights of the prisoners concerned" and called for a "sustainable system" of regular visits to Imrali by family members and lawyers. However, there is a decision against the prisoners on Imrali to restrict communication, which is renewed every six months - even during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Hunger strikes in prisons against the isolation

Abdullah Öcalan, who met government officials in İmralı Island to negotiate peace process during the period of 2013-2015, and three fellow prisoners on the island are not allowed to meet with their families, after the AKP government terminated the process.

Leyla Güven, Co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) initiated hunger strike in prison on November 7, 2019 which lasted 200 days and ended in the wake of the call of Kurdish People's Leader Öcalan through his lawyers who were eventually allowed to go to the island as the protest grew with further participation every day. Due to growing public concerns about Öcalan, who had only 5 meetings with his lawyers, his brother was allowed to visit him on March 3, 2020, and he was permitted to make a phone call on April 27 for the first time after 21 years in Imrali.

While Öcalan’s lawyers and his family were expected to meet him, the Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor's Office on September 23 banned the Kurdish leader to meet his lawyers for 6 months, in consequence of the "Road Map" he had prepared in addition to his defense sent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2009 with the perspective of a solution to the Kurdish problem.

This decision has been the final blow for PKK and PAJK detainees. As they had announced to the public before, the prisoners started a 5-day alternating hunger strike as of 27 November. The actions that started with the participation of many prisoners in different prisons were aken over by the second groups on December 2.

There is no clear information about the total number of prisoners who engage in hunger strike due to the restriction of lawyer and family meetings because of the epidemic.