Mazlum Dinç guardian of Abdullah Öcalan, said that the international forces, fearing the paradigm and solution power of the Kurdish people's leader, are in favour of the continuation of the isolation and added that the silence of the European Court of Human Rights and other institutions is related to this.

Mazlum Dinç spoke to ANF Arabic service and said that the severe torture and isolation regime in Imrali, in which the very same Turkish laws are violated, has been in effect since 1999, and added that even the most basic rights guaranteed were taken away and used as a means of blackmail and bargaining.

Dinç said that after July 2011, meetings with lawyers and families were prohibited for 11 years. He recalled that only at certain periods, when serious public reactions to the isolation emerged, a few exceptional family and lawyer meetings were granted. Dinç underlined that after the phone call made with his brother Mehmet Öcalan on 25 March 2021 and cut off after 4-5 minutes, no communication was made and no news was received.

International institutions are quiet

Dinç said that lawyers and family's requests for a visit had gone unanswered and they were prevented from communicating on the phone. In addition, communication was blocked and letters not delivered. "The fact that we have not heard from Abdullah Öcalan and the other three prisoners for 11 months is in violation of international law. He is incommunicado, which means in solitary confinement. His detention is seen as a violation of the prohibition of torture. Both the UN Human Rights Committee and the ECHR have jurisprudence by which even a few days of incommunicado detention is considered a violation of the prohibition of torture. Unfortunately, international institutions remain silent here and do not take a clear stance."

This is a political stance

Stating that their failure to take a clear stand against the Imrali torture system is a political stance, not a legal one, Dinç said that these organizations disregard their conventions and principles when it comes to Kurds or Abdullah Öcalan, and they see no harm in observing the political interests and stances of sovereign state-powers.

Dinç made the following example: “The ECHR can decide on a violation application from Turkey in two years, and if Turkey does not comply with this decision, the Committee of Ministers can initiate the violation procedure within two years. However, for 11 years, no decision has been made regarding the application we made to the ECHR in 2011 to end the conditions of Abdullah Öcalan's strict isolation, through which he was prevented from visiting lawyers and family. Again, although the ECHR's decision in 2014, which said that the aggravated life sentence for Abdullah Öcalan was a violation of the prohibition of torture, has not been fulfilled for 8 years, the Committee of Ministers did not take an active stance, and it has only just been put on its agenda thanks to the ongoing struggle.”

Against Abdullah Öcalan's paradigm

Dinç said that the failure of international organizations and European states to take a stance against the serious violations of rights against Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurds cannot be explained solely by Turkey's blackmail using the refugees against these forces, or with the economic and political concessions it made to these forces. Pointing out that Abdullah Öcalan has developed a paradigm that is based on the solution of the Kurdish question through democratic and peaceful means, eliminates the grounds of conflict in Turkey and the Middle East, and ensures that democracy and peace prevail, Dinç said: "They don’t take a stance against the denial and annihilation policies that ignore the rights of the Kurdish people and Abdullah Öcalan because they see it as unconstitutional, and in fact they became supporters of these crimes."

They fear Öcalan power

Dinç said that the conspirators sided with Turkey and added: "If the isolation ends and his thoughts reach society and he can play his role politically, Abdullah Öcalan will once again disrupt the plots of the conspiratorial states and make their policies ineffective. The conspiratorial states still maintain their old stance because they fear the influence and power of Abdullah Öcalan."

Dinç added: "Every time Turkey has adopted security policies on the Kurdish issue, the first step of this policy has been to aggravate the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan. This is the policy of the state that has been going on since 2015."