No news has been received for 43 months from Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been held in İmralı Island Prison under severe isolation conditions for more than 25 years. Abdullah Öcalan is being held under conditions of absolute incommunicado and torture, and his right to see his lawyers and family members is being usurped.

Abdullah Öcalan was last visited by his lawyers in 2019, while his last family visit was in 2020. In March 2021, a wave of international protests enabled a telephone conversation between Öcalan and his brother, but it was interrupted after a few minutes for unknown reasons. Since then, there has been no sign of life from Öcalan and his three fellow prisoners in İmralı Island Prison, Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş. Requests for visits from the Istanbul-based Asrın Law Office, which represents the four Imrali prisoners, have all been rejected by the Turkish judiciary, and requests for information remain unanswered. As a legal cover, extended disciplinary penalties are imposed in the prison system every six months. International initiatives to lift the isolation on Imrali are also ignored in Ankara.

Massimo D’Alema, who was the Prime Minister of Italy during the international conspiracy against Abdullah Öcalan in 1999, spoke to Erem Kansoy from Medya Haber TV. Massimo D’Alema stated that then US President Bill Clinton personally called him and asked him to extradite Öcalan to Turkey.

‘The US has always supported the Turkish government’

D’Alema said: ‘The situation in which it was impossible for us to resist was when US President Clinton called me and said, “You must give Öcalan to Turkey’. Yes, President Clinton said this to me, and we said ‘no’. Believe me, it is not easy to be allied with the US and say ‘no’ to them. It is absolutely not easy. When America said, ‘You have to do this’, there were many people in Italy, newspapers, political leaders, many people who said, ‘Yes, we have to fulfil the American demand’. The US, of course, has always supported the Turkish government. We are Italy, but we are an ally of the United States, we are part of NATO together with Turkey. It was not easy for us to resist the pressure and say ‘no’ to the United States.”

D’Alema argued that the ‘International Conference on a Democratic Solution to the Kurdish Question’, proposed by Öcalan when in Rome, had no grounds to be organised due to US support for Turkey.

‘Öcalan is committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict’

“Right, I know that Öcalan is committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict,” D’Alema said, “but on the other hand, the Turkish government was not ready to accept this process. And we should not forget that the Turkish government was supported by the United States. Whilst I appreciate Öcalan’s intentions and his idea, there was no ground for it in the given conjuncture.”

‘The inhuman treatment of Mr Öcalan is absolutely unacceptable’

Massimo D’Alema said that the isolation in İmralı is unacceptable both from a human rights and political point of view, “Of course, from our point of view, this inhuman treatment of Mr Öcalan is absolutely unacceptable. Because we respect human rights, including those of people in prison. It is also politically unacceptable. I would like to emphasise this important point that Öcalan can play a key role for a peaceful solution between the Kurdish people and the Turkish government.”

‘Erdoğan should immediately release Öcalan’

The former Italian prime minister also called for the immediate release of the Kurdish leader, saying: “Erdoğan should immediately release Öcalan in order to achieve a solution to the Kurdish question that includes Öcalan and respects the rights of the Kurdish people. I have never understood Turkey’s nationalist mentality. The Kurdish question cannot be solved in this way. iI can be solved by granting the Kurds their rights. This is my opinion both 25 years ago and today.”

The extended part of D’alema’s interview will be published on Thursday evening.

Background

On August 28, 1998, Öcalan declared a ceasefire and proposed a democratic solution to the Kurdish question in a live broadcast on MEDTV via a telephone connection. During the program, he also answered questions from 25 journalists representing international media organizations and Turkey’s mainstream news outlets. This program generated significant attention and received extensive coverage in the Turkish media. However, the PKK’s ceasefire, set to begin on International Peace Day on September 1, and Öcalan’s proposal for a peaceful resolution did not receive a favorable response.

Following this TV program, Turkey began pressuring Syria not to harbor Öcalan on its territory. On September 15, 1998, the Turkish Chief of the General Staff, General Atilla Ateş, appeared at the Syrian border with a crowd of flag-bearing citizens, wearing combat uniforms, rolling up his sleeves, and pointing towards Syria, stating, “Our patience is running out. We have no designs on anyone’s land, and no country will be allowed to have designs on our land. Our neighbor Syria must understand this very well.”

Subsequently, on October 1, President Demirel warned Syria, stating that their patience had run out. Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz and President Demirel made strong statements from the Syrian border in Hatay.

Thus, on October 9, 1998, the plane carrying Öcalan was compelled to depart Syria, where he had been residing for 19 years. His departure came at the request of the Syrian government, as Turkey amassed troops along its Syrian border, threatening its southern neighbor with an invasion of Damascus unless Öcalan was deported.

Once expelled from Syria on 9 October 1998, Abdullah Öcalan decided to make his way to Europe rather than to the PKK’s strongholds in the Kurdish mountains of Northern Iraq or North-Western Iran.

Abdullah Öcalan’s first destination was Greece, from where he immediately had to continue to Moscow. Neither of the countries were prepared to effectively grant him political asylum. On 13 November 1998, Abdullah Öcalan entered Italy, where he was allocated temporary accomodation in a Roman suburb until 17 January. The Italian authorities turned down a Turkish request for extradition on grounds that Mr. Öcalan would face the death penalty upon his return to Turkey. At the same time, the German Federal authorities decided to defer an arrest warrant against Abdullah Öcalan that had been issued in 1990 on grounds of a legally adventurous construct. The two countries’ prime ministers conferred on possible venues for an international conference on a political solution to the Kurdish question with European involvement.

Öcalan repeatedly made clear that he was prepared to stand trial before an international court himself under the sole condition that Turkey be tried, too. But his hopes and demands were not met. The Turkish government and media apparatus had unleashed an ever-mounting campaign of chauvinist outrage against Italy for harbouring Öcalan, “the baby killer and murderer of 30,000 people.” The campaign amounted to a boycott of Italian products and generated stark anti-Italian sentiments amongst the Turkish populace.

At the same time, and less parochially, the USA silently used diplomatic channels to dissuade European governments from supporting any political initiative for a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict. Germany’s move to defer the arrest warrant then turned out to be a green light for the Italian government’s final decision to pressure Abdullah Öcalan into leaving the country for an uncertain destination notwithstanding his outstanding asylum application. All European countries refused to grant him leave to enter. Via Moscow, Athens and Corfu the Kurdish leader was finally flown to the Greek Embassy at Nairobi, Kenya, in what became increasingly obvious as a deliberate consipracy to maneuvre him into a position where he could be handed over to the Turkish authorities as soon as safeguards of European law were effectively by-passed.

When Öcalan was finally forced off the premises of the Greek Embassy at Nairobi on 15 February 1999, the private plane of a Turkish businessman (who, most notably, was extradited from the USA to Turkey on serious charges of off-shore banking and tax crimes in summer 2001) had already been waiting on the tarmac of Nairobi airport for a couple of days.

In his application to the European Court of Human Rights, Mr. Öcalan gave an account of the last sequence of events surrounding his abduction:

“Black persons in a jeep kidnapped me by force. Staying in the embassy or going with them could have resulted in my being killed all the same. They drove the car right up to the door of the plane. Later, we entered a non-public area of the airport. My consciousness failed me. Most probably, they used some drugs on me. I can confirm that I was not in possession of my willpower at that stage. I can confirm that I felt numb.

As soon as I got on the plane, someone hurled on me. They were Turkish. All those standing around the plane were armed and from their appearance I think they were either US Americans or Israelis. No Turks were there until we got to the plane. Turks were only on the plane itself.”