The isolation imposed on Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) founder and leader Abdullah Öcalan violates the Turkish constitution and international laws, said Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP Habip Eksik on Wednesday, day 10 of the party’s daily vigil outside the Turkish parliament.

A group of HDP MPs marched from the Turkish National Assembly to the ministry, and have been holding a vigil outside the Turkish Ministry of Justice for 10 days to date.

MP for Iğdır province Habip Eksik said that the isolation on Öcalan was the greatest obstacle to a peaceful future for the peoples of Turkey and the Middle East.

“All Öcalan’s human and legal rights are being denied. He is not allowed to see his family or his lawyers, or anyone else […] The most important actor in a possible solution to the Kurdish question is Öcalan,” Eksik said.

The MP said that The path to the establishment of a life together, of democracy and equality, for all the peoples of Turkey and the Middle East, appeared possible when the Turkish state negotiated with Öcalan during peace process between 2013 and 2015.

Eksik and other HDP MPs called on the Turkish Justice Ministry to allow a meeting with Öcalan in İmralı Island Prison.

The PKK leader has been serving a life sentence in İmralı Prison on the northwestern Turkish island of the same name since 1999, and no word has been heard from him since a telephone call with his brother, abruptly curtailed, in March 2021. The last time his lawyers had contact with Öcalan was in 2019.