Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned chief of a Kurdish guerrilla motion that has been waging a bloody insurgency towards the Turkish state for many years, has referred to as on his fighters to put down their arms and disband.
The uncommon message from Mr. Ocalan on Thursday raised the likelihood {that a} battle that has killed greater than 40,000 folks over 4 a long time might lastly finish.
Who’s Abdullah Ocalan?
Mr. Ocalan is the founder and chief of the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration, or P.Ok.Ok., which has been battling the Turkish state. He has been in a Turkish jail for 1 / 4 century.
The P.Ok.Ok. started as a secessionist group that sought to create an unbiased state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, however extra not too long ago it has stated it was looking for better rights for Kurds inside Turkey. Turkey, america and different nations classify Mr. Ocalan as a terrorist and the P.Ok.Ok. as terror group for its assaults which have killed Turkish safety forces and civilians.
However lots of Turkey’s Kurds view Mr. Ocalan as a potent image of the battle for Kurdish rights. And regardless of his imprisonment since Turkey convicted him in 1999 of main an armed terrorist group, he wields nice affect over the P.Ok.Ok. and its affiliated militias in Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Mr. Ocalan based the P.Ok.Ok. within the late Seventies with a gaggle of different rebels and largely ran the group from neighboring Syria because it launched assaults in southeastern Turkey and later in different main Turkish cities.
In 1998, Syria compelled him out and he traveled to Greece, Italy and Russia to hunt asylum earlier than Turkish intelligence brokers, with assist from the C.I.A., captured him inside a aircraft at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 15, 1999.
That very same 12 months, Turkey convicted him and sentenced him to demise. That sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey abolished the demise penalty as a part of its bid to affix the European Union.
What Does Mr. Ocalan Need?
In the beginning, the P.Ok.Ok. sought to create an unbiased Kurdish state and Mr. Ocalan stated that armed motion was essential to advance that trigger.
“We aren’t in favor of violence to unravel the issues,” he stated in 1988 in his first interview with Turkish journalists. However it was required, he stated, “to forestall our nationwide identification from being destroyed completely.”
After his seize in 1999, he was incarcerated on Imrali Island within the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul, the place he was the one prisoner for a few years. Behind bars, his views modified. His objective moved away from reaching an unbiased state, and he wrote that nation-states themselves violated folks’s rights.
As an alternative, he proposed a brand new ideology, “democratic confederalism,” which he described as borderless, community-based democracy that promotes ecological residing and gender equality. He additionally argued that Kurds might obtain their rights by way of what he thought of to be the right utility of democracy in Turkey.
His new views have been closely influenced by the American political thinker Murray Bookchin. The 2 males exchanged letters by way of Mr. Ocalan’s legal professionals earlier than Mr. Bookchin’s demise in 2006.
How Does Turkey See Mr. Ocalan?
For many Turks, Mr. Ocalan stays the nation’s most hated terrorist, accused of ordering lethal assaults and driving an insurgency that killed greater than 40,000 folks over 4 a long time. Turkish politicians and the information media often consult with him as a “child killer” or the “chief terrorist.”
Human rights teams criticized his isolation on Imrali Island. In 2009, 5 different prisoners have been despatched to the power, and Mr. Ocalan was allowed to fulfill them a couple of instances per week, in accordance with Turkish media stories.
However lately, Mr. Ocalan and the island’s different inmates weren’t allowed any guests, together with their legal professionals, or any telephone calls with members of the family.
Final October, a robust political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a surprising public call to Mr. Ocalan, requesting that he inform his fighters to put down their arms and finish the battle.
That led to restricted visits from family members and political allies of Mr. Ocalan to discover the potential for a brand new peace course of between Turkey and the P.Ok.Ok.
