Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned chief of a Kurdish guerrilla motion that has been waging a bloody insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state for many years, has known as on his fighters to put down their arms and disband.
The uncommon message from Mr. Ocalan on Thursday raised the chance {that a} battle that has killed greater than 40,000 individuals 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.Okay.Okay., which has been battling the Turkish state. He has been in a Turkish jail for 1 / 4 century.
The P.Okay.Okay. started as a secessionist group that sought to create an unbiased state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, however extra just lately it has mentioned it was looking for higher rights for Kurds inside Turkey. Turkey, america and different international locations classify Mr. Ocalan as a terrorist and the P.Okay.Okay. as terror group for its assaults which have killed Turkish safety forces and civilians.
However a lot of Turkey’s Kurds view Mr. Ocalan as a potent image of the wrestle 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.Okay.Okay. and its affiliated militias in Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Mr. Ocalan based the P.Okay.Okay. within the late Nineteen Seventies with a bunch 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 airplane at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 15, 1999.
That very same yr, Turkey convicted him and sentenced him to loss of life. That sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey abolished the loss of life penalty as a part of its bid to affix the European Union.
What Does Mr. Ocalan Need?
At first, the P.Okay.Okay. sought to create an unbiased Kurdish state and Mr. Ocalan mentioned that armed motion was essential to advance that trigger.
“We’re not in favor of violence to resolve the issues,” he mentioned in 1988 in his first interview with Turkish journalists. But it surely was required, he mentioned, “to forestall our nationwide id 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 purpose moved away from attaining an unbiased state, and he wrote that nation-states themselves violated individuals’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-about to be the right software of democracy in Turkey.
His new views had 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 loss of life 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 individuals over 4 a long time. Turkish politicians and the information media often discuss with him as a “child killer” or the “chief terrorist.”
Human rights teams criticized his isolation on Imrali Island. In 2009, 5 different prisoners had been despatched to the power, and Mr. Ocalan was allowed to satisfy them a number of occasions per week, in keeping with Turkish media reviews.
However in recent times, Mr. Ocalan and the island’s different inmates weren’t allowed any guests, together with their legal professionals, or any cellphone calls with relations.
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 kinfolk and political allies of Mr. Ocalan to discover the opportunity of a brand new peace course of between Turkey and the P.Okay.Okay.
