Abdullah Öcalan case and human rights violations in Turkey

Our client Abdullah Öcalan has been held in Imralı island prison since 1999 until this day, for 17 whole years, as a result of the international conspiracy. The 17 year long island isolation has been a history of unprecedented prison practices, with hindered lawyer and family visits, disallowed communication rights like telephone calls and letters and restricted right to information like reading newspapers and watching television.

For instance, we as Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers have not been able to meet with our client since July 27, 2011. The meeting requests we file each week are continuously being refused with laughable and immoral excuses like “adverse weather conditions”, “ship malfunction” and “the captain is sick”. The main purpose of these solely political isolation practices is to deepen the deadlock of the Kurdish question with turning even Mr. Öcalan’s most fundamental human rights into a matter of negotiation, and to dictate a one-sided understanding of solution where a solution cannot outright be thwarted. In this sense, Mr. Abdullah Öcalan is not a prisoner held by the laws of Turkey, but a captive. The conditions of his imprisonment is in the form of captivity.

The essential source that brings forth these harsh conditions is the handing over of Mr. Abdullah Öcalan to Turkey against national and international law in February of the year 1999. State officials from countries like the USA, Israel, Italy, Greece, Russia and Kenya are
liable in the Öcalan conspiracy in which many international asylum and refuge laws including the conventions of Dublin and Geneva were trampled on. In our client’s words, “to smear ‘the good and the beautiful’ people who only have their people’s rightful cause and passions related to that cause in their hearts, while the real conspiracists and the treachery hide themselves; would be betraying our hopes as well as a betrayal to historical facts.”

As such, we as Mr. Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers have brought the case before Greece’s first degree administrative court to expose this piracy law and to lessen, at least to some extent, the effects of the ongoing suffering of our client, and in his person the Kurdish people. The charges that we pressed before Greece’s first degree administrative court and that constitute the subject of this gathering were put forth with this fundamental aim in mind. The main result we wish to achieve with this lawsuit, which will have its first hearing on November 9, 2015, is that the conspiracy be brought to light with all its details and a historical wrong be, at least partially, righted.

In this light, we would like to declare that our client Abdullah Öcalan is the leader of all oppressed peoples, not just the Kurdish people. He is the leader of communities in the iron grasp of capitalism and suffering all sorts of oppression. His approach to and esteem for the Greek people is also in this regard. The co-conspirators are the representatives of the global capitalist hegemony and their regional partners the nation states. Mr. Öcalan is a leader who makes the distinction between peoples and states and positions himself on the peoples’ side, even in his darkest hour. So, we, as a requirement of his emancipatory stance, would like to declare that we will, considering the economic crisis our friends the Greek people are facing, donate any material compensation we receive from this case to public benefit organisation TO XAMOGELO TOY PAIDIOU (The Smile of The Child) We would like this act to be known not simply as a gesture, but as a natural duty of Mr. Öcalan’s and the Kurdish people’s long running friendship with the peoples of Greece. And we would once more like to stress that the co-conspirators are states and their sovereignity law, not the peoples.

Our client Mr. Öcalan has also stated in his defense presented before Meikto Orkwto Dikasthrio (The Court) in 2003 that his “Athens initiative is not a threat against friendship and peace, on the contrary, it will play the role of one of the most historical steps of a true friendship and peace.”

We hope and wish that Athens first degree court will consider plaintiff Mr. Abdullah Öcalan’s appeal within this framework. The court’s affirmative decision to bring the conspiracy to light and regarding the suffering of our client will befit Athens democracy and its honorable soul that has been a cradle of world history with the democratic culture and administrations it has created.