Abdullah Öcalan
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Abdullah 'Apo' Öcalan (born April 4, 1948), is the leader of the Kurdish terrorist group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Biography
Abdullah 'Apo' Öcalan was born in 1948 in Ömerli, a village in Halfeti, Şanlıurfa Province, in the southeast of Turkey. After leaving his village after secondary school he studied Political Sciences at the University of Ankara but dropped out and entered the civil service in Diyarbakir.[Who is Abdullah Ocalan?] By Beat WitschiInfluenced by the situation of the Kurdish people, Abdullah Öcalan became an active member of the Democratic Cultural Associations of the East, an association promoting the rights of the Kurdish people#redirect . In 1978, two years before the military coup in 1980, the Kurdistan Workers Party was founded with Abdullah Öcalan as its leader. He currently retains this post.
In 1984 the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) initiated a campaign of armed resistance comprising of military attacks against government forces and civilians [The Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK)] Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Turkey [Letter to Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema] Human Rights Watch, November 21, 1998 [Turkey: No security without human rights] Amnesty International, October 1996 [Special Report: Terrorism in Turkey] Ulkumen Rodophu, Jeffrey Arnold and Gurkan Ersoy, February 6, 2004 in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey in order to create an independent Kurdish state. Approximately 30,000 people were killed by PKK as a result of these attacks between 1984 and 2003. After 2003 PKK (aka Kadek) still maintains their attacks in Turkey. Various ceasefire attempts between the PKK and the Turkish government have failed thus far.#redirect
PKK has been labelled a terrorist organisation by several states and international organizations such as Turkey[PKK & TERRORISM: A Report on the PKK and Terrorism], the United States[Foreign Terrorist Organizations] U.S. Department of State, March 27, 2002 , the European Union, Syria [Turco-Syrian Treaty] Adana, October 20, 1998 , Canada[[Citing sources citation needed]], Iran[[Citing sources citation needed]] and Australia.
Capture and Trial
Until 1998 Syria was harboring the leader of PKK. As the situation got worse in Turkey, the Turkish government openly threatened Syria over its support for the PKK. As a result of this, the Syrian government forced Öcalan to move out of the country instead of handing him to the Turkish authorities.
Öcalan went to Russia first and from there he moved to various countries, including Italy and Greece. In 1998 while in Italy the Turkish government requested the extradition of Öcalan. He was at that time counselled by the high-profile German attorney, Britta Böhler. The Netherlands based attorney argued that he fought a legitimate struggle against the oppression of his people. He was eventually captured in Kenya on February 15, 1999, while being transferred from the Greek embassy to the Nairobi international airport, in a joint operation between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)#redirect and the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT). He was then flown back to Turkey for trial. His capture led thousands of protesting Kurds to seize Greek embassies around the world. [Kurds seize embassies, wage violent protests across Europe] CNN.com, February 17, 1999
Öcalan has been held under solitary confinement on the İmralı Island in the Turkish Sea of Marmara since his capture. Though initially sentenced to death ([see verdict]), this sentence was commuted to life-long aggravated imprisonment when the death penalty was conditionally abolished in Turkey in August 2002.
Current Situation
Since his arrest, Öcalan had been campaigning for a peaceful solution [REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE KURDISH QUESTION IN TURKEY] by the international delegation of human rights lawyers, January 1997 [Interview with Abdullah Ocalan "Our First Priority Is Diplomacy"] Middle East Insight magazine, January 1999 [Kurdistan Turkey: Abdullah Ocalan, The End of a Myth?] The Middle East magazine, February 2000 [Abdullah Öcalan proposes 7-point peace plan] Kurdistan Informatie Centrum Nederland [Turkey, Europe and the Kurds after the capture of Abdullah Öcalan] Martin van Bruinessen, 1999 to the Kurdish conflict inside the borders of Turkey. Öcalan had also called for the foundation of a "Truth and Justice Commission" by Kurdish institutions in order to investigate "war crimes" committed by PKK and Turkish security forces. A parallel structure began functioning in May 2006.[Öldürülen imam ve 10 korucunun itibarı iade edildi] ANF News Agency, May 30, 2006 In March 2005, Abdullah Öcalan, has released the Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan[Demokratik Konfederalizm] and in this document he asks for a border free confederation between the Kurdish regions of Turkey (called "Northwest Kurdistan" by PKK [PKK Program (1995)] Kurdish Library, January 24, 1995), Syria ("Small part of South Kurdistan"), Iraq ("South Kurdistan"), and Iran ("East Kurdistan"). In this zone, three bodies of law would be implemented: EU law, Turkish/Syrian/Iraqi/Iranian law and Kurdish law. This perspective was included in PKK programme following the "Refoundation Congress" in April 2005. [PKK Yeniden İnşa Bildirgesi] PKK website, April 20, 2005
Since his incarceration, Abdullah Öcalan has significantly changed his ideological line, reading Western social theorists like Murray Bookchin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel [Tarihli Görüşme Notları] PWD-Kurdistan, March 16, 2005, fashioned his ideal society as "Democratic-Ecological Society" (later renamed as "Democratic-Ecological-Gender Liberationist Society" as it is in the current programme of PKK) and refers to Friedrich Nietzsche as "a prophet".[Öcalan: Diyarbakır olayları boşanmanın ilanıdır] ANF News Agency, May 20, 2006 He also wrote books [http://www.abdullah-ocalan.com/aihm] and articles [denge-mezopotamya.com/besataybet/news_detail.asp?newsid=-769564977&pg=1] on the history of pre-capitalist Mesopotamia and Abrahamic religions.
See also
- PJAK, Iranian Kurdish resistance group inspired by philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan
References
External links
- [Abdullah Öcalan] Homepage dedicated to Abdullah Öcalan, including some of his works in English
- [International Initiative: Freedom for Öcalan - Peace in Kurdistan]
- [Who is Abdullah Ocalan?] Article by Michael Radu
- [Left-Wing Monster: Abdullah Ocalan] FrontPageMagazine.com article, January 6, 2006
- [Ocalan Apologizes] Turkish Press Review, June 1, 1999
- [BBC NEWS Special report: The Ocalan file] November 26, 1999
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