Ocalan, Figurehead of Kurdish Independence in Turkey, calls the Shots From Prison

The Second Career of Abdullah Ocalan

By ANDREW FINKEL

ISTANBUL — Over a decade ago, I was a witness to one of the most cathartic episodes in postwar Turkish history. This week I was a witness to one of the most puzzling.

In February 1999, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (also known as the P.K.K.), was abducted from a hideout in Kenya and returned to Turkey. By the end of May, he was sitting in a bullet-proof glass box in a purpose-built courthouse on Imrali Island, opposite Istanbul. He was on trial to answer for waging a ruthless guerrilla in the name of Kurdish independence, which is estimated to have cost more than 30,000 lives since 1984 [pdf].

After 15 years of conflict, with Ocalan finally in custody, popular frustration was uncorked.

I had a rare ticket to attend the court proceedings, eight hearings spread over a month. Along with a handful of other journalists, diplomats and relatives of soldiers killed in action, I would go through retina scans and security checks before boarding a predawn hydrofoil to Imrali. Ocalan’s lawyers and family took another craft.

For the mothers with photos of their sons in uniform, the news anchors and the hordes of demonstrators waiting for our daily return to the mainland, the trial was the occasion for an outpouring of bitterness. After 15 years of conflict, with Ocalan finally in custody, popular frustration was uncorked.

And yet my clearest memory was just how unaffected by the drama unfolding around him the principal actor seemed to be. Ocalan once motioned in court his condolences to a woman whose husband, a police officer, had been shot before her eyes at a roadblock in 1995. But he made no great declarations about the Kurdish cause.

His general attitude toward the prosecutors seemed to be “Been there, done that.” He behaved less like a prisoner in the dock than a politician plotting his next move. Forget about the past; it’s time to move on.

Back then, he presented a simple choice to the court and to Turkey: he, Mandela-like, would get his supporters to cooperate with the authorities to end the fighting. After all, he claimed, he alone could bring Turkey’s Kurdish conflict to an end. And if the government turned him down and, more so still, if he ever were executed — there would be “one hundred years of bloodshed.”

Turkish Kurds held a poster of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan during a gathering to celebrate Noruz, the Kurdish New Year in Istanbul in 2011.Mustafa Ozer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Turkish Kurds held a poster of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan during a gathering to celebrate Noruz, the Kurdish New Year in Istanbul in 2011.

Ocalan wasn’t executed. He was sentenced to death in 1999, but in keeping with its commitment the European Union as a candidate for membership, Turkey abolished capital punishment a few years later. So Ocalan is still in Imrali prison. And he is still a commanding figure outside it, even though the P.K.K., particularly its militant wing based in the mountains of northern Iraq, isn’t under his control.

Omerli, the village where he was born, is a place of pilgrimage; his birthday is celebrated there like a saint’s day. And his influence over Kurdish activists everywhere is still significant.

Over the course of this autumn, an estimated 1,700 Kurdish militants held in extended pretrial detention went on a hunger strike. Some of their supporters, including members of Parliament like Leyla Zana, joined in. The protesters were demanding the right to defend themselves in court in Kurdish (to this, the government says it is prepared to accede) and the right for their children to be educated in Kurdish (this, the government denies, apart from allowing a few elective courses in school).

They were also calling for Ocalan to be allowed to see his counsel: For the last 15 months Ocalan has been denied access to his lawyers on the pretext that the boat used to transport them to his island prison is in need of repair.

The government refused to negotiate — in public at least. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan toyed with the idea of restoring the death penalty. Meanwhile, even after the strike had been going on for over two months — for the fasters, a medical tipping point toward death or irreparable brain damage – P.K.K. leaders were still saying it wasn’t up to them to call off the protest.

And so on Nov. 11, the 67th day of the strike, it was Ocalan who, communicating from prison through his brother, said it should end. He may have intended this as a humanitarian gesture, but it was also a demonstration of power.

There have been clandestine talks between the Turkish government and the P.K.K. before, but they have been called off upon becoming public knowledge. Now that the strike is over, the Justice Ministry has announced that, if necessary, negotiations could resume. With them, so it would appear, also resumes the career of Abdullah Ocalan.

Andrew Finkel has been a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, as well as a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers. He is the author of the book “Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

via Ocalan, Figurehead of Kurdish Independence in Turkey, calls the Shots From Prison – NYTimes.com.