Çetin Arkaş, who had stayed with the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı and had been exiled to Silivri some time ago, sent in an article to newspaper Özgür Gündem and claimed Öcalan had received an unsigned threat letter.
Çetin Arkaş, who had stayed with the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı and had been exiled to Silivri some time ago, sent in an article to newspaper Özgür Gündem and claimed Öcalan had received an unsigned threat letter.
Çetin Arkaş is staying in Silivri Type L Prison Number 9 right now. His article, translated by ANF English service, mentions the following points:
"Galip Ensarioğlu and Abdulkadir Selvi speak regularly about İmralı. It’s not hard to see they have been briefed by some authority when you look at the speeches of these two. Ensarioğlu says the solution process is not over. What a “solution process”, with cities and districts torn down, racist discourse takes over, top levels of politics push the racist discourse and try to poison the whole society, murdered people are approaching 4 digit numbers, new arrests are made every day although the prisons are already full to the brim... Not a day goes by that the Medya Defense Zones aren’t attacked aerially. With the last process, this intensity has shifted over to Botan, Dersim and Amed as well. Legal politicians didn’t have the protections anyways, but with the lifting of immunities one is left to wonder when, or if, they will get arrested. How many of them will? When, and for how long? Sieges in destroyed cities continue while the embargo, threats, disbanding and smothering operations that have gone on for years in Rojava keep their pace as well.
In such a situation, some people naturally say: “We don’t know what’s happening in İmralı.” Some have good intentions and are voicing a genuine concern. Others, try to create this idea of “Maybe the state is still doing the talks, who knows, maybe something good will happen” to create a deliberate false expectation. As a prisoner who has stayed in İmralı for 9 months and 10 days, I can bear witness to this: Whatever is happening outside, what’s happening in İmralı isn’t different.
Ensarioğlu speaking at this particular moment in time took me to the last months of 2015. It was before we were torn from the island and exiled. You can find his statements in the archives. At a time when the public was asking “Is the solution process over? Are the Imralı talks still happening?”, Ensarioğlu had made a statement and said the regular talks between the Leadership and the state committee continued in the Island.
The general air of the statement was “No cause for alarm, everything is in order.” At that same time, the Leadership had received a letter from Berlin. Of course we don’t know if it was actually from Berlin, or the stamp was forged, those are details. The Leadership shared the content of the letter with us. Somebody calling themselves “psychic” wrote: “I have made predictions about two people before, and both of them came true. I have a prediction about you as well. You will die of natural causes in 2016. Without any interference by the state, it will be an absolutely natural death. Erdoğan was a good chance, you should have taken it.”
All of us, including the Leadership, was very clear on this letter that it was a threat. Of course, I should also let you know that this letter didn’t arrive in the island “accidentally”. The letters that were given to the Leadership have always been very limited. All of them were letters sent from prisons. So, when no letters from the outside were given to the Leadership, this letter from Berlin was. And by accident! That’s what they said when the Leadership asked the administration: “It was a mistake, we wouldn’t give you such letters normally.” People may bend over backwards trying to spin this answer by the administration, but for those who know the İmralı system, this is very clear: There is such a system in place there, that nothing just happens by accident. If something happens, it’s because they want it to happen. It’s not about the administration either. Everything happens through the decision center in the Imralı system.
Let’s go back to Ensarioğlu’s statement: He said “The talks continue in the Island, everything is in order.” And what was the reality in the Island right when he made this statement? A threat letter! Did Ensarioğlu make this statement deliberately and became a willing subject in a deliberate masking operation, or was he used? That can’t be known, but this is certain: While the Kurdish and democratic societies are calmed down by the false perception, dangerous attempts that need to raise alarm bells happen in the Island. Naturally, one thinks: “Where is Ensarioğlu at with all this? How much of a subject is he, or how much of a pawn?”
A. Selvi plays a similar role, or he is also used. He was one of the centers of the “The talks are still on” statements when I was in the Island. Even the HDP administrators bought into this at first, and had given statements that the talks were still on. But there were no talks. Until December 26 when we were torn from the Island, there had been just a couple of talks and those didn’t go further than just testing the waters. But Selvi and others like him wrote such articles and stories they based on the Leadership, with no actual connection to the truth. The Leadership said with anger in the face of all this: “All the stories in the pool media based on this are lies. In fact, the opposite is true. Everybody should know it’s like this.”
A. Selvi who was obviously briefed wrote about our removal from the island as it was whispered in his ear. Now they make Selvi talk again to say the Imralı talks are still on, and Ensarioğlu jumps in as a complimentary unit to declare “the solution process” isn’t over. Whenever these people speak like this, what naturally comes to our minds is the question, “What bad attempts are happening in the Island again?” We don’t know exactly, because we can’t get information, but looking at the outside, it’s not hard to deduce that the pressure in the Island has gone up as well. Because up to this day, the exact opposite turned out to be true whenever these people said anything. We have ample evidence from the past to make us worry when these people start talking like this.
Before I finish this letter, as a prisoner who stayed in İmralı and experienced the isolation there first hand, I would like to ask some questions for Veli Ağbaba from CHP who declared İmralı the most comfortable prison in Turkey. He is a member of the prisons commission, so he should know the answer to these. There are over 150.000 convicts and arrestees in Turkey’s prisons. Among all these prisoners, who is the only captive who haven’t been able to meet with his lawyers for years? Who is the only captive who has effectively been banned from seeing his family members for years? Who is the only captive who hasn’t been able to use his right to a phone call even once in years? Who is the only captive whose right to communication and correspondence, right to access to news, right to health services are restricted so much more radically from any other prisoner? Should I go on, Veli Ağbaba? You could fit bending the truth into being an honorable intellectual and democrat, just to hit AKP, what more can be said to you? But know this, you haven’t hit the AKP with this distortion. You became a cart in the train of the whispers in Ensarioğlu and Selvi’s ears. They hit the same place in a different way, so do you. Or, is it that when it comes to the free Kurd, you all say “We’re no different from each other, we are the Ottomans”? Then why all this noise and hassle? Could the same whisperer be organising these as well?”
