The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) MPs Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan travelled to Imrali Prison Island to meet with Abdullah Öcalan earlier today after the Turkish Ministry of Justice granted the requested visit permit.

While the delegation returned from İmralı, DEM Party made the following statement: “Our delegation consisting of Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder held a meeting with Mr Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı today. This meeting has ended and our delegation has returned. Our delegation will share information and evaluations about the content of this meeting with the press and the public in the following hours.”

Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan were members of the İmralı Delegation during the talks between the Turkish state and Abdullah Öcalan between 2013 and 2015. On 28 February 2015, the ‘Dolmabahçe Consensus’ was declared in Istanbul. The agreement was a ten-point plan negotiated between Abdullah Öcalan and the Turkish state to resolve the Kurdish question. The peace process was terminated shortly afterwards by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, has been held incommunicado on the prison island of Imrali since his illegal abduction from Kenya to Turkey in 1999. The last contact with him was a visit from his nephew, Ömer Öcalan, on 23 October.

Background

Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan, Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş are kept under severe isolation conditions in Imralı F Type High Security Prison in the Sea of Marmara.

The right of Abdullah Öcalan and fellow prisoners in Imralı to meet with their families and lawyers is being denied by the authorities, citing "disciplinary penalties". The reasons and file numbers of these disciplinary penalties are not shared with their lawyers despite all applications and objections.

From 27 July 2011 to date, only 5 lawyer visits were allowed between May and August 2019. The last meeting of lawyers with the Kurdish leader took place on 7 August 2019. During the last lawyer meeting 5 years ago, Öcalan stated that he could end the war completely within a week in the face of the possibility of conflict in Serekanîye and Gire Spî, saying that, otherwise, deep social wounds would be opened and the economy would not be able to bear this situation. However, his call for a solution and dialogue was left unanswered. After the meeting with Abdullah Öcalan 5 years ago, the ban on lawyer visits started to be implemented.

The last 6-month ban on lawyer visits to Öcalan and fellow prisoners in İmralı was issued by Bursa Execution Judgeship on 6 November. With this ban, the Kurdish leader has been banned from seeing his lawyer for 6 months at least 14 times in the last 8 years.

Öcalan’s last face-to-face meeting with his family took place on 3 March 2020 and his last telephone conversation on 25 March 2021.

After four years, the Kurdish leader met face to face with his nephew Ömer Öcalan on 23 October 2024. During the meeting, he stated that the isolation continued and that he would be able to move the conflict from the level of violence to a political and legal level if the necessary conditions were in place.

The meeting took place amid discussions on possible talks with Öcalan. MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) Leader Devlet Bahçeli shook hands with the DEM Party group at the opening of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) on 1 October, starting discussions about a possible resolution process with the Kurds. In his speech at the party's group meeting in mid-October, Bahçeli further called on Abdullah Öcalan in İmralı Prison to “unilaterally declare the end of terrorism and the liquidation of his organization”.

On 12 December, Asrin Law Office made a new application to the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) requesting “an urgent (ad-hoc) visit to İmralı Prison in the face of the reality that the current conditions in İmralı have continued in uncertainty since your last visit on 22 September 2022 and have gradually hardened, and that the conditions have reached a new level in a period of more than 2 years.”