The International Initiative “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan” released a statement on World Human Rights Day and called for support for their signature campaign to join the struggle for freedom, democracy and peace for the Kurds and all peoples of the Middle East.

The statement by the “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan” campaign reads as follows:

“Developments in recent decades have proven that without solving the Kurdish question many of the problems in Turkey and the Middle East cannot be solved. Abdullah Öcalan is not only a strong leader and a symbol of freedom for Kurds, he is also the only person who has proposed a comprehensive program to achieve democratization and peace in the region. Therefore, since Abdullah Öcalan was abducted and placed in İmralı Island Prison in 1999, the Kurdish people and their friends around the world struggle to end his isolation and imprisonment, while promoting a just and political solution to the Kurdish question.

The last mass protest that aimed to end the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan occurred in 2018/19, when Leyla Güven, an MP of HDP (Peoples’ Democracy Party) initiated a hunger strike. Over three thousand people in prison and all around the world joined this hunger strike, which lasted two hundred days, with eight people losing their lives. As part of the International Initiative, we issued the “Call for Ending the Isolation of Abdullah Öcalan and all Political Prisoners”, on 12 January 2019, to direct attention to the hunger strike and its demands. There was widespread support around the world, and, on 23 January 2019, fifty Nobel Prize laureates declared with a separate statement that they supported our call. As a result of the hunger strike, the isolation of Öcalan was temporarily lifted, allowing his lawyers to visit him five times.

However, despite the repeated promise of the Turkish authorities to no longer enforce arbitrary restrictions on Öcalan’s legal right to receive visits from his family and lawyers, in 2020, Öcalan was allowed only one visit and one telephone call. Kurdish people recognize the connection between the aggression they experience and Abdullah Öcalan’s aggravated isolation. Hence it came as no surprise to them that Öcalan’s isolation is accompanied by Turkey’s invasion of several cities in Kurdish-populated northern Syria, air strikes against the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq and mass arrests, extra judicial killings, and torture of Kurds in Turkey.

Despite being bound by the European Convention on Human Rights and thus the decisions of Council of Europe bodies, including the CPT, Turkey is unhindered in its continued use of İmralı Island Prison as a site of lawlessness. The longer Öcalan can be kept in isolation without Turkey receiving any sanctions from Europe, whose human rights criteria Turkey committed itself to meeting, the more Turkey feels that it can repress and attack Kurds without experiencing any repercussions.

In the message Öcalan delivered to his lawyers during their first visit after the hunger strike, he reiterated his call for social reconciliation and peace negotiations: “The creation of geographies based on ethnicity and a single nation is an inhuman fabrication of modernity that denies our roots and our origins,” he wrote. “A great responsibility falls on all of us to create an equal, free and democratic country of all peoples and cultures.”

Today, 10 December 2020, marks seventy-two years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. We have again not heard from Abdullah Öcalan, and today marks thirteen days since a new hunger strike began in prisons all over Turkey. We insist that Öcalan can and must play a central role in any effort to end the isolation of the Kurdish people and to create an environment where all people in Turkey and the greater Middle East can coexist peacefully.

Our demand for Öcalan’s freedom finds increasing support as he makes his way into different intellectual and political milieus and the practice in different locations through his books, translated into a number of languages. It is due to the resonance of his ideas in the hearts and minds of people that our latest appeal for Öcalan’s freedom was signed by a diversity of democrats, defenders of peace and activists from around the world.

We call on everyone to push this demand forward and to not let up until the regime at the İmralı Island Prison is brought down and our goals are achieved: Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan—Peace in Kurdistan.”

Signature Campaign

The Time Has Come: Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan

Between 2013 and 2015, a staggering 10.3 million people worldwide signed the following statement:

I support the demand “Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and the political prisoners in Turkey”. Öcalan’s freedom will mark a breakthrough for the democratization of Turkey and peace in Kurdistan.

In 2015, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ended several years of talks between the Turkish state, Abdullah Öcalan, and the PKK, he launched a new stage of aggressive and violent escalation in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. In recent months Erdoğan waged war not only against the Kurds but all the neighbours of Turkey including Libya, Cyprus, the border with Greece and Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh.

Meanwhile, the people of North and East Syria, inspired by Öcalan and his prison writings, have transformed their land into a major bastion of peaceful coexistence and democracy despite Turkey’s constant and ongoing military attacks.

Öcalan’s ongoing incarceration and the inhumane isolation to which he remains subjected, the massive repression inside the Kurdish regions of Turkey and the attacks on North and East Syria are all aspects of the same overall approach taken by the Turkish state: to attack the forces of democracy and especially the Kurds by all means possible.

Unfortunately, international institutions have refrained from providing an adequate response to this deteriorating situation and the Council of Europe along with the European Court for Human Rights and the Committee against Torture (CPT) have all failed to guarantee even the most basic human rights for Abdullah Öcalan on İmralı Island.

Abdullah Öcalan is the most important symbol of the struggle against the repression of freedom and democracy in Turkey and the wider Middle East. His firm stand for peaceful coexistence, his relentless efforts for a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state have proven to be effective. This makes his freedom ever more important for all peace-loving people.

This is why we say: The Time Has Come—Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan!

Please support us with your signature and join the struggle for freedom, democracy and peace for the Kurds and all peoples of the Middle East.

Carry this message to your local councils, assemblies, trade unions, community organizations, parties and persuade them to join the worldwide chorus of voices for Öcalan’s freedom.

Signatories by 10 December 2020 can be seen here.