Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow prisoners in İmralı have been subject to a new 6-month ban on lawyer visits. Öcalan was last banned from seeing his lawyers for 6 months on 31 October 2023.
Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is kept under absolute isolation in İmralı F Type High Security Closed Prison, has not been heard from since his interrupted phone call with his brother Mehmet Öcalan on 25 March 2021. Öcalan was last banned from seeing his lawyers for 6 months on 31 October 2023.
Two days ago, it came out that Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow prisoners in İmralı, Ömer Hayri Konar, Veysi Aktaş and Hamili Yıldırım, were given a new 6-month ban on lawyer visits. The lawyers learned about the ban after they filed an application to judicial authorities with a request for a meeting with their clients in İmralı.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in Raqqa to protest the ban on lawyer and family visits to Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan.
People gathered in front of the Children's Hospital and marched with posters of Abdullah Öcalan and banners reading "The physical freedom of Leader Abdullah Öcalan is the freedom of oppressed peoples".
During the march, demonstrators chanted the slogan "Be Serok Jiyan Nabe" [No Life Without the Leader] was chanted, calling for the "physical freedom of Leader Abdullah Öcalan".
The march ended at the Free Women's Square. Speaking here, Raqqa Canton Executive Council Co-Chair Meşleb Tirkan pointed to the "Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, Solution to the Kurdish Question" campaign launched globally in October 2013 and noted that many activities are carried out in the region within the scope of this move, which has moved to the second stage.
Tirkan said, "The penalties given on disciplinary grounds are against domestic law. The violence and isolation against the leader has gone beyond the limit. For 4 years we have not received the slightest news from leader Abdullah Öcalan."
Kînana Ebdo, from Reqa Zenûbiya Women's Community Assembly, emphasised that the conspiratorial forces are trying to prevent the democratic nation project in the Middle East.
Kînana Ebdo said, "The conspiratorial forces aim to prevent the ideas of Leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has become a world symbol for creating peace, freedom and a common life, through isolation."
Ebdo stated that without the physical freedom of Abdullah Öcalan, the Middle East question cannot be resolved, stressing that Abdullah Öcalan is the key to a solution.
The march ended with slogans saluting Abdullah Öcalan's resistance in İmralı.
