DIYARBAKIR, Turkey – Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan has vowed to remain in his Turkish jail until there is a change in the country’s Kurdish issue, a top Kurdish politician said.
“I will not leave prison until the fact that brought me here is changed, and releasing me now will make no sense to me,” the co-leader of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Selahettin Demirtas, quoted Ocalan as saying in a message.
Ocalan, who has been jailed in Turkey’s Imrali island prison since 1999, began a peace process with Ankara in March last year, which has largely lagged due to foot-dragging by Turkish authorities.
“Even if they open the doors of Imrali prison to me I will not get out,” Ocalan said in his message.
Demirtas said that Ocalan would never ask Turkish authorities to free him.
“It has been 15 years since Abdullah Ocalan has been jailed for political reasons, not legal reasons,” Demirtas noted. “He wants to take steps to establish a civil constitution, and he will never ask the Turkish authorities to release him,” he added.
Demirtas also called for fewer restrictions on the 66-year-old Ocalan.
“There are changeable laws being implemented in Imrali. It has been three years that none of the lawyers of Abdullah Ocalan are allowed to meet with him, and I think there must be no such barrier, even for the politicians who want to see Abdullah Ocalan,“ Demirtas said.
The PKK, which fought a three-decade war in Turkey for greater rights for the country’s estimated 15 million Kurds, remains immensely popular with Kurds but is outlawed in Turkey and internationally.
