The Asrın Law Firm on Monday said it has been three years since it was able to contact Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as three other clients held in the prison on İmralı Island, the Bianet news website reported.
The law firm said all their administrative and judicial requests for contact have been denied since Öcalan’s phone call with his brother was interrupted on March 25, 2021.
Öcalan has also been prevented from exchanging letters and phone calls, according to the statement.
“Whatever the circumstances, prisoners must have access to a minimum of communication with the outside world,” the group said, referring to the Nelson Mandela Rules on detention.
“We have no information on our client’s access to his rights, protected under domestic and international law, including the right to healthcare.”
The statement highlighted a September 2022 UN Human Rights Committee decision calling on Turkish authorities to lift Öcalan’s incommunicado detention.
The group also criticized the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) for its failure to publish the findings of a 2022 visit it carried out to the İmralı prison and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for its failure to conclude an application about the prison conditions on İmralı for 13 years.
Located in the Sea of Marmara, the island prison of İmralı has been where the founding leader of the PKK has spent the last 25 years. He is serving an aggravated life sentence handed down on charges of treason and separatism.
Since the 1980s the PKK has been leading an insurgency that has claimed the lives of some 40,000 people in Turkey. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community.
In 2013 the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) launched peace talks with the armed group, but the truce collapsed in mid-2015 and the violent conflict resumed.
