Law office: PKK leader not able to communicate with outside world since April 2020

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Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan and other prisoners at the İmralı High-Security Type-F Prison have not been able to communicate with the outside world since a phone call with their families on April 27, 2020, their attorneys have said.

Holding a presser today (January 13) at their office in Taksim, İstanbul, attorneys from the Asrın Law Office gave information about the situation of Öcalan and the other prisoners, Hamili Yıldırım, Veysi Aktaş and Ömer Hayri Konar.

Throughout 2020, the prisoners were not allowed to meet or communicate with their families and attorneys in any way apart from the phone call in April, said İbrahim Bilmez.

Öcalan was able to meet his lawyers and family members for a limited period of time in 2019, around the same time when members of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited Turkey prisons, Bilmez said. The committee released a report about the visits last year.

Öcalan met his lawyers five times and family members three times in 2019, he said. On August 7 and 11, Öcalan met with his lawyers and family members for the last time, he added.

In 2020, the prisoners of İmralı were visited by their family members on March 3 and had a 20-minute phone conversation with them on April 27 and have not been able to communicate with the outside world since then.

Three applications for a meeting between the prisoners and their families were rejected until January 20, 2020, and other applications were not answered, Bilmez noted.

"None of the 96 applications for attorney visits were permitted in 2020. Sixty-eight of those applications were not responded to whereas 28 applications were not accepted on the grounds of court rulings," he said.

Öcalan has been serving an aggravated life sentence since June 1999.

In 2019, hundreds of prisoners, spearheaded by then-MP Leyla Güven, carried out a hunger strike for the lift of what they called the "isolation of Öcalan." Güven ended her 200-day strike after Öcalan was allowed to meet with his attorneys. (AS/VK)