Abdullah Olalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan World Militant ‘Party (PKK), is an icon for many Kurds but a “terrorist” for many within the broader Turkish society.
After an insurgency of decades against the Turkish state that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, the PKK said Monday that it was dissolving and ending its armed struggle.
The measure occurred after Ocalan issued a historic call on February 27 so that their combatants left their arms in an important step to finish the conflict of decades.
Now 76 years, Ocalan has been in solitary confinement since 1999 in Imrali Prison Island, near Istanbul.
But since October, when Türkiye moved tentatively to restore ties with the PKK, Ocalan has visited several times by legislators of the Dem party of the pro-kurda opposition.
For many Turks, the PKK leader is the number one public enemy.
He found the group founded in 1978. Six years later, it was an insurgency that demanded independence and then a broader autonomy in Southeast Kurdish in Türkiye.
A Marxist inspiration group, the PKK was on the blacklist as a “terrorist” organization by Ankara, Washington, Brussels and many other Western countries.
– An olive branch –
The attitudes were changing in October when the leader of ultra-nationalist MHP Devlet Bahceli, a nearby ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sacrificed Olive’s branch if he publicly renounced violence.
The next day, the former guerrillas, who embodies the Kurdish rebellion of decades, recovered his first family visit in four years.
He sent a message that said that he is only could change the Kurdish question “of a scenario of conflict and violence to one of the laws and policies”, then offering guarantees that he was “ready to … make the call.”
Ankara’s movement occurred shortly before the Syrian rebels overthrow the ruler Bashar al-Assad, raising the regional balance of power and pushing the complex relationship of Türkiye with the Kurds in the Center for Care.
– From people’s life to militancy –
Ocalan was born on April 4, 1949, one of the six brothers in a Turkish-Kurda mixed peasant family in Omli, a town in southeast Turkey.
His mother tongue is Turkish.
He became a left activist while studying politics at the University in Ankara and was imprisoned for the first time in 1972.
He established the PKK six years later, then spent a year in the race, launching the armed struggle of the movement in 1984.
When taking refuge in Syria, they led the fight from there, causing friction between Damascus and Ankara.
He forced in 1998, he moved from Russia to Italy to Greece in search of a port, ending at the Greek consulate in Kenya, where US agents dressed or their presence and went out to Türkiye.
He was arrested on February 15, 1999, after being attracted to a vehicle in a Hollywood -style operation by Turkish security forces.
Sentenced to death, the escape of the gallows when Turkey began to abolish capital punishment in 2002, living the rest of his days isolated on the island of Imrali prison in Marmara’s sea near Istanbul.
For many Kurds, he is a hero that they refer to as “Apo” (uncle). But Turkish or call it “Beberk Katili” (Baby murderer) for ruthless tactics that include the bombardment of civil objectives.
– imprisoned but still leading –
With Ocalan’s trial, Ankara thought he had decapitated the PKK.
But even from his cell he continued leading, ordering a high fire that lasted from 1999 to 2004.
In 2005, the followers ordered that they renounce the idea of an independent Kurdish state and a campaign for autonomy in their respective countries.
The tentative movements to solve the “Kurdish problem” of Türkiye begged in 2008 and several years later, Ocalan was involved in the first unofficial peace conversations, when Erdogan was prime minister.
Directed at that time, the Chief of Spy Hakan Fidan, who is now a Minister of Foreign Affairs, the conversations increased the Kurdish hopes of a solution with his future within the borders of Türkiye.
But the effort collapsed in July 2015, causing one of the most mortal chapters of the conflict.
The Government has defended its de facto silencing from Ocalan, saying that it could not convince the PKK of the need for peace.
Seen as the largest stateless people in the world, Kurds ran out of a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I.
Althegh, most live in Türkiye, where they constitute a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also Syria, Iraq and Iran.
The use of Türkiye’s combat drones has pushed most of the Kurdish fighters north of Syria and Iria, where Ankara has continued its raids.
