Free Republic

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and Turkey, penned an open letter in English rebuking President Trump's comparison of the group to ISIS amid a fight between Kurds and Turkish forces in northern Syria. The PKK said in Friday's letter that it “refused comparisons” to ISIS after Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday that the Kurds were “no angels” and that the PKK is likely “more of a terrorist threat” than ISIS. “We refuse comparisons being made between our movement and the inhumane thugs of ISIS,” the PKK’s...

Continuing to criminalize the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey and strengthening Turkish authoritarianism serves no one but President Erdogan and his neo-Ottoman, Islamist-nationalist agenda. On November 6, the U.S. unexpectedly announced a total of $12 million in reward payments for information on three senior members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – Murad Karayilan, Cemil Bayik and Duran Kalkan. These three have led the PKK’s decades-long rebel war against Turkey. For Ankara and Washington, the PKK is a terrorist group.But it’s not that simple. The PKK is fighting for Kurdish rights and freedoms in Turkey, which Turkey has long violently...

Ankara—Politics always involves a tension between laws and leadership, accountability and action. Emergencies occur, the ship of state needs to negotiate the storms of unexpected events; there is a need to act. For those who believe in the priority of rights as an ideal of politics, this can be a problem. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben mused on this in his State of Exception, arguing that sovereignty and constitutions are unstable partners, with the sovereign always longing to slip the constitutional net.

Human rights defender and lawyer Eren Keskin stated that there is no legal basis for the isolation imposed upon Öcalan and stressed that this needs to end immediately and visits need to be arranged.   Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan has been held in İmralı Type F High Security Prison since February 15, 1999. The Turkish judiciary system is trampling their own laws as well as universal norms in the treatment of Öcalan, while international judicial institutions are also silent. One of the institutions that has turned a blind eye to the ongoing unlawfulness has been the European Court...

Georg Restle Prominent German journalist, Georg Restle, on a programme aired on German state TV ARD compared imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asking, “Who is the real terrorist?”Commenting on a recent Kurdish demonstration in the German city Frankfurt on the Tagesthemen (topic of the day) programme Restle said:“The Turkish president [Erdogan] and his cronies are really angry that tens of thousands of Kurds living in Germany of which some carried posters of Abdullah Ocalan protested peacefully for their rights. The Federal German state is accusing these people of “supporting a terrorist organisation.”“One must ask this question”, Restle...

Abdullah Ocalan isn't exactly a household name in America. But he's more notorious even than Osama bin Laden in Turkey, where his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) waged a terrorist and guerrilla war that cost an estimated 37,000 lives. Last week, incredibly, the European Court of Human Rights ordered that he be given a new trial. For Americans, this verdict should serve as yet another warning about the dangers of joining permanent multilateral legal institutions such as the International Criminal Court. ICC backers claim that the court can be trusted to exercise its authority with prudence and discretion. But the Ocalan...

In the Qandil Mountains... Separatist Kurds want to use Turkey's rift with the United States over war in Iraq to win U.S. acceptance of their cause and add pressure for Kurdish cultural and political rights. The brother of captured rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan said U.S. anger over being denied use of Turkish territory for its assault on Iraq was a window of opportunity for Turkey's Kurds. Washington has so far backed Turkey in a guerrilla war waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK campaign for autonomy in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast has claimed over 30,000 lives since 1984,...

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday criticized Turkey for its handling of the trial of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. The court said the trial was unfair because a military judge was present for some of the hearings and because Ocalan was given only restricted access to his lawyers. The ruling means Turkey should in theory be obliged to try Ocalan again, but it is not binding. Turkey blames him for 30,000 deaths in a 16-year Kurdish separatist campaign by the Kurdish Workers Party for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey. Ocalan was given...

The state security court in Turkey has commuted the death sentence of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to life imprisonment. The semi-official Anatolia news agency said Ocalan - the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - would serve out his life in prison with no chance of parole or amnesty. The decision is a formality in line with Turkey's abolition of the death penalty in August to meet criteria for European Union entry. The abolition - except in times of conflict - was part of a comprehensive package of human rights laws rushed through parliament. Ocalan was arrested in...