The Istanbul-based Asrın Law Office, which advocates Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow prisoners on Imrali Island, released a statement regarding the provisional decision made by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers during its meeting on human rights from September 15 to 17. The Committee, which had given Turkey one year to implement the “Right to Hope” in the case of Abdullah Öcalan, Hayati Kaytan, Emin Gurban, and Civan Boltan in its 2024 meeting, gave Turkey another deadline and requested information by the end of June 2026. The Committee referred to the Peace and Democratic Society Process and suggested making use of the “terror-free Turkey” initiative and the recently established “National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission”.
The statement by Asrın Law Office reads as follows:
“We consider it important that the decision taken by the Committee of Ministers recommends evaluating the draft laws previously prepared by political parties and submitted to the Turkish Grand National Assembly as a solution proposal. This is because, in the case of our client, Mr. Öcalan, the requirement of the ECtHR ruling, which defined his 27-year imprisonment under severe isolation conditions as “torture,” has not been fulfilled for 12 years. In light of this fact, addressing the existing legislative proposals in the Grand National Assembly appears to be the most practical and reasonable solution. The Committee’s emphasis on a maximum period of 25 years for the supervision of the enforcement of aggravated life imprisonment is also particularly important.
However, the Committee has once again given Turkey until June 2026, continuing to provide a basis for Turkey’s policy of dragging out the issue, which Turkey has been implementing since 2014. In this context, we would also like to note that Mr. Öcalan pointed to the Committee during his meeting with his lawyers on September 15, and stated that “if they are serious and sincere, they can play a role in the solution; if not, they will prefer to use delaying tactics.”
In its interim decision, the Committee referred to the ongoing process in Turkey, which gives us all hope, as a method, thereby acknowledging that Turkey is approaching the issue politically rather than legally. However, it has unfortunately failed to adopt an approach commensurate with this finding. We would like to reiterate that the right to hope is a structural problem in Turkish law and affects thousands of prisoners.
The Committee has attributed significance to the commission established at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey within the framework of the “peace and democratic society process.” The Committee’s decision has confirmed the necessity for the commission to act in accordance with its importance, to conduct its work on this basis, and to act with urgency. It should be noted that Mr. Öcalan stated that during our meeting that the process had reached the stage of legal resolution and that interim laws were needed. Similarly, the findings made by academics during the parliamentary commission meetings, particularly that legal and statutory guarantees were necessary for negative peace to transform into positive peace and that peace could only become permanent in this way, are important.
In light of these findings, it is clear that the first step should be to regulate the right to hope. Consequently, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey urgently placing the proposed legislation on the right to hope on its agenda and enacting it will resolve the structural problems in Turkey’s national legislation, as required by the interim decision of the Committee of Ministers. There is no doubt that such a resolution will also contribute to accelerating the process of peace and democratic society.”