Abdullah Ocalan: biography

For someone, he is the banner of the struggle of the Kurds for independence. For others - a dangerous criminal and a terrorist. Who is this Abdullah Ocalan? The biography of the Kurdish political and military figure will be considered in this article. Let's just say: this person is ambiguous. Ocalan is an honorary citizen of Naples, Palermo, and other European cities. Many prominent European figures appeal to the government of Turkey with a request to release the political prisoner. Last year the Socialist Party of Ukraine awarded Abdullah Ocalan with the medal "Peace and Democracy". At the same time, this political leader of Kurdistan has been sentenced to life imprisonment since 1999 and is now serving his sentence on the island of Imrali, which is located in the Sea of Marmara. How and for what have condemned Abdullah Ocalan - read below.

Youth, education, the beginning of political activity

The hero of our article was born on April 4, 1949 in a simple peasant family. His small homeland is the Turkish village of Omerli, which is in the province of Shanlıurfa, inhabited by Kurds. As a child, he showed a great propensity for science, he studied well at school. His parents sent him to study at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Ankara. There he gnawed granite science from 1971 to 1974. As a student, Abdullah Ocalan was imbued with leftist, socialist ideas. And only a little later these views were nationally patriotic. Ocalan deliberately dropped out of university. In 1974, he organized around him a group of young people, who four years later became political force under the name of "Workers' Party of Kurdistan". Its goal was to create an independent national state. Recall that the Kurds live not only in the southeast of Turkey, but also in the west of Iran, northern Iraq and Syria. This nation does not yet have its own statehood.

The military figure

Shortly before the military coup in Turkey (1980), Ocalan went to exile in Syria. There he organized partisan detachments, which from 1984 began real military operations against the army of Turkey. The slogan of this armed struggle was the independence of Kurdistan. Turkey has long pursued a policy of assimilation of national minorities. And against the genocide of the Kurds as a people raised the flag of struggle Abdullah Ocalan. The party he headed was aimed at the federalization of Turkey and the creation of autonomy. Ocalan denied that he was conducting separatist work aimed at dismembering the country. The party also had a social program. Earlier the PKK stood on Marxist positions. Later, Ocalan revised his views on communist ideas. He is convinced that social justice can not be achieved by using totalitarian methods. In fact, the PKK is close in its views to the left-of-center, social-democratic parties.

Refugee

Since all military operations were conducted in Turkey, the Syrian government allowed Ojalan to live on his territory. Over eighteen years - from 1980 to 1998, the political leader and military leader lived in Damascus. However, the government of Hafez Assad, after all, was bent under pressure from Ankara. The Syrian President asked Abdullah Ocalan to leave the country. Abdullah Ocalan came to Russia. In this regard, on November 4, 1998, the State Duma of the Russian Federation passed a majority decision to appeal to President Boris Yeltsin and ask him to grant political refugee status to the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party. However, this request was not answered. Ocalan moved to Italy and asked for asylum there. But, confronted with the European bureaucracy, he moved to Greece, and from there - to Kenya.

The Abduction

Abdullah Ocalan thought to wait in this African country for his political asylum in Italy, which progressed very slowly. As a result, the refusal of the migration authorities was appealed by the lawyer of the Kurdish leader in court. But the Turkish secret services acted faster than the European bureaucracy. When the Civil Court of Rome on 4 October 1999 granted the application for refugee status to Abdullah Ocalan, he was already captured in Nairobi and awaited the sentence in prison. Turkish special services organized the kidnapping of the leader of the Kurds with the help of the Israeli. They captured Ocalan on February 15, 1999. At the pre-trial stage, he was kept in the most impregnable prison of Turkey on the island of Imrali, fearing his release by supporters. The trial began on May 31 of the same year. Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced to death, but under the pressure of the world community, she was replaced by her life imprisonment.

The political leader of our time

But even behind the bars, Ocalan did not lose his charisma and influence. Throughout the world, the progressive public was in favor of a fair trial of the leader of the Turkish Kurds. But the process resembled, rather, a farce. The accused was not even allowed to communicate with his lawyers. But times are changing, and the new government, although it has not revised the case of Ocalan, still did much to mitigate the conditions of his detention. So, in 2009, five more members of the PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan) were transferred to the island . Thus, the national leader no longer sits in solitary confinement. The new challenges of our time have forced President of Turkey Erdogan to go on a dialogue with Ocalan. Since 2013, negotiations are under way to settle the conflict between the government of the country and the Kurdish partisans peacefully. A common enemy, IGIL, forced the avid enemies to quit their conflicts.

Works

Abdullah Ocalan is the author of many sociological works and books on the topic of Kurdish statehood. Among his famous works there are books on colonialism, imperialism, socialism and the problems of the revolution. They are still being reprinted. One of the most popular still remains the work "Personality in Kurdistan. Features of political life and revolutionary struggle ".