Between Barghouti and Ocalan, releasing prisoners for hostages -opinion

On October 21, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas who is based in Qatar, received a very special phone call. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was on the line. The Turkish leader had expressed his solidarity with Gaza and outlined the Turkish efforts to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza and achieve a ceasefire in the region as soon as possible.

Haniyeh, for his part, explained the reasons that had “forced Hamas to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” i.e. the massacre of over 1,200 Israelis in Southern Israel and 3,000 rockets launched from Gaza on October 7: occupation, escalation in Jerusalem, and the “oppressive campaign against the Palestinian prisoners.” 

Soon Erdogan was openly calling for a deal – a ceasefire, and an exchange of “all Palestinian prisoners” in return for the kidnapped Israelis. Among “all Palestinian prisoners” there are arch-terrorists of Hamas, PIJ, Fatah, and other Palestinian organizations that were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis.

Exchanging hostages for prisoners

In fact, Erdogan has a soft spot for Palestinian prisoners: In 2011, he agreed to host 11 of them in Turkey, following the Gilad Schalit deal.

In 2012, Haniyeh delivered to him a letter from Palestinian prisoners who were pleading with Erdogan to help them.

In 2018, Erdogan personally phoned Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian youth who served jail time for attacking an Israeli soldier and became a symbol for Palestinians and their supporters. 

Today, if the “all for all” prisoners and hostages deal were to be concluded, it would mean that, inter alia, Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader labeled in some circles as a “Palestinian Mandela,” who is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for terror activity, will be freed.

Meanwhile, while Erdogan enthusiastically calls on Israel to release all Palestinian prisoners, there are over 38,000 Kurdish prisoners held in Turkish jails, according to Kamal Sido who heads the Society for Threatened Peoples in Germany. These prisoners, as well as many other inmates, have reported inhumane treatment, torture, and cases of suicide as a result.

Many are held in prisons without trial. Among them are a number of top political figures, such as Selahattin Demirtas, a former chair of the People’s Democratic Party, and his co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, both of whom have been imprisoned since 2016 after being accused of “undermining the unity and territorial integrity of the State” (separatism) and even “murder.” Human Rights Watch has called for their immediate release. 

But what happened to the most famous Kurdish prisoner in Turkey, the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, is even more outrageous. Since his kidnap in Kenya in 1999, Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement in Imrali F Type High-Security Closed Prison.

This single-person island prison was built specifically for Ocalan in February 1999 and overrides domestic and international law. The prison’s operation is based on a special status and through special practices.

The last contact with him was in a truncated phone call with his brother Mehmet Ocalan on 25 March 2021.

While Ocalan led a military insurgency against Turkey during the 80s and 90s (his men and women were also trained in DFLP camps), in 2013 he conveyed a message through deputies with a historical appeal – he substantiated the need for a transition from armed struggle to political struggle. 

Millions of Kurds around the world and many experts on the Kurdish issue, such as Cambridge University political sociologist Dr. Thomas Jeffrey, believe that Ocalan is a key figure for peace in the Middle East. They believe he has immense potential to bring about a democratic solution to the Kurdish problem in Turkey and to help resolve the deepening political chaos in the region and the wider world.

Ocalan’s solution of a new democratic co-existence is not based on rival nation-states – instead, Democratic Confederalism offers a viable alternative to the current war. One example of this is the implementation of his vision which led to the birth of the Rojava solution, an area in which co-existence among the diverse ancient peoples of the region is now possible.

While Turkey’s president viciously attacks Israel and proudly embraces murderous Hamas and calls it a “liberation organization,” it’s astonishing to listen to Ocalan’s interview with a Greek TV station that was recorded during the 90s in which he said the following about Hamas: “I’m against bombing civilian populations, it is against my approach to war to bomb the innocent civilians. Also, Hamas’s political aims harm the Palestinians.” 

He also said this about Turkey: “The biggest supporter of Turkey in the US is the Jewish lobby. They should not support it. I’m not against the Jewish people, they survived so many massacres. We are being massacred too; the Jewish people know what it means to be massacred. Supporting Turkey despite that is absolutely not in their interests and one day they will get just the opposite of what they expect.” 

Today, when world leaders discuss a possible deal between Israel and Hamas that might lead to the release of the hostages in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners, they should also keep in mind Kurdish political prisoners in Turkey and their leader Abdullah Ocalan, who will soon mark 25 years in his one-man island-prison. 

The writer is a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and ex-member of Knesset, where she led a caucus for strengthening relations between Israel and the Kurdish nation.