Throughout his imprisonment, Abdullah Öcalan has been represented by Asrın Law Office in Istanbul, which also acts for the other prisoners on İmralı. They regularly apply to visit Öcalan, and, at present, are as regularly refused. They currently submit around 100 visit requests a year, while his family submit a further 50. In recent years these have simply been ignored. Lawyer visits are currently subject to 6-month bans whose basis is never given, and which are renewed as soon as they expire. Family visits are prevented by 3-month disciplinary penalties imposed for specious reasons, such as ‘pacing during sports activities’. Lawyers are given no opportunity to question these, which are similarly renewed as soon as they expire.
The lawyers challenge these illegal conditions up through the Turkish legal system to the Constitutional Court, which then stalls on processing them or declares them inadmissible. Every legal malpractice exercised by the judicial system gives rise to further complaints and legal cases. Complaints have also been filed to the Union of Turkish Bar Associations and the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors – all without result.
As well as representing Öcalan in the major cases in the European Court of Human Rights, Öcalan’s lawyers inform, and put pressure on, all institutions that might be able to help.
They come to Strasbourg for the quarterly meetings of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where they meet with representatives from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and from the Committee of Ministers (which is charged with implementing the European Court’s Decisions). They also meet with the international politicians who come for the Assembly, and inform them of Öcalan’s situation, of which many are otherwise unaware.
As the only people freely able to visit Öcalan, the CPT have a special importance. The lawyers send them frequent reports on Öcalan’s situation, and try to persuade them to make further visits to İmralı and to be more active in pressing Turkey to act on their past recommendations. You can read Asrın Law Office’s most recent report here.
The conditions in İmralı island prison fall foul of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) in a great many ways.In 2022 Öcalan’s lawyers appealed to the United Nations, calling for action from the Commissioner for Human Rights, the Rapporteur and Sub-Committee on Torture, and the Urgent Action Unit. In response the UN informed Turkey’s Minister of Justice that the prisoners must be allowed unrestricted access to lawyers of their choice. The UN made their call in September 2022, and again – when Turkey failed to respond – in January 2023, but Turkey remains unmoved. In July 2024 the United Nations Committee Against Torture held an enquiry that looked at the situation in Turkey. The resulting report especially highlighted their concerns about İmralı and recommended that Turkey “consider abolishing the penalty of aggravated life imprisonment and immediately facilitate contact between prisoners held in İmralı Prison and their families and legal representatives.”
Lawyers from Asrın Law Office regularly take part in conferences and public meetings, including at the European Parliament and at the Council of Europe. And they help recruit lawyers from around the world to speak up on Öcalan’s behalf and put pressure of both the Turkish authorities and international organisations such as the CPT. In June 2022, they organised a letter signed by 775 lawyers from 29 different Bar Associations in Turkey who said they would act for Öcalan and demanded to see their client. This was followed by a similar letter from 350 lawyers from other countries – especially from Europe – and another from 756 lawyers in Syria and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
In 2011, 42 lawyers working for Öcalan were arrested and accused of transmitting messages to a terrorist organisation. They spent 2½ years remanded in custody before being released at the time of the peace talks.
In February 2024 we made this interview with one of Ocalan’s lawyers, Ibrahim Bilmez, when he was in Strasbourg.
Faik Özgür Erol, the lawyer who was part of the delegation that visited Öcalan on 27 February 2025, was interviewed about the visit by Firat News