Political prisoners in Turkey

Next Wednesday, October 11, marks the end of the arbitrary extension of the prison sentence of Kurdish activist Nevzat Öztürk in Turkey. “I hope my father will finally be released and that we will see each other again after 31 years,” Jiyan Öztürk, daughter of the political prisoner, told the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) today. “Now, I would like to thank everyone who signed the appeal to the Commissioner of the Federal Government for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid, Luise Amtsberg, asking her to advocate for my father to be released.”

“The PKK’s recent attack on the Turkish Ministry of the Interior and the subsequent mass arrests and air raids against the Kurds once again show that war, violence, and terror will not solve the Kurdish question, which has been awaiting a just solution for at least 100 years,” explained Dr. Kamal Diso, the STP’s Middle East Correspondent. “This will only lead to even more hatred, and political solutions will become even more difficult. However, instead of appealing to both sides accordingly, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg are completely on the side of the Turkish state – which has been trying to destroy the Kurdish language, culture, and identity since its founding. “Dialogue and political negotiations between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people in Turkey could also help to stabilize the situation in the Kurdish areas of neighboring countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Iran. “In the course such a process, it would be possible to let tens of thousands of political prisoners such as Nevzat Öztürk return to their families. Many of them have been locked up in Turkish prisons for more than 30 years,” Sido stated.

Nevzat Öztürk – a Kurd who already advocated for the rights of his oppressed people in Turkey as a young man – was arrested in 1992, at the age of 31. On the orders of the State Security Court, he was imprisoned in Istanbul, far from his homeland. After 14 days of mistreatment at a police station, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment based on charges of “destroying the unity and the integrity of Turkey”. He was supposed to be release in June of this year, but his sentence was extended by three months. The alleged reasons were that he had “not tried to save electricity” and that he had “not read enough books in the prison library”.

Nevzat Öztürk is married and has two children. His daughter Jian, who is living in Cologne today, was three years old at the time of his arrest, and his son was one year old. The Kurdish prisoner has a heart issue. He has been moved from one prison to another several times. Bans on visits and telephone calls are commonplace. His wife and his seriously ill son, who still live in Turkey, have to travel 1,300 kilometers to see him. Sometimes, they are sent away – and state arbitrariness prevails.