İSTANBUL - Asrin Law Office say they consider the President's visit as an important opportunity for him to express his critical stance in face-to-face meetings regarding Imrali System of Isolation along with other violations in Turkey.

 

The Asrin Law Office which represents Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow prisoners on Imralı, released a statement on occasion of the ECtHR President Robert Spano’s visit to Turkey.

 

The statement published by Asrin Law Office includes the following:

 

“We received news that European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) President Mr. Robert Spano is visiting Turkey for different purposes. On this occasion. we see it as our duty to inform both the President and the public about a few basic issues.

 

We have been indicating for a long time that the Imrali System of Isolation is determinant in terms of the criminal code and the political system of Turkey, as it has been pointed out in detail by Mr. Abdullah Öcalan in his presentations in front of the ECHR. With respect to many topics, unlawful practices are first introduced in lmrali Island Prison, from where they gradually spread all across Turkey. There is no regard for any measures of either national or international law concerning many practices in 1mrali Prison, which is fundamentally characterized by lawlessness and arbitrariness.

 

Imralı Island Prison resembles a proto-Guantanamo institution and was founded with a special status within the scope of which the law and basic human rights principles are not valid. Imrali Island was also used for the trial of Mr. Öcalan and the trial was carried out in perfunctory manner in a short period of 4 months in order to impose a death sentence.

 

The ECtHR ruled that the right to a fair trial was violated in this formality trial. However, Turkey did not apply this decision and has not opted for a retrial of Mr. Öcalan. Following the proposal of the Turkish lawyers at the ECtHR at that time, the Turkish judiciary closed the file by rendering a formality verdict on the file. This situation was ignored and covered up by international law institutions, especially the ECtHR.

 

The ECtHR’s decision on the death penalty has led to a conversion of the sentence into an aggravated life sentence, which basically means letting the convict rot to death for the rest of his life. In 2014, the ECtHR ruled that the regime of aggravated life sentence, according to which imprisonment lasts until the convict's death, constituted a violation of the prohibition of torture. Although more than 6 years have passed since this decision, there has been no change in the Penal Execution Law to implement it. The passive attitude of the Court and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe regarding the implementation of the decision has enabled discriminatory approaches in the Turkish regime of criminal execution, which further aggravated the situation for political prisoners. While people who were convicted for their thoughts continued to be kept in prison even under pandemic conditions, those who had originally received heavy sentences for crimes committed against society were released.

 

Not only is our client Mr. Öcalan subjected to this regime of aggravated criminal execution, which is a system of torture, in violation of his right to a trial, but moreover was a practice of absolute isolation devised and has since then been implemented, which the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) describes as a "punishment within punishment." Mr. Öcalan was not allowed to meet with his lawyers for nearly eight years after 2011. Only in 2019 did it become possible for him to meet with his lawyers for only a few meetings after thousands of people had gone on a joint hunger strike, which resulted in several deaths. The legal application we made as lawyers in 2011 against the conditions of isolation that have prevailed in Imrali Prison has not been concluded by the ECtHR.

 

These practices, which could be explained by reference to many other issues, are not directed at a single person, Mr. Öcalan, or a single prison, but operate as a system targeting the political and social values represented by Mr. Öcalan. Unfortunately, Turkey is searching for loopholes in the context of international law and politics that will allow it to continue with these practices. These practices pursued by Turkey also hold the European Human Rights Law System responsible to which Turkey is subject by virtue of different conventions. Like Guantanamo, which is a "black hole" in terms of Universal Human Rights Law, Imrali, with its lawless and arbitrary character, is becoming a black hole for the European Legal System with each passing day. The European Convention on Human Rights and the ECtHR were established to control and prevent exactly these kinds of occurrences.

 

In this respect, we consider the President's visit as an important opportunity for him to express his critical stance in face-to-face meetings regarding Imrali System of Isolation along with other violations in Turkey. However, we would also like to remind that an opposite stance, regardless of the intention behind it, will further encourage the Government of Turkey to pursue practices contrary to human rights.”