Over 10.3 million signatures for freedom of Turkey’s jailed Kurdish leader Ocalan.

STRASBOURG,— 10,328,623 signatures have been collected as part of the worldwide campaign for freedom for Turkey’s imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The campaign which was initiated in the Belgium capital Brussels on September 6, 2012 and has been run across the world ended with a press conference in the French city Strasbourg today.

Speaking here, Freedom for Öcalan Peace in Kurdistan Initiative member Reimer Heider announced that 10, 328, 623 signatures have been collected in the campaign since September 2012.

The press conference is being attended by Prof. Dr. Norman Peach who is among the first signatories of the campaign, HDP MP Ertuğrul Kürkçü, KNK President Tahir Kemalizade, TJKE member Gönül Kaya, Freedom for Öcalan Platform spokesperson Hüseyin Koçuk.

The signatures will be submitted to the Council of Europe following the press conference.

Ocalan is the founder of the outlawed Turkey Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish southeast of Turkey (Turkey-Kurdistan). Ocalan had been forced from his long-time home in Syria by Turkish pressure in 1998, embarked on an odyssey through several European countries and ended up in the residence of the Greek ambassador in Nairobi. He was on his way from there to the airport on Feb 15, 1999 when he was arrested by Turkish agents and put on a plane to Turkey.

Following the arrest, violent protests by Kurds erupted all over Europe. Ocalan was put on trial on the heavily guarded prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life in prison, after Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002. Ocalan was the only prisoner for a decade until new prisoners arrived on November 2009, after the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) criticised Ankara for violating Ocalan’s human rights by keeping him in solitary confinement.  He is allowed only visits from close relatives and his lawyers.

Experts say Ocalan has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide, a lot of Kurds in Turkey openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

For Kurds, the 67-year-old represents their bitter struggle for greater cultural and political rights

Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state, but now limited its demands to to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy.

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