BY ERDAL SAFAK
SABAH- Abdullah Ocalan’s brother Osman Ocalan has at last entered the spotlight. Interviews with him were recently published in two newspapers. In the interviews conducted in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, Ocalan and two former top PKK militants later declared as traitors to the group, Hidir Yalcin and Nizamettin Tas, expressed regret over their years and activities in the PKK. Ocalan said that the newly established Patriotic Democratic Party would take a liberal democratic line and stated clearly that they were going under the protection of Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq and the US. Nor are they hiding that their aim is acceptance by Turkey as a ‘political identity.’
On some Kurdish websites, Osman Ocalan apologizes to the victims of executions within the terrorist group and their families. There were reports about the executions of people wanting to break ties with the group. This discussion heated up with repeated disclosures. Especially the statements of two militants who were able to evade the executions caused deep shocks in Turkey’s southeast.
The first militant told of the executions of militants accused of betrayal due to their ‘emotional relations’ He said that seven people had been killed. The second witness, Harun Tak, was able to escape a massacre in an ‘education camp’ near the southeastern city of Mus and published an account called, ‘There are Always Some Who Can Escape a Massacre.’ He compared the camp with the Nazi concentration camps for Jews in World War II and said that only three out of the 50 members were able to escape it. The reason behind Osman Ocalan’s apologies is Tak’s story. ‘Harun Tak made me remember what we have lived through. I’m sorry, but his entire story is true,’ said Ocalan, adding that the three escapees owe their lives to the Turkish military.
Speak Ocalan, so that the youth in the southeast don’t throw away their lives. Maybe this way you can help to bring terrorism to an end.