BY GUNERI CIVAOGLU
MILLIYET- Land Forces Commander Gen. Yasar Buyukanit this week warned that the number of PKK terrorists in Turkey equals the number at the time of PKK head Abdullah Ocalan’s 1999 capture. We could add information on Ocalan forming a new political party by ‘remote control’ and the PKK’s planned activities for this spring. Thus we can say that we’ve come to the end of the strategy of freezing PKK activities.
Firstly I would like to point to a fact: Ocalan has remote control over the PKK and politicians under his influence. But how can he do this? According to state officials I have spoken with, he is doing this through his lawyers, who regularly visit Ocalan in his prison on Imrali Island. He sends them his directions. He receives information from countries with forces in the region. I unfortunately witnessed confirmation of this by top-level officials. Turkey can’t prevent this communication. The meetings with Ocalan and his lawyers go beyond legal matters and into politics. Top officials say that they face European Union roadblocks when they try to prevent Ocalan’s remote control over the PKK. They also asked Ocalan’s lawyers body of lawyers to stop this practice which goes beyond their professional duties, but these efforts came to naught. Thus Ocalan is able to influence the PKK and the region as if he were in his office in Damascus or the Bakaa Valley. There’s no parallel to this sort of imprisonment. Turkey can’t explain its worries to the EU or the lawyers.
These facts are overshadowed by discussions of Ocalan’s comfort in Imrali. Discussions on Ocalan having ‘too much comfort’ in Imrali would make the arguments over Ocalan’s remote control implausible. Turkey shouldn’t be swept into the years when it lost 30,000 people in the struggle with the PKK. Everybody knows about the US’ help for Turkey capturing Ocalan. The US was on Turkey’s side in those days. Ocalan’s expressions of penitence and his promise to work for the unity of Turkey weren’t empty words. He first waited till the death penalty was ended and then a wind of change in US policies. The turning weathervane in Imrali is confirming the wind of change.