The Kurdish militia group, the PKK, had decided to disband and lay down its arms, after decades of launching attacks against Turkey and bombing civilian areas.
The move came after the PKK’s ageing jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, called in February for the group to end its campaign. From his prison cell, Ocalan sent a message to his followers: ‘I am making a call for the laying down of arms… The PKK must dissolve itself.’
Ocalan wondered if Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams might be able to help? ‘I know he is a friend of ours,’ he said.
The Marxist-inspired PKK, which has long been branded a terrorist organisation by Turkey as well as the UK, the US and other western countries, responded to his call today, announcing that it had ‘carried the Kurdish issue to a level where it can be solved by democratic politics.’
The announcement will boost the prestige of Turkey’s President Erdogan, who can now boast that he achieved what his predecessors failed to do – the end of the PKK’s violent ‘armed struggle’.
For me, the announcement has brought back memories of my own encounter with the group’s leader in a Rome ‘safe house’ more than a quarter century ago.
I was one of the last journalists to interview Ocalan before he was captured by Turkish special forces in Kenya back in February 1999. Since then he has been imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul.
For many years Ocalan, revered by his followers, had resided in Damascus from where he masterminded a bloody campaign for a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. He was something of a Scarlet Pimpernel figure, always remaining beyond the reach of Turkish forces who wanted dearly to kill or capture him.
But, under pressure from Turkey, the Assad regime in October 1998 gave him a one-way air ticket out of Syria. After a brief sojourn in Russia, he landed in Rome where, in January 1999, he agreed through intermediaries to give me an interview. I met him in a house in a Rome suburb, where he was closely guarded by jumpy Italian security agents toting sub-machine guns.
The man I found was charming, courteous and not without a sense of humour, although I was also conscious that Turkey’s most wanted fugitive was accused of waging a brutal 14-year campaign that had resulted in 30,000 deaths.
At the time, Ocalan denied claims the PKK was on the run. ‘If those claims were true, they [Turkish forces] would not have pursued me so much. They would not have more than 300,000 soldiers in military operations, they would not have gone to occupy northern Iraq.’ But he admitted that Turkish military helicopters were a major threat to the PKK and said that they were responsible for 90 per cent of the casualties among his forces.
We sat on opposite sides of a sofa in a small sitting room dominated by a huge TV set, and he seemed eager to present himself as a moderate – strongly denying the widespread claim that the PKK was funded largely from the drugs trade. He also urged the West to intervene to get a peace deal.
While Ocalan insisted he was not worried about his future, he admitted that no country seemed willing to take him in. ‘I am like a ball of fire, and everybody is wishing not to have this fireball,’ he said with a grin.
Despite his easy charm, I felt that he was, indeed, nervous about what lay ahead.
He asked me if Ireland could give him refuge. After all, Ireland was not a member of Nato. He wondered if Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams might be able to help? ‘I know he is a friend of ours,’ he said.
As I departed, he shook my hand and said: ‘We hope to meet in better days’. He chose a chocolate from a bowl on the table and popped it into his mouth.
There were not to be better days for Ocalan. Just days after our interview, he was off on his mysterious travels again. After landing in Nairobi, he was grabbed by jubilant Turkish security agents. Trussed up like a chicken and his eyes bound with tape, he was hustled onto a private jet bound for Turkey. Put on trial, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Now, the bloody campaign that he once masterminded has finally come to an end. Maybe the 76-year-old captive held at Imrali prison on an island in the Sea of Marmara is hoping that peace will now at least be part of his legacy.
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