“All the bans, on demonstrations, meetings [...] are nothing but the denial of basic democratic rights. Democratic meetings are denied, banned, and often at the request of the secret service, and this means nothing but the abolition of democratic rights.”

Turkey has detained PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan under total incommunicado isolation since March 2021 on the tiny island of Imralı, set in the Marmara Sea. The air is thick, humidity high, and doctors have noted the detrimental effects of the intense climatic range on his health. In an article published by Özgür Politika, physician and Kurdish academic Dersim Dağdeviren compares the environmental and political pressures experienced by Öcalan, to the wider, pressing need for climate action and international peace.

With so much talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity, this week’s review looks at what is meant by these terms. It illustrates them with examples from Turkey’s actions in Syria and Iraq, and discusses the limits of the international mechanisms set up to address them. It goes on to look at the constitutional crisis besetting Turkey, as the Court of Cassation challenges the Constitutional Court, and at the attempts by the new leader of the Republican People’s Party to woo Kurdish voters. It ends with the biggest crime against humanity – though not one recognised by the International Court - the systematic crushing of every attempt at progressive opposition to the status quo.

It would be difficult to argue that in a conflict, as in Gaza, which has killed approximately 4,000 Palestinians, of which 3,420 are civilians, that Israel is ‘distinguishing between civilians and combatants’. Or indeed that the Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, who directly said all infrastructure connected to the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) is ‘from now on… the legitimate target of our security forces’, is operating with respect for international law and conventions

Palestine is occupied, and so is Kurdistan. Yes, also the part of Kurdistan that is situated in Turkey. The Turkish army has violently suppressed the Kurds’ aspirations for self-determination for many decades, massacred the population in large numbers and implemented a policy of forced assimilation starting a century ago this month. That’s longer than Palestine has been occupied, actually...

Öcalan’s isolation is of course not a judicial matter but a political one. Turkey has once again reduced the Kurdish issue to a military problem instead of treating it as the human rights issue that it is. The isolation of Öcalan, who can and should play a crucial role in negotiations to end the Kurdish issue and with that het violence of the PKK, fits that Turkish approach.

Noted academic Michael Gunter reflects on his first meetings with Kurdish political leader Öcalan during the 1990s, and argues that the Kurdish political leader can still pay a role as a key interlocutor in a negotiated peace process - if he’s first released from solitary confinement.

Amed Dicle looks at the three key reasons why Abdullah Öcalan should be freed, pointing to his vital role in resolving conflict in the Middle East and beyond, and the unlawfulness of his absolute isolation on Turkey's prison island

Over the last fortnight, a limited but lethal insurgency has rocked Deir ez-Zor - part of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the last region to be liberated from ISIS. Now that the immediate danger has been contained, it is important to look at the combination of factors that allowed this to happen, from political miscalculation and mismanagement to economic pressures, and at the roles played by the Syrian regime and by the different powers that attempt to direct Syria’s future to their own advantage. This week’s review also looks at deadly political machinations in Kirkuk, the Kurdish parties from Iran, and solidarity from Sweden.

Did I know who *this woman* was?, one person asked me, adding a picture of an Instagram post of one of the players who paid tribute to Sabiha Gökçen. Of course I know who Sabiha Gökçen is: she is the adopted daughter of Turkey’s founding father Atatürk, who was the world’s first female combat pilot who – and this is what many Turks don’t know or refuse to acknowledge – bombed Kurds to smithereens and used chemical weapons to do that, for example during the Dersim massacres in the late 1930s.