ISTANBUL,— Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) is considering the possibility of house arrest for Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), after the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently handed down a ruling that paves the way for that option for Ocalan, the Sözcü daily has claimed.

Saygı Oztürk, Ankara bureau chief of Sözcü, wrote in his column on Friday that the ECtHR recently reviewed an appeal previously made by Ocalan in which Ocalan asked the court to make a ruling that urges Turkey to grant prisoners serving life sentences the opportunity to benefit from house arrest.

Oztürk asserted that the ECtHR reviewed Ocalan’s request and made a decision urging Turkey to amend the law governing house arrest for convicts serving life sentences and in line with the ECtHR’s ruling. Some senior figures within the AK Party considering a plan that will grant house arrest to Ocalan, Oztürk argued.

Ocalan was sentenced to death in 1999, but his punishment was reduced to a life sentence when Turkey abolished the death penalty. Since then 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.

The column argued that if the Turkish government defies the ruling, Ocalan may renew his appeal to the ECtHR

In the article titled “The Plan to Save Ocalan,” Oztürk went on to write: “In its ruling, the ECtHR emphasized that the death penalty is a type of cruel and unusual punishment. Also, a life sentence [as in the case of Ocalan] is inhumane and humiliating if those convicts are not given the opportunity for house arrest under certain circumstances. The court also considers Ocalan’s current conditions a violation of international law.”

“After the ECtHR’s ruling, prominent AK Party figures have started to seek a solution to address the issue,” Oztürk concluded.

In April 2014, Ocalan has made demands to be released and placed under house arrest. The European Court of Human Rights in March 2014 condemned Turkey over its treatment of jailed the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan..

Ocalan is the main interlocutor of the government in the settlement process, which was launched at the end of 2012 and derailed this past June after the AK Party was unseated in the election, and key AK Party figures accused the Kurds of being responsible for their election defeat, aiming to find a solution to the decades-long Kurdish problem which has stemmed from the state having refused to recognize the rights and freedoms of Kurds as being equal to the rights of other groups within Turkish society.

In March 2013, its imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan called a ceasefire. But violence has resumed after a suicide bombing blamed on Islamic State killed 32 pro-Kurdish activists in July 2015 in the Kurdish town of Suruc in Turkish Kurdistan. Since then, the PKK and Turkish forces are again trading attacks on the ground and from the air.

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.

In the 1990s, the PKK limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels. The conflict has since claimed 45,000 lives.

The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU and US, but its image has improved in the West as its sister party in Syria has been at the forefront of the fight against the Islamic State.

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