Two men in search for a way forward

Published on 22/03/2013 00:00

TURKEY’S populist leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 59, has been keener than most of his predecessors to facilitate a peace deal with Abdullah Ocalan’s PKK.

The capture of Ocalan in 1999 led to televised trial, which was expected to end in a death sentence. But Ocalan surprised many Turks by appearing to bargain, statesman-like, for his life in court.

At one point he told the judge: “If permission is granted, I say I can bring all the men [fighters] down from the mountains within three months. I might not be worth a penny, but they say… 5,000 suicide bombers are ready to die for me.”

In the intervening years, Ocalan, now 64, has moved from his belief that armed insurrection would secure Kurdish rights, a shift which opened the way for Mr Erdogan to seek a resolution after he became PM in 2003.

“Ocalan has evolved to such an extent that let alone an independent Kurdish state, he doesn’t even want to refer to ‘democratic autonomy’,” said Eyup Can, editor of the liberal Radikal newspaper. “He no longer sees himself as leader of a group involved in armed struggle. His eye is on leading 25 million Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.”

Ocalan grew up in south-east Turkey’s Sanliurfa province.

“My passion was to roam the mountains,” he said at his trial. “The villagers knew me both as someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly and as a snake hunter”.

Successful at school, he went on to study in Ankara where he first became active in left-wing politics, developing the ideas which would lead to the foundation of his Marxist PKK in 1978. He launched the group’s armed struggle in 1984.

Before capture, Ocalan was based in Syria. In 1998, Turkey threatened armed action against Syria if he was not handed over. Ocalan fled. Then followed a race across Europe in search of asylum, flying between Greece, Russia and Italy before Turkish special forces seized him in Kenya on 15 February 1999, probably with the help of US or Israeli security services.