Abdullah Öcalan

Abdullah Öcalan co-founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party in 1978 and a year later fled to Syria, which sheltered him and the PKK for nearly two decades. In 1984 he launched the armed conflict with Turkey that would define his life. When Syria withdrew its protection in the late 1990s, Turkish intelligence tracked him to Nairobi and seized him in February 1999. A Turkish court sentenced him to death under laws against forming armed organizations; the sentence became aggravated life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished. He has spent every year since on İmralı island, for a decade the prison's only inmate, his contact with the outside world subject to long blackouts. From that isolation he has written books advancing democratic confederalism and jineology, ideas now embedded in the autonomous administration of northeast Syria, and in 2013 he brokered talks that produced a temporary peace process. In February 2025 he called on the PKK to disarm, prompting the group to declare a unilateral ceasefire.