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…