Kurdistan - Abdullah Ocalan (aka Apo)

Apo, please come home . . . to be hanged. It's not quite known what kind of miss-you cards the Turkish government sent Apo while he was in Syria, but they didn't work.

Abdullah Ocalan was finally captured by Turkish intelligence operatives in February 1999. It's all a bit shady but DP has the scoop. In late 1998 the Turks were getting just a bit unhappy with Apo running the show out of a nice little villa in the suburbs of Damascus, so they decided to bomb Syria. Which is to say that they told the Syrians, "lose the man with the potbelly and the funny mustache or Damascus is history." Rather than lose Damascus the Syrians lost Apo, who took a plane to southern Cyprus, slunk off to Russia before landing in Italy on a false passport. The Italians didn't quite know what to do. The Germans did, though, and issued an arrest warrant for Apo-before they realized that maybe they really didn't want 200,000 German Kurds going ape as their leader was hauled through the courts. The extradition order was quietly rubbed off the menu and the German public prosecutor took a long holiday.

So for a few weeks Apo had a nice comfy villa on the outskirts of Rome. The Turks were not happy. All those plans and it looked like the bastard was going to end up with better accommodation than they had planned for him. That is, until Apo disappeared from all our radar screens. Here one minute, gone the next. Abdullah Ocalan had left Italy, said the Italian government, wiping its collective brow with relief. So Apo set off on another odyssey to find asylum somewhere other than Turkey. He rocked up in Moscow, only to find the Ruskies uninterested. A few Greeks then hid him in Greece before carting him off to their ambassador's residence in Nairobi. Nairobi . . . hmm . . . not the best of choices perhaps when you consider that in the aftermath of Mr. bin Laden's little bomb, the place is crawling with CIA and FBI agents.

Needless to say, they were soon listening in to Apo's desperate cell phone calls to anyone who might be able help him. Someone in Washington got on the blower to someone in Athens and gave them a mega bollicking for harboring the "terrorist Ocalan." Turkish intelligence agents, tipped off by Washington, flooded into Kenya. The Greeks told Apo that they were all going for a short ride. Apo's car, though, took a small diversion into the hands of . . . Turkish intelligence. Drugged and rushed to the airport, the next thing poor old Apo knew, he was in a plane heading for Istanbul.

After a quick trial, whichwas naturally extremely fair and considered all sides of the argument, Apo was sentenced to death. His last-minute plea that he could solve the Kurdish problem in Turkey if his life was spared fell, quite rightly, on deaf ears. As we all know-and as the Turkish government never tires of telling us-there is no Kurdish problem in Turkey. There is only a minor problem of some mindless terrorists, who happen to be Kurds. Sorry, as the Turkish government has just-again, quite correctly-reminded DP, these people are Turkish citizens who live in the east and sometimes call themselves Kurdish. There is not a Kurdish problem in Turkey. Get it?

Then, in August 1999, from his prison cell, Apo announced a unilateral cease-fire and the withdrawal of all PKK forces from Turkey. Er, come again? Well, yes, all PKK forces are supposed to be leaving Turkey. Quite what the kids on the ground make of all this remains to be seen. But when DP visited the PKK kids in southeastern Turkey, they didn't appear to have any plans to start trekking out. Could it be that Apo just can't bear the thought of being a middle-aged prisoner with bad food and no more journos queuing up to visit him?

The Turkish government meanwhile, has said, "No negotiations with terrorists." So much then, for . . . er . . . peace. That said, there have been various noises made about not hanging Ocalan and letting him off with life imprisonment. How nice.

Abdullah Ocalan (latest-and probably final-address):

Imrali Prison

Imrali, Turkey