Prison Writings

Abdullah Ocalan actively led the Kurdish liberation struggle as the head of the PKK from its foundation in 1978 until his abduction on 15th February 1999. He is a leading strategist and the most important political representative of the Kurdish freedom movement. Under isolation conditions at Imrali Island Prison, Ocalan authored more than 10 books which revolutionised Kurdish politics, including The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (Pluto, 2017), and Prison Writings, Volumes I and II (Pluto, 2007; 2011).

In his second book, Abdullah Ocalan applies the political and historical philosophy that was developed in the first volume of his Prison Writings to the Kurdish question. The book addresses the concrete political issues at the centre of the Kurdish question. Ocalan calls for a 'Renaissance of the Middle East' where the integration of democratic Western values and universal human rights with the deeply rooted cultural values of the Middle Eastern societies, especially the Kurdish, will form a new synthesis of civilisations. Abdullah Ocalan was the leader of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). He was eventually kidnapped while in Kenya in 1999, and has been in prison in Turkey ever since. Ocalan was the most wanted man in Turkey for almost two decades until his kidnapping. From 1984, under his leadership, the PKK fought for an independent Kurdish state in the southeast of Turkey. In a sustained popular uprising, tens of thousands of PKK guerrillas took on the second largest army in NATO. The book begins with Preliminary Notes by Cemil Bayik, military commander of the PKK.