Turkey on Friday condemned a
Molise town's granting honorary citizenship to Abdullah Ocalan,
leader of the PKK Kurdish militant group who has been in a
Turkish prison since 1999.
Ocalan was granted citizenship by Fossalto near Campobasso.
Slamming the move, the Turkish foreign ministry urged Italy
to make sure that "similar attempts do not happen in the
future".
Turkey had previously condemned citizenship for Ocalan by
other Italian towns and cities including Naples and Palermo.
Italian authorities have always stressed that local
administrations are autonomous in these decisions.
The mayor of the first Molise town to grant Ocalan
citizenship, Nicola Marrone, told ANSA that the move was a sign
of peace.
"The Kurds are not terorists and it is serious that the EU
isn't saying anything about this," said Marrone, mayor of
Castelbottaccio.
Molise MP Antonio Federico of the ruling anti-establishment
5-Star Movement (M5S) said Turkey's interference on the matter
had been "unacceptable".
He said "Ankara must not touch Italian democracy".
The leader of Communist Refoundation, Maurizio Acerbo, said
that "the Turkish statement is unacceptable, comuni are free in
Italy".
He said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was "a
bomb-slinging Fascist" and called on the Turkish leader to free
Ocalan and "other political prisoners".
Öcalan, 71, also known as Apo (short for both Abdullah and
"uncle" in Kurdish), is a Kurdish leader, leftist political
theoretician, political prisoner and one of the founding members
of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Öcalan was arrested in 1999 by the Turkish National
Intelligence Agency (MIT) with the support of the CIA in Nairobi
and taken to Turkey, where he was sentenced to death under
Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code, which concerns the
formation of armed organisations.
The sentence was commuted to aggravated life imprisonment
when Turkey abolished the death penalty in support of its bid to
be admitted to membership in the European Union. From 1999 until
2009, he was the sole prisoner on İmralÕ island, in the Sea of
Marmara. Öcalan now argues that the period of armed warfare is
past and a political solution to the Kurdish question should be
developed. The conflict between Turkey and the PKK has resulted
in over 40,000 deaths, including PKK members, the Turkish
military, and civilians, both Kurdish and Turkish.
From prison, Öcalan has published several books. Jineology,
also known as the science of women, is a form of feminism
advocated by Öcalan and subsequently a fundamental tenet of the
Kurdistan Communities Union.
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