Osman Öcalan

Who is Osman Öcalan?

Osman Öcalan is a Kurdish militant politician and former commander of PKK, a militant Kurdish organization.

The younger brother of Abdullah Öcalan, Osman studied at teachers’ training college before joining the PKK when it was founded in 1978 and spending two years in Libya. He joined the central committee in 1986, and the executive committee in the 1990s, becoming virtually second in command of the PKK, but in 1992 he suffered disgrace after signing a truce with the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, and was jailed by the PKK.

"In June 1993, they removed all my powers", he told The Middle East in an interview. "I was isolated in a cell for three months and interrogated for 52 days before being tried in February 1995. The trial lasted only one day.I was warned that if I continued to defend my ideas, I would be executed. If not, I would be pardoned. A lawyer? Out of the question. The trial was conducted under the law of the mountain."

In 1994, he left the PKK in order to marry a fellow PKK fighter. The PKK forbids relationships between its guerillas. He later rejoined the PKK. In 2000 the Independent referred to him as a " senior commander" of the PKK when Medya TV, the underground Kurdish satellite television channel reported him as claiming that the Turkish authorities wanted his brother to die.