Jailed PKK chief receives first family visit in two years

Jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan today received his first family visit in two years, meeting his brother on the Turkish prison island where he has been held for over one-and-a-half decades, his lawyers said.
His brother Mehmet Ocalan travelled from the port of Gemlik south of Istanbul to the high security prison on the island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara returning in the early evening, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Amid concerns over his health after months cut off from the outside world, Ocalan's lawyers confirmed that he had met his brother.
"Mr Ocalan today received a family visit. A statement about the situation of our client will be made in the shortest time," the Asrin lawyers office wrote in a statement on their Twitter account.

Turkish media reports had announced on Saturday that permission had been granted for the visit marking the Eid al-Adha Islamic holiday, in an apparent bid to counter alarm over his welfare.
A group of 50 Kurdish activists, including MPs, are on the seventh day of a hunger strike to protest the lack of news about Ocalan. They have vowed to continue their action until there is concrete confirmation he is alive and well.

Turkish media reports said this was the first family visit Ocalan had been allowed since October 6, 2014. He last met with a political delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in April 2015.

The last visit to Ocalan was by a delegation of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) in April 2016. It said there were just four prisoners held on Imrali.
Ocalan was captured in 1999 by Turkey's secret service in Kenya, put on trial and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 when Turkey abolished the death penalty. He has been held on Imrali ever since.
Ocalan held secret talks with top officials that resulted in the PKK declaring a ceasefire in 2013. But this collapsed in 2015 and conflict is again raging in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

The PKK, which has led an insurrection that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984, is outlawed as a terror group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.