Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed prospects for improvements in prison conditions for the jailed leader of the terrorist group Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) despite earlier statements from the government officials leaving the door open for such changes, Todays Zaman reported.
"This is a person who has been sentenced to aggravated life sentence. The state has done everything it could to improve humanitarian conditions. Nothing beyond that could be done," Erdogan told a group of journalists on his return from a visit to Afghanistan on Saturday.
"It is not like we are going to give him a villa," said Erdogan.
Erdogan's remarks followed statements over the past few days by Deputy Prime Minister Yalchın Akdogan and Interior Minister Efkan Ala that prison conditions of Ocalan can be improved to help a peace process aimed at resolving Turkey's Kurdish issue through talks with Ocalan proceed.
"As the process progresses, [Ocalan's] prison conditions might be reviewed and improvements might be made," Akdogan told daily Hurriyet in remarks published on Saturday.
Asked to comment on Akdogan's remarks, Interior Minister Ala said later in the same day that steps can be taken if they contribute to achieving the goals of the peace process.
Erdogan revealed in his statements published on Sunday that Ocalan is currently able to use two rooms and has a television in the prison facility where he is kept. He is also able to have contacts with the five other prisoners at the same facility, located in an island off Istanbul.
"He had none of these before; we gave them during our term in power. What else are we supposed to do?" he asked.
The president also dismissed claims that Ocalan will be given an official status as the "negotiator" in the peace process, saying uttering such things is "very dangerous" and "very wrong."
Erdogan said the undersecretary of the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) has been discussing whatever needs to be discussed with Ocalan as part of the peace process talks, although he complained that there have been discrepancies lately between what Ocalan says and what the PKK leadership and the pro-Kurdish politicians in Parliament say.
"Things have changed lately," he said of the perceived difference in the discourse of Ocalan, the PKK leadership and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).