Two large portraits adorn the walls of the otherwise colorless apartment in a Tokyo charity home that Meryem Dogan shares with her two young children.

One shows her smiling husband Erdal and the other is a photo of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the armed Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey.

Both men are currently under lock and key: Erdal in the same immigration detention system that freed chess legend Bobby Fischer last week, and Ocalan in a Turkish prison where he is serving a life sentence for terrorist-related offenses.