ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A delegation from the pro-Kurdish opposition DEM Party on Thursday met with Turkey’s parliamentary speaker Numan Kurtulmus, and Devlet Bahceli, leader of the country’s far-right MHP party, briefing them on a weekend meeting with Abdulla Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, amid renewed efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the PKK.
Joined by 82-year-old veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk, DEM Party MPs Pervin Buldan and Sirri Sureyya Onder met with Kurtulmus, and Bahceli.
“The meeting was positive. We are hopeful,” Onder said, adding the delegation would meet with the ruling AKP party and the main opposition CHP on Monday after which they would offer a full briefing.
Buldan and Onder were granted the rare permission of a meeting with Ocalan at Imrali prison on Saturday, amid a shift in Ankara’s stance of prohibiting contact with the PKK founder, two months after Bahceli surprisingly invited Ocalan to the parliament during a speech to his party’s bloc at the legislature, to disband the PKK, an initiative immediately backed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“He [Ocalan] was in good health and his morale was quite high,” the lawmakers said in a statement on Sunday, adding that Ocalan’s assessments for finding a “permanent solution” to the Kurdish issue were “of vital importance.”
Ocalan stressed the importance of re-strengthening the “Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood,” according to the DEM Party delegation, urging the need for all political circles in Turkey to take the initiative and “make positive contributions” toward making the process a success, emphasizing that it “can no longer be postponed.”
“In light of this, I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the call,” the MPs cited Ocalan as saying, adding “this era is an era of peace, democracy and brotherhood for Turkey and the region.”
Shortly after the Ocalan meet, DEM party co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan hailed what he described as a "historic opportunity to build a common future,” in a post on X.
"We are on the eve of a potential democratic transformation across Turkey and the region. Now is the time for courage and foresight for an honorable peace," he said.
In 2013, the Turkish government, led by then-prime minister and current President Erdogan, entered a peace process with the PKK aimed at ending the decades of conflict and bloodshed. The truce was short-lived and collapsed in July 2015, leading to violent clashes in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish areas.
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence at Imrali prison, a small but high-security facility on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, since February 1999.
The Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the political umbrella group of the PKK, on Tuesday affirmed their commitment to the Ocalan message, pledging that his directives would guide their struggle in the new year.
“Despite the darkness imposed, Leader Apo [Ocalan], with a sense of responsibility, once again displayed his positive views and highlighted solutions and views that broaden the horizons of thought,” read a statement from the co-chairmanship of the KCK Executive Council on Tuesday.
The PKK is an armed group that has fought for increased Kurdish rights in Turkey for decades. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara.
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