ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A delegation from the People’s Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party on Sunday met with President Masoud Barzani at his residence in Erbil’s Pirmam, delivering a message from jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, and discussing the ongoing peace talks.

In the nearly two hour long meeting, the delegation “conveyed the content of Abdullah Ocalan's message to President Barzani” and expressed “their views on the political situation and the peace process in Turkey to President Barzani,” read a Sunday statement by Barzani Headquarters after the meeting.

The meeting saw a review of the details of the Imrali delegation’s meeting with Ocalan.

The meeting with president Barzani came upon the request of Ocalan himself, DEM Party MP and delegation member Berdan Ozturk told The New Region on Sunday.

President Barzani for his part, stressed “the peace process as the only correct way to reach solutions” and emphasized the necessity of intensified efforts toward realizing the peace process in order to reach the desired results, while offering his complete readiness to assist the peace process in Turkey and his full support in making the process successful, the statement added.

In a statement following the meeting, the delegation said that they would be meeting Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani and later visit Sulaimani where they will meet Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Bafel Talabani and Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani.

The meetings come in the context of a peace initiative mediated by DEM Party between Turkey and the PKK, following a proposal by Devlet Bahceli, head of the far-right Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to release Ocalan in exchange for PKK’s laydown of arms, the proposal was endorsed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately.

This initiative led to the DEM Party MPs Pervin Buldan and Sirri Sureyya Onder being granted the rare permission to meet with Ocalan at Imrali prison in December amid a shift in Ankara’s stance of prohibiting contact with the PKK founder.

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.

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.