ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Wednesday met with the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) delegation in Erbil, voicing his support tor the ongoing peace talks between Kurds and Ankara.

“We reaffirmed our full support for the peace process in Turkey and ending the war and violence, and expressed the Kurdistan Region's readiness for any cooperation and coordination in this regard,” read a statement from the premier’s office.

Prime Minister Barzani emphasized the need to take advantage of this opportunity to establish peace and stability in Turkey.

The delegation said that “a new phase has begun in Turkey,” stressing that resolving the Kurdish issue has become “an important and urgent necessity.”

The delegation also lauded the role and support of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader and former President of the Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani, with whom they met on Monday, for the peace process.

The DEM Party delegation’s meetings in the Kurdistan Region aimed at obtaining the perspective and opinions of the Region’s leaders on the peace process in Turkey, which would later be conveyed to Ocalan.

In a major development, Devlet Bahceli, head of the far-right Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in October proposed allowing Ocalan to appear before the legislature and declare the dissolution of the PKK, an initiative immediately endorsed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish political landscape.

Bahceli’s initiative led to 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.

Following the delegation’s meetings with Ocalan, Tuncer Bakirhan, a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament revealed that Ocalan is set to make “a historic call” for a permanent solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey.

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.