ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A senior member of a Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) offshoot on Friday criticized the efforts of a Turkish parliamentary committee tasked with drafting a legal framework for the peace process as “insufficient,” urging Ankara to take concrete steps to resolve the long-standing Kurdish issue.

On November 21, the Turkish parliamentary committee tasked with drafting a legal framework for the Ankara-PKK peace process voted by an absolute majority to visit the latter group's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan on the secluded Imrali prison island. 

Following the meeting, the committee said on Monday that “positive outcomes” had been reached.

Bese Hozat, co-chair of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella group that includes the PKK, on Friday criticized the Turkish parliamentary commission overseeing the peace process as “an insufficient work process,” saying the initiative “has now entered the stage of legal institutions,” the Rojava-based Ronahi TV reported on Friday.

She further urged Ankara to take concrete steps “in legal and judicial terms” to advance the process and resolve the long-standing Kurdish issue.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday, speaking on the sidelines of meetings in Berlin, described the ongoing peace process between Ankara and the PKK as “progressing positively,” saying efforts “continue,” thanking European countries, especially Germany, for their support, state media reported.

In early October, the leader of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahceli urged the PKK to call on Kurdish forces in Rojava to lay down arms, suggesting that the Turkish parliament should hold direct talks with Ocalan on the matter amid clashes in Rojava. 

Despite the advancement of the peace process and the halting of the PKK's four-decade-long campaign against the Turkish state, many observers have remained skeptical of the next steps, citing legal ambiguities and a lack of clarity.

Ocalan and the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) have repeatedly expressed concern over the lack of concrete measures to establish a political framework ensuring the success of the peace process.

The DEM Party has been the main mediator between the PKK and the Turkish state in the recent peace process.

In July, dozens of PKK fighters burned their weapons in a symbolic disarmament ceremony in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani province, and earlier this month the group announced it will completely withdraw from Turkish soil.