ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), on Monday said that the Ankara-PKK peace process has entered its “second phase,” according to a pro-Kurdish lawmaker who visited him in prison. The phase will be focused on democratic integration into Turkey’s political system. 

A delegation from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), including lawmakers Pervin Buldan, Mithat Sancar, and Ocalan’s lawyer Ozgur Faik, met with Ocalan on Monday on the secluded Imrali island.

Following the meeting, Sancar spoke to Ankara-based independent media outlet İlke TV regarding the content of the meeting, stressing that the PKK leader has announced the start of the “second phase” of the PKK-Turkey peace process.

Ocalan noted that while the first phase is not completely over, “this is now the second phase. Now we need to develop the architecture of the second phase. We are working on this,” Sancar cited the jailed leader as saying.

The basis of this “architecture,” according to Ocalan, was outlined in his February 27, 2025 recorded message calling for the disarmament of the PKK and the establishment of a democratic political system and social structure in Turkey, where Kurdish rights are preserved by law and all components are equally represented and enjoy freedom of expression and movement.

The PKK leader, who has been jailed for around 27 years now, dubbed the first phase the “negative dimension” concerned with ending the decades-old conflict between the armed group and Ankara that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

“Now we are facing the positive phase,” he said, “the integration phase is the positive phase; it is the phase of construction.”

For the phase to be realized, Ocalan called on Turkish authorities to provide conditions that would allow him to put his “theoretical and practical capacity” to work, “not for myself” he noted, but “for the solution, and so that we can build and advance the architecture of the second phase, this is necessary.”

DEM Party has for months been advocating for the start of the second phase of the ongoing process, holding several meetings with Turkish leaders in December, calling on the political sides to proceed to the second phase which they referred to as the judicial phase, and urging for the drafting of legislation and a “peace law” to act as the basis for the upcoming stage.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday received the DEM Party mediator delegation, Buldan and Sancar, for a closed-door meeting attended by Turkey’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin, which the pro-Kurdish party described as “important.”

DEM Party is the main mediator of the peace process between Ankara and the PKK.

The head of the parliamentary commission assigned with overseeing the peace process announced in early February that its report on the next phase of the process is set to be finalized in the coming days.