ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) on Wednesday described the signing of the parliamentary legal framework underpinning the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as a “historic step” toward resolving the Kurdish issue in Turkey.

Turkish lawmakers on Wednesday signed the legislature's long-awaited final draft of the legal framework for the peace process with the PKK, which was later submitted to Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency reported. 

The move came after a prolonged peace process sparked in large part by the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli’s historic 2024 call for reconciliation.

“We have signed a common future,” DEM Party Co-Chair Tuncer Bakirhan said following the signature, adding that “It is a signature for peace, democracy, and our common future. It is valuable and important and a historic step,” read a party statement.

“As we have expressed the shortcomings of the law, we also know its importance, and we will defend its importance,” he added, noting that “it will open a new door for Turkey.”

Despite the advancement of the peace process and the halting of the PKK's four-decade-long campaign against the Turkish state by the leader Abdullah Ocalan’s 2025 February disarmament call, many observers have remained skeptical of the next steps, citing legal ambiguities and a lack of clarity.

“This law clearly signifies taking a step, opening a door, in the solution of the Kurdish issue,” DEM Party co-chair Tulay Hatimogullari said.

The Kurdish lawmaker emphasized the importance of the move "in terms of transitioning from negative peace to positive peace."

Earlier on Wednesday, Bahceli renewed his call for the release of imprisoned Kurdish politicians, including Selahattin Demirtas, and asserted that Ocalan "should regain his right to hope.”

The "right to hope" referred to by the lawmaker is a legal framework established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) asserting that a prisoner serving a life sentence should have the right to the prospect of conditional release based on periodic reviews.

Demirtas, a veteran Kurdish politician and former co-chair of Turkey's Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the predecessor of the DEM Party, was arrested in November 2016 along with the party's other co-chair and several lawmakers on accusations of ties to the PKK.

The developments come after nearly six months of limited progress regarding enacting the legal framework for the peace process that was initially signed in parliament earlier in the year, despite the Kurdish militant group having agreed to dissolve itself and evacuate multiple of its military bases over that timeframe.