ISTANBUL: Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is “ready to make a call” to back a new initiative by the Turkish government to end decades of conflict, Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party said on Sunday.

Two lawmakers from the DEM party made a rare visit to Ocalan on Saturday on his prison island, the first by the party in almost a decade, amid signs of easing tensions between the Turkish government and the PKK.

On Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government approved DEM’s request to visit the founder of the PKK, which is designated a terror group by Turkiye and its Western allies. Ocalan has been serving a life sentence on the island of Imrali south of Istanbul since 1999.

The government’s approval of the visit comes two months after the head of Turkiye’s nationalist MHP party, Devlet Bahceli, extended Ocalan a shock olive branch, inviting him to parliament to renounce terror and disband his group, a move backed by Erdogan.

“I have the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr Bahceli and Mr Erdogan,” Ocalan said, according to a DEM statement. Ocalan said the visiting delegation would share his approach with both the state and political circles.

“In light of this, I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the call.” DEM party co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan lauded Ocalan’s appeal as “historic opportunity to build a common future,” in a message on social media platform X.

“We are on the eve of a potential democratic transformation across Turkiye and the region. Now is the time for courage and foresight for an honourable peace,” he said.

‘Historical responsibility’

The PKK has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, claiming tens of thousands of lives. A peace process between the PKK and the government collapsed in 2015, unleashing violence, especially in the Kurdish-majority southeast.

The new initiative launched in October by Bahceli, who has been fiercely hostile to the PKK, sparked a public debate, with Erdogan hailing it as a “historic window of opportunity”. But a deadly terror attack in October on a Turkish defence company in the capital Ankara, for which PKK militants claimed responsibility, put those hopes on hold.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2024