ANKARA: The jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party, Abdullah Ocalan, has been allowed to meet his lawyers for the first time in six years, his legal team said on Wednesday.

“On Sept 15, we visited Mr Ocalan and our other clients who are being held in Imrali prison after a six-year hiatus,” the Asrin Hukuk law firm wrote on X.

According to his lawyers, the PKK leader said “the process of peace and democratic society has reached the stage of a legal solution” and expressed his wish to see a legal framework in Turkey for disarmament of the group.

A delegation led by the pro-Kurdish DEM party — the third-largest force in Turkish parliament — has visited Ocalan several times since December last year as part of the peace process between Ankara and the PKK.

But Ocalan’s lawyers have not been able to secure authorisation to see him since 2019.

The PKK decided in July to start the process of disarmament, ending more than four decades of conflict with Turkish forces that has claimed at least 45,000 lives.

Ocalan, who has been detained since 1999 on the prison-island of Imrali off Istanbul, called for his movement to disband in February, seizing on a process begun by the authorities in Ankara last October. A Turkish parliamentary commission tasked with preparing a legal framework for the peace process began its work last month.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2025