Pro-Kurdish Turkiye leaders continue efforts for dialogue

Pro-Kurdish DEM party delegation meets Turkish leaders to discuss PKK founder Ocalan's rare political visit.

A delegation from Turkey's pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday (January 3, 2025) with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group.

DEM's three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.

The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.

It was the Ocalan's first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.

The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the "right to hope" in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.

Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad in a move which has forced Turkey's concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.

During Saturday's meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had "the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr Bahceli and Mr Erdogan".