 left Thursday to meet with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who was to make a "historic declaration" on ending the decades-long conflict with the state, Agence France-Presse reported.){kind=link}
A delegation from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) left Thursday to meet with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who was to make a “historic declaration” on ending the decades-long conflict with the state, Agence France-Presse reported.
During the visit by a delegation of seven lawmakers and one member of his legal team, Öcalan is expected to make a long-awaited statement that they will relay at a news conference at 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) in İstanbul.
“The DEM Party delegation … set off for İmralı Island to hold a third meeting with Mr Öcalan,” a party source said, referring to the prison island off İstanbul where the PKK founder has been incarcerated since 1999.
“If everything goes smoothly, we expect Öcalan to make a historic declaration [on Thursday],” the party said late Wednesday.
The Turkish government is seeking to reset ties with the PKK, which has fought a decades-long war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The delegation, which includes lawyer Faik Özgür Erol, wanted Öcalan to issue a video message rather a written statement, but Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç ruled that out, Turkish media reported.
Reception unclear
Observers said Öcalan was likely to call on his followers to lay down their weapons and use politics as a means of achieving their goal of broader rights.
But the big question is how the call will be received by his followers, whose military leadership is mostly based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
The PKK also has fighters who are part of the US-backed Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria, which is seen as crucial to keeping Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants at bay.
But the force is under pressure from Syria’s new leaders — who are close to Ankara — to lay down their weapons and also locked in clashes with Turkish-backed militia groups.
Öcalan, 75, has been serving a life sentence without parole on İmralı Island since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999.
Since his detention there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed that erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives. The last round of talks collapsed in a storm of violence in 2015.
After that, there was no contact until October, when far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli offered Öcalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Since then, he has twice been visited by two DEM Party lawmakers who then briefed the parliamentary parties on the talks.
The contact has fueled a growing anticipation that Öcalan will call on his militants to lay down their arms in exchange for concessions for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.
Thursday’s delegation includes DEM Party Co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan and veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk, 82, who has a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.
Deputy Speaker Sırrı Süreyya Önder and lawmaker Pervin Buldan, who were both part of the earlier delegations, will also go, as will another DEM Party lawmaker.