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After meeting with Erdoğan, pro-Kurdish party visits Öcalan for fourth time

This handout photo shows jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan meeting with members of a DEM Party delegation at İmralı Island prison on February 27, 2025. Also visible in the photo are three inmates who are also incarcerated in the prison in İmralı. On this day, Öcalan issued a historic call for the PKK to lay down its arms and disband. (Photo: DEM Party)

A pro-Kurdish party delegation has held a fourth meeting on İmralı Island with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, following a landmark meeting between its senior figures and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The delegation visiting İmralı Island on Monday comprised Pervin Buldan, an MP from the People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), and Öcalan’s lawyer, Faik Özgür Erol.

Sırrı Süreyya Önder, another lawmaker from the party who took part in the previous three delegations, was absent from Monday’s visit as he remains in intensive care following a heart emergency suffered on April 15.

Ahmet Türk, a veteran Kurdish politician and former mayor of Mardin who had missed some of the previous visits due to health issues, was also absent from Monday’s delegation.

The visit marks the latest step in a series of quiet diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the long-running conflict between the Turkish government and the outlawed PKK.

Öcalan, the founding leader of the PKK, in February issued a historic call for his group to lay down its arms and disband. The landmark message was publicly read out in İstanbul, though no official timeline has been announced.

The visit follows Erdoğan’s landmark meeting with Buldan and Önder at the presidential complex in Ankara on April 10 — his first direct talks with pro-Kurdish representatives in 13 years. A written statement from the DEM Party described the meeting as taking place in a “highly positive, constructive, productive and promising atmosphere for the future,” adding that both sides discussed potential next steps in a possible peace framework.

A follow-up meeting between the DEM delegation and Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç was scheduled for April 18 but postponed after Önder’s hospitalization.

DEM Party deputy group chair Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit said the meeting was expected to address Öcalan’s prison conditions, broader judicial reforms and the status of ill prisoners.

Founded by Öcalan in 1978, the PKK has waged a decades-long war in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

The peace talks were initiated by a surprise call from Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and an ally of Erdoğan, when he offered Öcalan a surprise peace gesture in October if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by Erdoğan.

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.

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