 leader Abdullah Öcalan has called on young #Kurdish adults who migrated to #Europe to return and build their lives in #Turkey, saying he would rather remain in prison on İmralı Island than live abroad.){kind=link}
Jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has called on young Kurdish adults who migrated to Europe to return and build their lives in Turkey, saying he would rather remain in prison on İmralı Island than live abroad, the İlke TV news website reported on Wednesday.
The remarks,which have just become public, came during Öcalan’s August 28 meeting with a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party). The three-hour meeting, held at the high-security İmralı F-Type Prison where Öcalan has been serving a life sentence since 1999, was the first such visit in months.
According to İlke TV, the PKK leader criticized young people from Turkey’s eastern provinces such as Şanlıurfa and Ağrı for preferring to leave their homeland, calling it the result of a “deliberate policy of alienation.” He urged them to repay their “debts” to their own land and culture rather than seek a future abroad. “I would choose İmralı over Europe,” he was quoted as saying. “They must return and build their lives here. One of my goals in this process is to facilitate a qualified return from exile.”
He also said Kurds in Europe should preserve their language, culture and communal structures.
Öcalan’s comments come amid a renewed peace process between the Turkish government and the outlawed PKK, which in May announced an end to a decades-long insurgency that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, saying it was taking up a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority.
Two months later its militants began laying down their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq, after which the Turkish Parliament set up the cross-party commission to manage the emerging peace process.
The move came after months of indirect contacts between the Turkish government and Öcalan. The DEM Party, Turkey’s third-biggest party, played a key role in facilitating an emerging peace deal, sending a special delegation to hold regular meetings with the PKK leader on İmralı Island.
Öcalan’s call also follows rising emigration among young people in Turkey. According to official data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), more than 424,000 people left the country in 2024, with those aged 25–29 making up the largest group at 14.4 percent, followed by 20–24 year olds at 12.2 percent. Surveys show that nearly 60 percent of Turks aged 15 to 24 would prefer to live abroad if given the chance, reflecting widespread frustration over economic hardship and political uncertainty.
Migration experts note that while older generations are less willing or able to emigrate, many young people see leaving as an opportunity to “give it a try” amid record youth unemployment and a lack of prospects at home. Turkey has been grappling with inflation above 32 percent and a lira that has lost more than 80 percent of its value in recent years, pushing many young graduates into precarious work or unemployment.