A nationalist politician whose party helps keep President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power said Tuesday that Abdullah Öcalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), should be given a legal path toward release and that jailed Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş should return home, in remarks that also pointed to reinstating Kurdish mayors removed from office, amid Turkey’s new peace initiative with the PKK.
Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a key partner of Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), closed his weekly speech to lawmakers with a line that spread quickly across Turkish media and social platforms: “Until Anatolia reaches peace, Öcalan reaches hope, the Ahmets return to office and Demirtaş returns home… We are resolute in this.”
The veteran politician often speaks in idioms, a style that can be clear to Turks who follow the political debate but hard for outsiders to decipher.
Turkish outlets widely interpreted “the Ahmets” as Ahmet Türk, a Kurdish politician removed from office as mayor of Mardin and replaced by a government-appointed trustee, and Ahmet Özer, a suspended opposition mayor in the Esenyurt district of İstanbul, who was also replaced by a trustee.
What the ‘right to hope’ means and why Öcalan is central
In Turkish political discourse, the “right to hope” is shorthand for a principle tied to European human rights standards on life sentences. According to this even people serving life terms must have a real prospect of release and a meaningful sentence review after a certain period of time, rather than being held with no option of parole. The phrase is often linked to rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on life imprisonment and sentence review.
Öcalan, the PKK’s founding leader, has been jailed since 1999 on İmralı Island near İstanbul. Any move that gives him a clearer legal path toward release would be one of the biggest political shifts of the process because Ankara has long treated his imprisonment as a pillar of its security policy.
How Bahçeli framed the peace
Bahçeli’s remarks came as the government seeks to consolidate the first serious peace effort with the PKK since talks collapsed in 2015. In this cycle, Bahçeli helped set the tone in late 2024 by urging steps that would push the PKK toward ending its armed campaign. The effort accelerated after Öcalan issued a call on February 27, 2025, for the group to lay down arms and disband, which the PKK later said it would do.
In May 2025 the PKK decided to disband and end its armed campaign, a milestone in a conflict that began in 1984 and has killed more than 40,000 people. The group later marked laying down weapons with a ceremony in July 2025 in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey and its Western allies designate the PKK as a terrorist organization.
Demirtaş and the question of political prisoners
Demirtaş, a former leader of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party and a major figure in Kurdish politics, has been in prison since 2016 on terrorism-related charges he denies. The ECtHR has ruled that his rights were violated and has called for his release, but Turkish courts have kept him behind bars through multiple cases and sentences.
Bahçeli’s wording, especially “Demirtaş returns home,” echoed his earlier public signals that freeing Demirtaş could be part of a broader settlement if the PKK ends its armed activity. In November 2025 Bahçeli said releasing Demirtaş “would be beneficial,” a striking message from a politician whose party has long taken a hard line against Kurdish political demands.
Trustees, elections and what Turkish media emphasized
Turkey’s use of government-appointed trustees to replace elected mayors has been one of the most disputed tools of the state’s security approach, especially in Kurdish-majority areas in the southeast and, more recently, in some opposition-run municipalities in big cities. Bahçeli’s “Ahmets” reference was widely read as an endorsement of returning at least two high-profile mayors to office.
State news coverage and pro-government outlets led with other parts of Bahçeli’s speech. The Anadolu news agency’s main headline focused on his insistence that early elections are not on the agenda. Public broadcaster TRT Haber highlighted his comments on Syria and foreign policy themes. Independent outlets, including T24 and Cumhuriyet, put the “Öcalan” and “Demirtaş” line at the center and treated it as the clearest summary of what Bahçeli was demanding from the process.
Observers interpreted this divergence as stemming from a rift between Bahçeli and Erdoğan, as pro-Erdoğan media ignored his more weighty remarks.