“Let the Kurds and Turks start the ancient brotherhood again. This is our goal,” Turk told Rudaw on Saturday after visiting Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtas and Adnan Selcuk Mizrakli in jail in Edirne.
“Today, for the future of the Kurdish people, for peace, for a dignified peace, both Selahattin Demirtas and Selcuk Mizrakli have supported us in every way. They help us and our goal is for peace today in the Middle East to start anew,” he said.
Demirtas is a charismatic politician who was at the helm of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) when it entered the Turkish parliament in 2015 - the first pro-Kurdish party to pass that electoral threshold. He played a role in the collapsed peace talks a decade ago and has been in jail since 2016 on PKK-related charges.
Selcuk Mizrakli is a former parliamentarian and popular mayor of Diyarbakir, he is serving a nine-year sentence for membership in the PKK.
Ocalan had the same message of brotherhood when he met with a pro-Kurdish delegation last month.
“Strengthening Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood again has gained historical importance and urgency, as well as being a critical responsibility for all peoples,” he said.
The meeting between Ocalan and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) is part of a new push for a negotiated end to four decades of conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state.
After meeting Ocalan, DEM Party on January 2 launched a series of official talks with the Turkish political parties about the potential peace process.
Ocalan called on all political fronts in Turkey to join in the process by “making positive contributions” and said that the Turkish parliament could be an important platform for change.
Demirtas, in a statement on social media on Saturday, expressed support for the new initiative for peace.
Founded in 1978, the PKK initially called for the establishment of an independent Kurdistan but now calls for autonomy. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey.
DEM Party’s predecessor, HDP, played a key role in negotiating peace talks a decade ago. The short-lived ceasefire collapsed in 2015 and was followed by intense urban fighting in the country’s southwestern Kurdish areas.
