ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The committee mediating peace talks between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish government is scheduled to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan soon, amid renewed hopes of establishing a legal framework for the peace process.
Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, a prominent lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), told the opposition ANKA news agency late Wednesday that the party’s parliamentarians, Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar, will visit Erdogan without disclosing the date of the meeting.
Buldan and Sancar are main members of the mediating committee, which has met with Erdogan twice since April and visited the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Imrali prison since his February call on followers to disband the PKK and lay down arms.
Ocalan has been jailed since 1999.
On July 11, a group of PKK fighters burned their weapons in Jasana Cave in Sulaimani province in a symbolic disarmament as part of the peace process. A Turkish parliamentary commission is now formulating the legal foundations for peace with the PKK.
The Turkish presidency has yet to confirm the third meeting between Erdogan and the peacemaking committee.
The committee has also held meetings with other politicians, including the prominent Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas.
“We visited our friends Selahattin Demirtas, Figen Yuksekdag, Selcuk Mizrakli, and Semra Guzel by conducting prison visits in Edirne and Kandira. All of them are in high spirits and their health conditions are good,” the committee said in a statement on Thursday.
Demirtas and Yuksekdag are former co-leaders of the Peoples’ Protection Party (HDP), a sister party of the DEM Party, before their detention in 2016. Mizrakli, sacked mayor of Diyarbakir (Amed), has been behind bars since 2019 after he was convicted of charges related to the PKK. Guzel is a former lawmaker who was arrested in 2022 after photos showing her with a PKK fighter were leaked.
“During the meetings, we primarily shared information and exchanged ideas regarding the peace process. Selahattin Demirtas, after emphasizing that his support for the process is complete, expressed that he is ready to provide all kinds of contributions for the success of the process and the establishment of peace and democracy,” read the statement from the committee following their meeting with the jailed Kurdish leader.