ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A delegation from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish political party will visit the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) within two days, state media reported on Friday, citing the justice minister.
Yilmaz Tunc told Anadolu Agency that they have granted permission to Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan - both lawmakers from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) - to visit PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on Imrali Island, where he has been imprisoned since 1999.
He said that the visit will take place within two days, depending on the weather.
The DEM Party submitted a request to the Turkish justice ministry in November, asking to meet with Ocalan.
Ocalan’s nephew Omer Ocalan, also a DEM Party lawmaker, visited the island prison in late October. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the PKK leader and his family since March 3, 2020.
The PKK leader said he was in “good health” and “sent greetings to everyone,” according to his nephew.
Abdullah Ocalan’s elder brother Mehmet Ocalan last had a short phone call with him in March 2021. Numerous subsequent requests by lawyers and family to meet the PKK leader were rejected.
The government shifted its hardline stance banning contact with Ocalan after Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), proposed that Ocalan address the Turkish parliament and announce the dissolution of the PKK. MHP is the government ally of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Bahceli’s proposal received mixed reactions. It was rejected by some of his fellow ultranationalists.
He has also called on the DEM Party to distance itself from the PKK.
The DEM Party is routinely accused of being the political wing of the PKK, a charge it denies. DEM Party’s predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), played a key role in a short-lived peace process between the PKK and the Turkish state that crumbled in 2015.
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.
