Skip to content

Cart

Your cart is empty

Article: Jailed PKK leader Ocalan says he may be ready to end insurgency, pro-Kurdish sources in Turkey say

Jailed PKK leader Ocalan says he may be ready to end insurgency, pro-Kurdish sources in Turkey say

Jailed PKK leader Ocalan says he may be ready to end insurgency, pro-Kurdish sources in Turkey say

PHOTO CAPTION: Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) display flags with a portrait of jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, in Istanbul, Turkey, March 17, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

 

ANKARA (Reuters) - The jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group's decades-old insurgency.

Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key Erdogan ally expanded on a proposal to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and Ocalan's PKK.

"I am ready to take (the) necessary positive step and make the call," Ocalan was quoted as saying, according to a statement by the MPs on Sunday.

Ocalan did not specify what the call would be but his comments came after the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, said Ocalan should make a call for the militants to lay down arms.

DEM requested the visit soon after Bahceli expanded on a proposal to end the conflict, suggesting in October that Ocalan should announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.

Erdogan described Bahceli's initial proposal as a "historic window of opportunity" but has not spoken of any peace process.

Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.

Recent developments in Syria and Gaza showed that the solution for the Kurdish issue has become "undelayable", Ocalan was also quoted as saying, adding that opposition and Parliament should also contribute to the new process, in a veiled reference to possible legal amendments.

One major development in the region has been the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria this month. Turkey has repeatedly said there would be no place for the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara sees as an extension of the PKK, in Syria's future.

"I am also qualified and determined to make the necessary positive contribution to the new paradigm that Mr. Bahceli and Mr. Erdogan have empowered," Ocalan said, according to the DEM statement.

Turkey and its Western allies deem the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centred on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.



(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Frances Kerry)

MORE FROM THE

OAF NATION NEWSROOM

US announces package of military, other aid to Ukraine valued at $5.9B

US announces package of military, other aid to Ukraine valued at $5.9B

The United States on Monday announced nearly $6 billion in additional military and budget assistance for Ukraine as President Joe Biden uses his final weeks in office to surge aid to Kyiv before Pr...

Read more
Fiery plane crash kills 179 in deadliest airline disaster in South Korea

Fiery plane crash kills 179 in deadliest airline disaster in South Korea

The deadliest air accident ever in South Korea killed 179 people on Sunday, when an airliner belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway, erupting in a fireball as it slammed into a wall at ...

Read more
#3 Liquid error (layout/theme line 179): Could not find asset snippets/back-in-stock-helper.liquid