Jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

29/12/2024 18:14

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.



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.