Lawmakers from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) will meet Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç on Friday as the party seeks to drive the terror-free Türkiye initiative launched last year by government ally Devlet Bahçeli, chair of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
In the meantime, the party on Tuesday attempted to get more concessions from the state for the initiative. The party’s co-chair, Tülay Hatımoğulları, told the party’s parliamentary group chair in the capital Ankara on Tuesday that the government should allow “freedom of working and communication” for Öcalan. Hatımoğulları also called for the implementation of laws to support the initiative.
The government has repeatedly said counterterrorism operations against the PKK will not cease unless it dissolved itself after laying down arms as Bahçeli called for. It insists that the PKK should take unilateral steps first before expecting something in return. For instance, Bahçeli had suggested that Öcalan could be brought to Parliament to make his call to the PKK to dissolve but instead, he was allowed to make a written statement instead in February.
Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan, two DEM Party lawmakers who conveyed Öcalan’s messages to the public and parties after meetings with PKK’s ringleader, were received by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week. The DEM Party has said that the meeting with Erdoğan took place in a "constructive and hopeful atmosphere," marking a rare moment of dialogue between the two sides.
Hatımoğulları said on Tuesday that Önder and Buldan relayed the public’s “expectations” from the initiative in meeting with Erdoğan and now they expected “a door to be opened” for the solution.
DEM Party advocates for an end to what it calls the “solitary confinement” of Öcalan, while it remains quiet about the PKK’s abduction of children and brainwashing of children as recruits. This silence triggered a landmark protest by mothers of PKK recruits in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır about six years ago.
The group, known as the “Diyarbakır Mothers,” has expanded to include fathers and other relatives of abducted recruits over the years. One of their sites of protest, in front of the DEM Party’s spiritual predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), will soon be the DEM Party’s headquarters in the capital Ankara.
Nihat Aydın, father of PKK recruit Mehmet Aydın, said they have been proponents of “terror-free Türkiye since the beginning.”
“(The HDP) removed all signs of the party from the building. They recently shut down the building entirely. So, we will now move our protest to the DEM Party headquarters in Ankara. We invite everyone supporting us there,” he told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) on Tuesday.
Süheyla Demir, a mother fighting for the return of daughter Hayal, says she will “fight until my last breath.”
“We have been waiting here for six years but we will not give up,” she said.
Demir said they were hopeful about the terror-free Türkiye initiative. “God willing, we have hope in this process and that we will be reunited with our children. Everyone needs to take responsibility now. These mothers and fathers shouldn’t have to shed any more tears. The martyrs who’ve died (in the fight against the PKK) are our children, and those in the mountains (in the hideouts of the PKK) are also our children. We don’t want to cry anymore. We don’t want our hearts to burn,” she said.
