Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, is expected to make his “historic” call to his terrorist group to lay down arms sometime this week, Turkish media reported Wednesday.
The delegation from the PKK-affiliated Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has applied to the Justice Ministry to visit Öcalan for the third time at Imralı, an island prison he has been kept in since his capture in 1999, for what has been dubbed the “terror-free Türkiye initiative.”
The party’s delegation, including lawmakers Pervin Buldan, Sırrı Süreyya Önder and veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk, will meet Öcalan on Thursday, Justice Ministry confirmed on Wednesday.
“We are expecting the historic call from Öcalan,” Doğan told reporters on Wednesday. “We are on the cusp of a new life.”
Government ally Devlet Bahçeli, the head of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), launched the initiative last year and paved the way for the formation of the DEM Party delegation.
Bahçeli, staunchly opposed to any concessions to the PKK, suggested Öcalan could be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded the PKK. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has also endorsed the initiative, calling it a “historic window of opportunity.”
DEM Party lawmakers have since met Öcalan twice and conveyed his message of readiness to contribute to the initiative.
"Reinforcing the Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood is a historic responsibility and is a matter of importance and emergency for all peoples," Öcalan said in his first statements quoted by the DEM Party.
The PKK has waged a terror campaign against Türkiye since 1984, initially to establish a so-called Kurdish state in the southeast of the country. It has spread beyond Türkiye's borders into Iraq and Syria and has killed tens of thousands of people.
Öcalan said it was essential for all political circles in Türkiye to take the initiative without being confined to "narrow calculations," "act constructive" and "provide a positive contribution" for this new process to succeed.
The PKK leader said the Parliament he was urged to come to would be "undoubtedly one of the most important grounds for 'this contribution.'"
Turkish officials are opposed to the conflation of the Kurdish community and the PKK, arguing the definition implies Kurds are a problem for Türkiye and abets the PKK’s terrorist agenda.
Tens of thousands of people have already died due to PKK violence. The last attempt at peace failed in 2015 when the PKK resumed attacks during negotiations.
The group also occupies Sinjar and Makhmour, and has a foothold in Sulaymaniyah, all of which Ankara strongly opposes.
The DEM Party delegation held talks with Iraqi Kurdish politicians last week to brief them about the process and talks with Öcalan.
Masoud Barzani, a veteran Iraqi Kurdish politician from Irbil, the seat of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has endorsed the process, saying he was "fully prepared to assist and support the process in Türkiye."
According to a statement released after the meeting, he stressed that "(the process) is the only right way to reach a solution," urging all parties to "focus their efforts" on achieving it.
