Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş is set to visit Diyarbakır, a city intensely targeted by the PKK terrorist group in the past, on Oct. 17 as part of the terror-free Türkiye initiative aimed at ending four decades of violence and bloodshed.
A statement from the Speaker’s Office said Friday Kurtulmuş will attend the Dicle University Academic Year Opening Ceremony and the Diyarbakır Cultural Road Festival, followed by meetings with civil society representatives. Members of the Parliament’s Presidential Council and lawmakers from the National Solidarity, Brotherhood, and Democracy Committee have also been invited to join the visit.
The visit comes amid growing attention to the initiative launched by Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli last year. The initiative seeks to end the PKK’s terror campaign that has claimed more than 40,000 lives and to achieve full disarmament by the end of 2025.
Bahçeli’s unprecedented call last year for the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan to urge disarmament was followed by a symbolic ceremony of PKK terrorists burning their weapons in northern Iraq this summer. Since then, the Parliament’s special committee has held over a dozen sessions with academics, think tanks, business groups, and families of terror victims to map out a legislative framework for lasting peace.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has underscored that the process must advance “without betraying the memory of martyrs.” “Together, we will reach the goal of a terror-free Türkiye with patience and hope,” he said.
Kurtulmuş’s Diyarbakır program is seen as a symbolic continuation of this outreach, focusing on unity, economic cooperation, and inclusive democracy. The committee has wrapped up the “hearing phase” and awaits political parties’ own reports before it is expected to submit a final framework to the General Assembly.
