Three Turkish MPs made an unprecedented visit to the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Monday, to try to push ahead a continuing peace process between the militants and Ankara.
MPs, including a representative from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), met Abdullah Ocalan at a prison on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul, Turkey’s Parliament confirmed in a statement. It was the first recorded visit to Ocalan by MPs from parties other than Turkey’s pro-Kurdish groups.
The MPs took “detailed statements” about the PKK’s pledge to disband and lay down its arms, the Parliament statement said. “As a result of the meeting, positive outcomes were achieved in terms of social integration, strengthening brotherhood and advancing the process from a regional perspective.”
In February, Ocalan called on PKK members to disarm and dissolve the group that he founded in the late 1970s. In July, PKK fighters burnt some of their weapons in what Kurdish politicians in Turkey described as a sign of the militants' preparedness to move away from armed struggle. And, in recent weeks, the group announced both its withdrawal from Turkey and areas of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
The PKK’s full dissolution would end one of the Middle East’s longest conflicts, which has defined modern Turkey and caused the deaths of at least 40,000 people. The group is designated as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the US and the EU, and is widely regarded by Turkey as its primary security threat. Ocalan is serving a life prison sentence for treason and has been incarcerated since he was captured by Turkish commandoes in 1999.
Monday’s meeting came after MPs on a parliamentary committee designed to propel forward the PKK’s dissolution approved the visit in a vote on Friday. Feti Yildiz, from the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party, was among the three to meet Ocalan, along with the AKP’s Huseyin Yayman and Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party. Mr Yildiz told Turkish media on Friday that there would be “no bargaining or give and take” with the PKK leader.
On Monday, Mr Erdogan said he supported the visit as a way towards a “terror-free Turkey” – a description used by the government for the PKK’s dissolution.
“We consider the commission's latest decision to pave the way for this process, contribute to it and accelerate the elimination of terrorism,” he told journalists on a flight returning from the G20 leaders’ summit in South Africa.
The MPs’ meeting with Ocalan also involved discussions over the fate of Kurdish militias in north-eastern Syria, who Turkey considers to be an extension of the PKK and has vowed to eradicate. The militias, under an umbrella known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, in March signed an agreement with the government in Damascus for their integration into a national army.
But implementation of that deal has been slow, leading observers in Turkey to fear that it could jeopardise the PKK’s dissolution.
Efforts to work out a framework determining the future for former militants have been slow. Some in Turkey believe they should be allowed to return home and be granted amnesty, while others, including veterans’ representatives, firmly reject this. The wildly differing views have made it hard to come to a consensus, complicating a push for the parliamentary commission to propose legislation over the PKK members’ fate.
Turkey’s largest opposition party, the People’s Republican Party, opposed the visit to Ocalan. It abstained from the commission vote on Friday afternoon and group vice president Murat Emir told reporters that they rejected “a visit, conducted in secret from the public”.
