Turkey’s Kurdish PKK leader is ready to end the insurgency, a report claims

The jailed leader of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call on the militants to lay down their arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group’s decades . – old insurgency.

A protester holds up a sign with a portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 (AFP) — A protester holds up a sign with a portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 (AFP)

Two lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party met Ocalan for talks in his prison on the island on Saturday, the first such visit in nearly a decade. The DEM requested the visit after a key Erdogan ally extended a proposal to end the 40-year conflict between the state and Ocalan’s PKK.

“I am ready to take the necessary positive (step) and make the call,” Ocalan said, according to a statement by lawmakers on Sunday.

Ocalan did not specify what the call would be, but his comments came after Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli said Ocalan should call for militants to lay down their arms.

The DEM requested the visit shortly after Bahceli extended a proposal to end the conflict, suggesting in October that Ocalan announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for his possible release.

Erdogan described Bahceli’s initial proposal as “a historic window of opportunity” but did not talk about any peace process.

Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a prison on Imrali Island, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.

Recent developments in Syria and Gaza have shown that the solution to the Kurdish issue has become “immediate,” Ocalan also said, adding that the opposition and Parliament should also contribute to the new process, in a veiled reference to possible legal changes.

A major development in the region was the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria this month. Turkey has repeatedly said there will be no place for the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara sees as an extension of the PKK, in Syria’s future.

“I am also qualified and determined to make the necessary positive contribution to the new paradigm that Mr. Bahceli and Mr. Erdogan have empowered,” Ocalan said, according to the DEM statement.

Turkey and its Western allies consider the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which was once concentrated in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now concentrated in northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.