Öcalan may call for disarmament as of March, Demirtaş says

ISTANBUL

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The imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, could make a call for disarmament by March 2015 if a consensus is reached in the Kurdish peace process with the state, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş said in an interview on Nov. 14.

“Mr. Öcalan was very clear on this in the last meeting: ‘This is my proposal to the state. You bring your solution proposals and program and I will discuss them with friends ... I have a road map in my mind.  [Let me] finalize this with the help of my friends. Then we can put our road map on the table and you can put yours. Then we can discuss each part, article by article, allowing observers to monitor these discussions. If we come to a consensus then I can call on the PKK to summon a congress and disarm by March or April,’” Demirtaş told the Mednuçe TV station.

Öcalan is serving a life sentence in İmralı Island Prison near the Marmara Sea and a delegation of three HDP deputies are continuing to hold meetings with him as part of the peace process.

Demirtaş said the government has not proposed any road maps while Öcalan has proposed his to them. “The dialogue stopped at this point,” he added, while also stressing that the meetings could restart with the recent statements of the government officials.

The HDP’s deputy parliamentary chairs, Pervin Buldan and İdris Baluken, and HDP Istanbul deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder will be holding a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan on Nov. 17.

There has recently been a stalemate in the peace process aimed at ending the three-decade long conflict between the PKK and Turkey’s security forces, particularly since the beginning of the battle for the Syrian border town of Kobane.