Türkiye allows DEM party to meet jailed PKK leader Saturday

ANKARA

Türkiye's Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç announced Friday that the pro-PKK Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) has been granted permission to visit Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned founder of the PKK terrorist group.

A delegation from DEM party is due on Saturday to visit Öcalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.

"The delegation left in the morning," the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.

The delegation, comprising Istanbul Deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Van Deputy Pervin Buldan, is set to travel to Imralı Island this weekend, weather permitting. Öcalan has been serving a life sentence on the island since 1999.

This move follows a historic call in October by the People's Alliance, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and Devlet Bahçeli's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to end decades of PKK terrorism. Bahçeli suggested allowing Öcalan to speak in Parliament and be eligible for parole, a proposal Erdoğan endorsed as a potential "window of opportunity" for a terror-free Turkey.

Öcalan has conditionally accepted this unprecedented offer. His nephew, Ömer Öcalan, a DEM Party member, quoted the PKK leader as saying, "If the conditions are right, I have the theoretical and practical power to move this process from the level of conflict and violence to a political and legal level."

The PKK, classified as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the European Union, and the United States, has been at the center of a long-standing conflict in the region.