A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due to meet on Saturday with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on Istanbul’s prison island, a party source said.
“The delegation left in the morning,” the source told AFP, without elaborating on how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
This visit will be the party’s first visit in almost 10 years.
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met with Öcalan in April 2015.
On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, nearly half a century ago and has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Türkiye and most of its Western allies, including the United States and the European Union.
The DEM party delegation is composed of two MPs – Sirri Sureya Onder and Pervin Buldan. The same source told AFP that he was not expected to make any statement after the visit.
Detained by Turkish security forces in Kenya 25 years ago in a Hollywood-style operation after years on the run, Ocalan was sentenced to death.
He escaped execution when Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2004 and is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on Imreli prison island south of Istanbul.
Saturday’s rare visit was made possible after Devlet Bahceli, a nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce “terrorism” and dismantle the militant group.
Bahceli, who heads the ultra-nationalist MHP party, is a staunch opponent of the PKK.
Erdogan hailed the unprecedented appeal as a “historic window of opportunity”.
“My dear Kurdish brothers, we hope that you will firmly understand [Bahceli’s] Extending a sincere hand,” he said in October, urging them to join efforts to build what he called “Türkiye’s century.”
Shortly after Bahceli’s call, Ocalan was granted his first family visit since March 2020, prompting Dem to submit his request to the Justice Ministry to meet the 75-year-old terrorist.
PKK militants then claimed responsibility for an attack on a Turkish defense company in October, in which five people were killed. This delayed the government’s approval of DEM’s request.
For several years until 2015, Ocalan engaged in negotiations with officials, when then-Prime Minister Erdogan called for a solution to what is often referred to as Turkey’s “Kurdish problem”.
The peace process and ceasefire collapsed in 2015, leading to a resumption of violence, especially in the Kurdish-majority southeast.
The government has taken the Kurds by surprise after rebels in neighboring Syria ousted strongman President Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8.
Türkiye regularly targets Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and Iraq.