By Huseyin Hayatsever
ANKARA (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally said on Tuesday the Kurdish militant PKK’s jailed leader could be allowed to speak in Turkey’s parliament, if he announces an end to the group’s insurgency, in exchange for the possibility of being released.
Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), made the surprise suggestion to MHP lawmakers in a parliamentary speech following media speculation in recent weeks about fresh efforts to end a conflict that began 40 years ago.
He made the offer to Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who has been serving an aggravated life sentence in an island prison south of Istanbul since 1999, with little prospect of release.
“If the terrorist leader’s isolation is lifted, let him come and speak,” Bahceli said, proposing he address the assembly’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party in parliament. “Let him shout that terrorism is completely over and the organisation disbanded.”
He said that if Ocalan did so, he should then be given the “right to hope”, suggesting he could potentially be set free.
The call from Bahceli was extraordinary given that his speeches are regularly full of vitriol targeting Ocalan, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish DEM politicians whom he sees as allied with the PKK.
The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
The Turkish state held peace talks with Ocalan and the PKK from 2012, but that process and a ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, unleashing the bloodiest period in the conflict.
Bahceli said there was no need for a new peace process, saying that the PKK should surrender unconditionally to Turkish justice and serve prison sentences. However, he did propose the implementation of unspecified democratic reforms.
Speculation about possible steps on the issue were triggered when parliament reopened on Oct. 1 after its summer recess and Bahceli took the rare move of shaking the hands of DEM lawmakers, normally the target of his harsh rhetoric.
Following Bahceli’s call, the co-leader of DEM Tulay Hatimogullari told the party’s lawmakers in a speech that they were ready to do their part for “an honourable peace”.
“So end Ocalan’s isolation and he shall come out and speak. Then we can hear what he has to say,” Hatimogullari said in parliament.
DEM says that Ocalan has not been allowed to meet his lawyers or family for 43 months.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Daren Butler and Alison Williams)
