For anyone with an interest in the future of the largest Middle Eastern ethnic group without a nation of their own to call home, this latest development could be absolutely monumental — particularly if it helps to peacefully resolve the long-standing conflict between Türkiye and its Kurdish minority in southeastern Anatolia (and their neighbors in northeastern Syria. From AFP:
A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party on Saturday visited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, party officials said.
The visit was the party’s first in almost 10 years.
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On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
The PKK is regarded as a “terror” organisation by Turkey and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
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DEM’s co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan said he hoped the talks with Ocalan would “open a new era” for a democratic settlement to the Kurdish issue.
“While I speak here, our delegation is currently meeting with Mr Abdullah Ocalan at Imrali (island). We believe it’s important,” he told reporters in the Uludere district near the Iraqi border.
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“I hope that the discussions there will enable the Kurdish issue to be resolved through democratic means and on a democratic basis.”
After the delegation returned from the island, DEM party said they would make a statement on Sunday on the content of talks with Ocalan.
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Saturday’s rare visit became possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce “terror”, and to disband the militant group.
Bahceli, who heads the ultra-nationalist MHP party, is fiercely hostile to the PKK.
Erdogan backed the unprecedented appeal as a “historic window of opportunity”.
Erdogan had once before reached out to Ocalan to try and resolve Türkiye’s Kurdish problem, back in 2012-15, but those negotiations fell apart when he failed to get the ultra-nationalists on board and he abandoned the process to shore up his own nationalist base of support.
This time looks much more promising if he’s letting the ultra-nationalists take the lead; and regardless of how most of us might feel about his autocratic tendencies, if Erdogan actually pulls this off and manages to make peace with the PKK Kurds (which presumably would also include their brethren in the YKP/SDF of northeastern Syria), he will almost certainly go down in history as the greatest Turk since Mustafa Kemel Ataturk himself, the founder of the modern Türkiye.
Hope to have an update tomorrow after the DEM releases their statement on their talks with Ocalan. In any event I’ll try to include more info on Ocalan himself, who is a fascinating character in his own right, and who has the potential to become Türkiye’s Nelson Mandella.
