Erdoğan Hails 'New Era' After Talks with Jailed PKK Leader

“No one would be willing to waste an opportunity that will permanently and definitively eliminate the scourge of terrorism,” Erdoğan said in a parliamentary speech on Dec. 15.

The talks held with the PKK leader serving life on a prison island off Istanbul on Dec. 28, 2024, were the first since the pro-Kurdish DEM Party's predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), met with him in April 2015.

“Not using the opportunity to open the doors of this new era, which finds its meaning in the phrase 'terrorism-free Turkey' is incompatible with the responsibility we have assumed,” Erdoğan said.

“We have instructed our friends to carry out the work to ensure the dismantling of the separatist organization carefully and in a multifaceted manner."

The visit to Öcalan became possible after Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Devlet Bahçeli invited Öcalan to come to parliament to renounce terror and disband PKK. Erdoğan, his ally, backed the appeal as a "historic window of opportunity."

“We want to put the gun out of the way, tear down the wall of terror, and hug each other tightly as 85 million people. We want to build our future together, taking strength and inspiration from our common past of a thousand years," Erdoğan said on Jan. 15.

“We want to heal the wounds inflicted on hearts by terrorism for 40 years, hand in hand, heart to heart.”

The president described the delegation’s talks with Öcalan as "fruitful."

“If the necessary call is made and the terrorist organization and related structures take the necessary steps, the winner will be all of Turkey, with its Turks and Kurds,” he said.

"If the organization turns a deaf ear to this call... then we will achieve our goal of a terrorism-free Turkey through other methods."

Erdoğan said the government’s priority is to conclude the decades-long conflict "peacefully, calmly and by using the existing mechanisms."

"Our people have suffered a lot from terrorism and paid a heavy price. It is time to put an end to this forever. Today is the day,” he stated. “Today is the day of brotherhood. Today is the day to open the door of peace wide open."

After the delegation returned from the island, a DEM Party statement said Öcalan was "ready to make a call" to back a new initiative by the Turkish government to end decades of conflict.

Detained 25 years ago by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, the PKK leader was sentenced to death. However, Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004 and he is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the İmralı island.

Source: HDN