Öcalan may call for disarmament as of March, Demirtaş says

Leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan could make a call for disarmament as of March 2015 if a consensus is reached in the Kurdish peace process with the Turkish state, co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş said in an interview Nov. 14.

“Mr. Öcalan was very clear on this in the last meeting: ‘A negotiation will not take years or months if it started. This is my proposal to the state. You bring your solution proposals and program and I will discuss them with friends, a consular who could help in Ä°mralı [Island prison]. I have a road map in my mind.  [Let me] finalize this with the help of my friends. Then we can put our roadmap on the table and you can put yours. Then we can discuss each, article by article, and allow the observers to monitor these discussions. If we come to a consensus then I can call on the PKK to gather a congress and disarm as of March or April,’” Demirtaş told Mednuçe TV station citing Öcalan’s proposals. Öcalan is serving a life sentence in Ä°mralı Island prison near the Marmara Sea and a delegation of three HDP deputies continue to hold meetings with him as part of the peace process.

Demirtaş said that the government has not proposed any road maps while Öcalan has proposed his to them. “The dialogue stopped at this point,” he added. However, he also said the meetings could restart with the recent statements of the government officials.

The HDP’s deputy parliamentary chairs, Pervin Buldan and İdris Baluken, and HDP Istanbul deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder will be holding a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan on Nov. 17.

There has been a stalemate in the peace process, which the government prefers...