DEM Party group visits Öcalan for second time

A delegation from the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) visits jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on Jan. 22, marking a second meeting in less than a month.

The delegation made up of lawmakers Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan was poised to brief Öcalan on contacts with various parties following the first meeting on Dec. 28, 2024.

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

Delegation members, along with former mayor Ahmet Türk, have since engaged in talks with political parties in parliament.

The trio later visited former HDP officials Selahattin Demirtaş, Figen Yüksekdağ, Selçuk Mızraklı and Leyla Güven in prisons.

The rare visit to Öcalan became possible after Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli invited Öcalan to come to the parliament to renounce terror and disband PKK.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his ally, backed the appeal as a "historic window of opportunity."

After the delegation returned from İmralı, 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, Türkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004, and he is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on İmralı island.