Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan urges all parties to act responsibly to ensure Turkey’s Kurdish peace process succeeds.
ISTANBUL: Imprisoned Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan has called for all parties to make genuine efforts to ensure Turkey’s peace process succeeds.
Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is leading efforts to transition from armed rebellion to democratic political struggle for Kurdish rights.
A cross-party parliamentary committee has been working since August on a legal framework for this peace transition.
The committee must decide on Ocalan’s fate and possible security guarantees for his fighters.
Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement since his capture in 1999.
“To progress to a positive phase, it is essential for everyone to act with sensitivity, seriousness and a sense of responsibility,” Ocalan wrote in a message published on Tuesday.
The message was published by a delegation from the pro-Kurdish DEM party that visited him in jail on Monday.
“The basis for this must be to integrate the Kurdish question in all its dimensions into the country’s legal framework and engage in a solid transition process,” he added.
The PKK formally renounced its armed struggle against the Turkish state in May.
This ended four decades of conflict that claimed approximately 50,000 lives on both sides.
Last month, the group announced it was withdrawing its last fighters in Turkey to northern Iraq.
This completed the first phase of the peace process initiated a year earlier.
The DEM party, parliament’s third largest, has called for the second phase to begin.
They want “namely the legal and political steps” to proceed.
Turkey’s Kurdish community is estimated to comprise 20% of the country’s 86 million population. – AFP
