After 26 years in a Turkish prison, Abdullah Ocalan is carving out a key role for himself as Ankara tries to end his outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s four-decade
insurgency.
In an event that was unimaginable a year ago, three Turkish lawmakers visited Ocalan on Monday to further the peace process following the PKK’s announcement in May that it would disarm and disband.
In July, the PKK symbolically burned weapons and last month announced it was withdrawing fighters from Turkey as part of the disarmament process. PKK attacks have come to a halt since the process began.
But there is still some way to go to complete the peace process after a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people, and Ocalan’s abiding authority over the PKK ensures his
involvement is vital.
Balancing Act
The parliament speaker’s office said that during Monday’s talks at Imrali prison in the Marmara Sea, the parliamentarians took statements from Ocalan related to the PKK’s disbandment and Syrian Kurdish forces, which Turkey regards as part of the PKK.
Achieving peace would be a major achievement for President Tayyip Erdogan – the conflict has sown deep political and cultural divisions in Turkey and set back the economy in the
mainly Kurdish southeast by a generation.
Erdogan, 71, has remained largely in the background as peace moves progress with the PKK, which is deemed a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its Western allies after its attacks on both civilian and military targets.
But he welcomed the decision by the three members of a parliamentary commission to visit Ocalan, 76, saying it “paves the way for the process, contributes to it and accelerates the elimination of terrorism”.
Erdogan may be partly motivated by hopes of winning Kurdish support if he calls early elections or seeks constitutional changes to extend his rule beyond his scheduled term limit in 2028, his critics say.
But completing the peace process involves a delicate balancing act between the government, Ocalan and the active PKK leadership in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountains, as well as the forces aligned with Ocalan in northern Syria.
With inputs from Reuters
