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A landmark meeting between lawmakers and the jailed leader of the PKK terrorist group will take place this week. The focus of the meeting will be the U.S.-backed YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, which did not join the leading group for disarmament. The visit to Imralı island prison near Istanbul is part of the terror-free Türkiye initiative launched in 2024 by government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli.
The National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Committee of the Turkish Parliament, set up to advance the initiative, agreed to visit Öcalan during a session last Friday. The committee, established last August, has already heard from several people, from representatives of nongovernmental organizations to people affected by decades of PKK violence. Bahçeli made waves last Tuesday when he volunteered to hold talks with the group’s ringleader, Abdullah Öcalan.
Öcalan already responded to Bahçeli’s call for the PKK’s dissolution by urging his terrorist group to dissolve last February.
“I won’t take offense at going to Imralı,” Bahçeli said at his party’s parliamentary group meeting in Ankara. Bahçeli’s remarks are yet another significant shift in the discourse of a veteran nationalist politician who once called for the hanging of Öcalan. As a matter of fact, he launched the terror-free Türkiye initiative by shaking hands with lawmakers of a party he once called for closure for its links to the PKK.
The terror-free Türkiye initiative took several critical turns after Öcalan’s written statement in February. The terrorist group announced it would heed Öcalan’s call last spring and started “burning weapons” in a ceremony in Iraq this summer. This month, it announced it had withdrawn from Zap, a former stronghold of terrorists in northern Iraq. This move was preceded by an October announcement that said the PKK withdrew all its members from Türkiye to Iraq.
Opponents of the terror-free Türkiye initiative have criticized planned talks with Öcalan, though Bahçeli says it is necessary to give voice to the initiative’s leading actor. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which has representatives in the parliamentary committee, shunned sending representatives to the delegation that will meet Öcalan. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the MHP, and the pro-PKK Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) agreed to dispatch lawmakers to Imralı.
This is not the first visit by delegations; DEM Party lawmakers also met him last year after the initiative was launched. Those were the first visits to Öcalan in years, who had once been held in solitary confinement in the prison before authorities, long before the start of the initiative, allowed fellow inmates to be transported to the island.
Öcalan has made lengthy statements conveyed to the public by the DEM Party, but this latest meeting’s agenda is expected to be more tangible. Lawmakers will seek to clarify how wide the PKK’s dissolution will be and whether it would include the YPG. The issue of the YPG’s disarmament has been up in the air, especially after the terrorist group seemingly agreed to integrate with the Syrian army after the Baathist regime in Syria collapsed last December. Yet, the integration did not happen with Damascus rejecting the YPG’s calls for adhering to its so-called autonomy in the northeastern Syria, immediately across the Turkish border.
The National Intelligence Organization (MIT), which is also tasked with monitoring the PKK’s disarmament in Iraq and elsewhere, will arrange the trip of lawmakers to Imralı, likely by helicopter or a private ferry.
