https://arab.news/g9b9e
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye鈥檚 pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM鈥檚 three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.
The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers鈥� Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
It was the Ocalan鈥檚 first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.
The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the 鈥渞ight to hope鈥� in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.
Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye鈥檚 concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.
During Saturday鈥檚 meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had 鈥渢he competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.鈥�
Onder and Buldan then 鈥渂egan a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties鈥� and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.