, the Sabah daily reported on Thursday.){kind=link}
The Turkish government will allow parliament’s pro-Kurdish opposition party to hold talks with Abdullah Öcalan, jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Sabah daily reported on Thursday.
A Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) delegation is expected to go to the prison located on İmralı Island in the Sea of Marmara where Öcalan had been the sole inmate for more than a decade, on Thursday or Friday, Sabah said on its website, without specifying its source.
This will be first such visit in nearly a decade.
The decision comes after far-right Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahçeli, a key ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, proposed the move as part of a bid to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
The PKK has been waging a bloody war in Turkey’s southeast since 1984, with tens of thousands of people killed in the conflict.
Bahçeli surprised many when he suggested in October that if prison restrictions imposed on Öcalan were lifted, he could appear at the party group meeting of the DEM Party and declare the dissolution of the PKK, signaling an end to decades of violence.
In his call, backed by Erdoğan as a “historic opportunity” to resolve the Kurdish issue, Bahçeli also suggested that if Öcalan takes this step, there could be legislative action to pave the way for his possible release.
A recent survey by the İstanbul-based Spectrum House revealed that 58.5 percent of Turkish citizens disapprove of Bahçeli’s call to Öcalan.