, whose members played a key role in recent peace talks with jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.){kind=link}
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will meet on Thursday with a delegation from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), whose members played a key role in recent peace talks with jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Erdoğan announced the meeting during a speech to his ruling party on Wednesday.
“By receiving the DEM [Party] delegation, we will not only meet with them but will also reaffirm our determination to achieve a Turkey free of terrorism,” he said.
The delegation includes senior Kurdish politicians Pervin Buldan, Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Ahmet Türk, all of whom have visited Öcalan in prison several times as part of the peace talks aimed at resolving the armed conflict between Turkey and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Öcalan, the founding leader of the PKK, in February issued a historic call for his group to lay down its arms and disband — a landmark message that was publicly read out in İstanbul.
The DEM Party delegation is expected to seek another visit to Öcalan following their meeting with Erdoğan.
The upcoming meeting marks the first time since 2009 that Erdoğan, then prime minister, will hold formal talks with members of a pro-Kurdish political party regarding the long-standing conflict.
The earlier dialogue effort included Ahmet Türk and Selahattin Demirtaş, the former co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) who has been imprisoned since 2016 on terrorism-related charges widely seen as politically motivated.
Founded by Öcalan in 1978, the PKK has waged a decades-long war in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
The peace talks were initiated by a surprise call from Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and an ally of Erdoğan, when he offered Öcalan a surprise peace gesture in October if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by Erdoğan.
Öcalan, 75, has been serving a life sentence without parole on İmralı Island since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999.
Since his detention there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed that erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives. The last round of talks collapsed in a storm of violence in 2015.