 will meet Friday to decide whether lawmakers should travel to an island prison where PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan is incarcerated.){kind=link}
A Turkish parliamentary commission working on a legal framework for peace with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will meet Friday to decide whether lawmakers should travel to an island prison where PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan is incarcerated, officials said Wednesday.
The PKK formally renounced its four-decade armed campaign against the Turkish state in May after Öcalan urged his followers in February to lay down their weapons and shift to political activity.
Turkey has designated the PKK as a terrorist organization, and Öcalan has been imprisoned on İmralı Island near İstanbul since 1999.
The cross-party commission was created in August to prepare a legal framework for the political phase of the peace process and to outline possible steps for the integration of PKK militants who left Turkey for northern Iraq earlier this year.
Parliament said the commission will meet Friday at 2 p.m. to review its work and to consider whether lawmakers should visit Öcalan inside the high-security İmralı facility.
A senior PKK figure said last month that a direct meeting between Öcalan and lawmakers was essential for progress.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday’s meeting would shape the next phase of the process and called the commission’s work important.
Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), said Tuesday that the visit to İmralı would be the only item on the agenda and confirmed that lawmakers would vote on the proposal.
Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a close Erdoğan ally, urged the commission on Tuesday to move ahead and said he would travel to the island himself if lawmakers refused.
Erdoğan said Bahçeli had played a key role in the steps taken so far and pointed to his support for the negotiations.
© Agence France-Presse