ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s key nationalist ally urged jailed PKK militant group leader Abdullah Ocalan to explicitly announce the group’s disbandment after his next expected meeting with the country’s pro-Kurdish political party.
The remarks by Devlet Bahceli, leader of the nationalist MHP party, came after a rare meeting between officials from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party and Ocalan last week.
The PKK, designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and European Union, has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
“At the second meeting to be held between the DEM delegation and (Ocalan), it should be stated without any conditions that the organisational existence of the PKK is over, that no results have been achieved with terrorism, and that this bloody page has been closed,” Bahceli said in parliament.
“PKK terrorists must either bury their weapons, hand themselves in along with their weapons, or meet their inevitable end. There is no bartering, negotiating with terror,” he added, saying the first meeting between DEM and Ocalan was a “positive” development.
The meeting came after a surprise proposal by Bahceli last year for Ocalan to announce the PKK’s disbandment.
Those talks have fostered peace hopes, but the precarious situation of Kurdish forces in Syria, where rebels took over the country after 13 years of civil war, and uncertainty about the Turkish intentions have left many Kurds anxious about the path ahead.
After the first meeting with DEM officials, Ocalan was cited as indicating a willingness to call on the PKK to lay down arms. Two DEM sources told Reuters last week the party was now set to visit Ocalan again, as soon as Jan. 15.
Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and has remained in prison on Imrali island, in the Sea of Marmara, since then.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Daren Butler and Jonathan Spicer)
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