ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s justice minister said on Tuesday that his ministry ‘will work’ on specifying a date for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party’s (DEM Party) requested meeting with jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Last month the DEM Party submitted a request to the Turkish ministry to meet with Ocalan after the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli called for allowing the pro-Kurdish party to meet the PKK leader in Imrali Island.
“The application letter was on November 26. We received the letter. As I mentioned to you at the time, we said, ‘We are reviewing it,’ this process is ongoing. We will work on determining an appropriate date. God willing, we will inform you of the outcome,” Yilmaz Tunc told reporters in Ankara.
Tunc did not respond to reporters when asked whether the meeting would be held soon.
Last month, a Turkish court extended a ban on meetings between Ocalan and his lawyers for six months. Ocalan last met with his family in October. Before the meeting, the PKK leader was under strict isolation for over three years. Ocalan’s elder brother, Mehmet, last had a short phone call with him in March 2021. Numerous requests by lawyers and family to meet the PKK leader had been rejected.
In October, Turkey witnessed a drastic shift in Bahceli’s position on Ocalan and the Kurdish issue, when he proposed allowing the PKK leader to appear in the legislature and call for the dissolution of the armed group.