ANKARA: Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM party on Monday hailed the withdrawal of PKK fighters from Turkish soil as a “critical” step that completed the first phase of Ankara’s peace process with the Kurdish militants.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought the government for four decades, began withdrawing its forces on Sunday, urging Turkiye to take the legal steps to advance the process which began a year ago when Ankara offered an olive branch to its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
“This decision to withdraw is the most concrete expression of (the PKK’s) resolve on the path to peace,” DEM co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan told reporters, describing it as “one of the most critical and significant steps.”
“At this point, the first phase of the (peace) process has concluded,” he said, urging the government to press ahead with the “critical and vital second phase... (of) legal and political steps.”
“Parliament must facilitate and develop this process. Legal arrangements must be made for the transition period. These will not only be technical arrangements, they will be the building blocks of peace,” he said.
“A solution to the Kurdish issue means the democratization of Turkiye, we all win.”
Turkiye has set up a parliamentary commission to prepare a peace process and a legal framework for the political integration of the PKK and its fighters. The DEM has urged authorities to act quickly.
“In this new phase of the process, taking political and legal steps swiftly is crucial for its progress,” said Bakirhan’s co-chair Tulay Hatimogullari.
Parliamentary speaker Numan Kurtulmus, who heads the commission, on Monday said once the PKK move was confirmed by Turkiye’s security and intelligence agencies, “a period of legislative amendments” related to the process would begin.
Ocalan’s freedom ‘crucial’
Indirect talks with the PKK began last year with the backing of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the DEM, Turkiye’s third-biggest party, playing a key role in facilitating the emerging agreement.
The party has said it will send a delegation to meet Erdogan on Thursday.
Since December, a DEM delegation has regularly met with Ocalan who has been serving a life sentence in solitary confinement on Imrali prison island near Istanbul since 1999.
Now 76, Ocalan has been central to the peace drive, making a historic call in February that led his fighters to renounce their armed struggle in May. That drew a line under four decades of conflict that had claimed some 50,000 lives.
The PKK has repeatedly called for his release, with Bakirhan urging the government to ease his conditions and allow him to take a greater role in the process.
Ocalan’s role was “decisive” in the peace efforts reaching this stage, he said, calling for him to be given the freedom to “take greater initiative and play a more active role in the process.”
The PKK on Sunday said the parliamentary commission must meet with Ocalan. Senior leader Devrim Palu told AFP his freedom was “crucial for this process to advance with greater effectiveness.”
