Abdullah Ocalan offers Erdogan his “positive support” in the face of a “new paradigm” of “fraternity” between Kurds and Turks
MADRID, 29 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has offered from prison his support for any peace effort to end the long and bloody armed conflict between Turkey and his organization at a key moment such as the end of the war in Syria.
The war that broke out in 1984 between the PKK and Turkey has cost more than 40,000 lives and saw its last episode with a Turkish military campaign against the Kurdish-Arab militias in Syria, which Ankara accuses of complicity with the armed organization, designated by the Turkish authorities as a terrorist organization.
The turn of events began when the leader of the ultranationalist Turkish Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahçeli — a key ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — proposed that a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Turkish People’s Equality and Democracy Party will visit Ocalan in the prison on the island of Imrali. Ocalan has been behind bars since 1999, first sentenced to death for treason in a sentence commuted three years later to life in prison.
The visit finally took place this Saturday and ended with an offer of peace from Ocalan: “I have the necessary experience and will to provide positive support to the new paradigm supported by Bahçeli and Erdogan,” the PKK leader said in a statement. summary statement of the meeting published by the pro-Kurdish party.
“I am ready to take the necessary positive measures,” Ocalan promised after a three-hour meeting with deputies Sirri Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan, participants in the last reconciliation effort between Turkey and the PKK, which collapsed in 2015.
Ocalan added that “strengthening the brotherhood of Kurds and Turks is not only a historical responsibility, but also has decisive and urgent importance for all peoples.”
“The delegation is ready to share its approach both with the state and with political circles. In this perspective, we are prepared to take positive steps when necessary,” insisted Ocalan, who has called for a new era of “peace, democracy and brotherhood” in Türkiye.