Anti-terror initiative nears end: Parliament speaker

ADANA

The government is approaching the final stages of its anti-terror peace initiative, Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş said on Nov. 28.

“We are pursuing our continued brotherhood in these lands in line with the goal of a terror-free Türkiye and now nearing completion to achieve results,” Kurtulmuş said at an event in the southern city of Adana.

The ceremony at Çukurova University was attended by Adana Governor Yavuz Selim Köşger, deputies from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), as well as academics and students.

"We are now leaving behind the scourge of terrorism, which has shackled the 50 years of our republic, preventing this country from moving forward and preventing its people from forming the world’s strongest nation in unity,” he said.

"We are consigning the issue of terrorism, which imperial projects use as pawns and see as a proxy for policies of division and fragmentation, to history, never to be revived again.”

The initiative is overseen by a parliamentary commission chaired by Kurtulmuş. The panel is set to convene on Dec. 4 to review findings from a delegation that visited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan on the İmralı prison island earlier this week.

Representatives from the AKP, the MHP and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) traveled to the island on Nov. 24. Talks produced “positive results” for social cohesion and regional stability, according to Kurtulmuş’s office.

The commission was formed after Öcalan called for PKK to disarm. In July, a first group of members burned their weapons, and in late October, the terror group announced its withdrawal from Turkish territory.