DEM Party prepares comprehensive statement on İmralı visit
ANKARA

A delegation from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) plans to release a comprehensive statement on Jan. 17 detailing their rare visit to jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and subsequent talks.
The talks held with the PKK leader serving life on the İmralı prison island off Istanbul on Dec. 28, 2024, were the first since the pro-Kurdish DEM Party's predecessor, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), met with him in April 2015.
Delegation members, lawmakers Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan, along with former mayor Ahmet Türk, have since engaged in talks with political parties in parliament.
The trio later visited former HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ in separate prisons on Jan. 11 and 12.
DEM Party sources told local media the Jan. 17 statement will outline the delegation’s discussions with Öcalan and its subsequent engagements with political stakeholders.
Önder said they intend to seek permission from the Justice Ministry for a second meeting with Öcalan next week.
The visit to Öcalan’s prison became possible after the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli invited Öcalan to come to the parliament to renounce terror and disband PKK. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his ally, backed the appeal as a "historic window of opportunity."
After the delegation returned from İmralı, a DEM Party statement said Öcalan was "ready to make a call" to back a new initiative by the Turkish government to end decades of conflict.
Detained 25 years ago by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, the PKK leader was sentenced to death. However, Türkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004, and he is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the İmralı island.