Turkiye's jailed PKK leader 'ready' to lay down arms, end insurgency

ANKARA: The jailed leader of Turkiye's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as saying he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group's decades-old insurgency.

Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key Erdogan ally expanded on a proposal to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and Ocalan's PKK.

"I am ready to take [the] necessary positive step and make the call," Ocalan was quoted as saying in a statement by the MPs on Sunday.

Ocalan did not specify what the call would be but his comments came after the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, said Ocalan should make a call for the militants to lay down arms.

DEM requested the visit soon after Bahceli expanded on a proposal to end the conflict, suggesting in October that Ocalan should announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.

Erdogan described Bahceli's initial proposal as a "historic window of opportunity" but has not spoken of any peace process.

Ocalan has been serving a life sentence in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.

Recent developments in the Middle East crisis showed that the solution for the Kurdish issue has become "undelayable", Ocalan was also quoted as saying, adding that opposition and Parliament should also contribute to the new process, in a veiled reference to possible legal amendments.

One major development in the region has been the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this month. Turkiye has repeatedly said there would be no place for the Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara sees as an extension of the PKK, in Syria's future.

"I am also qualified and determined to make the necessary positive contribution to the new paradigm that Mr Bahceli and Mr Erdogan have empowered," Ocalan said, according to the DEM statement.

Turkiye and its Western allies deem the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centred on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.