Jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan has sent a rare message to Ahmet Özal, the son of former Turkish President Turgut Özal, describing the late leader as a “martyr for democracy” and expressing hope for a meeting, Ahmet Özal confirmed this week.
The letter, delivered via members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party after the original courier late MP Sırrı Süreyya Önder fell ill, marked a surprising overture from Öcalan, who has been held in near-total isolation on İmralı Island since 1999.
“Öcalan praised my father’s efforts for peace in the early 1990s and referred to him as a democracy martyr,” Ahmet Özal told T24. “He wrote that he would like to meet me as soon as possible.”
Turgut Özal, who served as president from 1989 until his sudden death in April 1993, had advocated for a peaceful, political solution to the Kurdish conflict. His death at the age of 66, officially from a heart attack, has long been surrounded by speculation. His body was exhumed in 2012, but tests found no conclusive evidence of poisoning.
Ahmet Özal said he believes his father’s death should be re-examined in the context of other suspicious deaths in 1993, including journalist Uğur Mumcu, MP Adnan Kahveci and General Eşref Bitlis. “There were too many unsolved deaths that year,” he said. “My father’s vision threatened powerful interests.”
Öcalan’s outreach appears to revisit that era of tentative Kurdish-Turkish dialogue, which collapsed following Özal’s death and decades of renewed conflict. More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
“Peace is precious,” Ahmet Özal added. “Do we want another 40,000 people to die in the next 40 years?”
While he said he had no immediate way to reply, he welcomed the call for peace. “Everyone should support efforts to end the violence,” he said.
