Two members of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party have travelled to İmralı Island to meet with Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in what observers consider part of a cautious return to dialogue over the Kurdish issue in Turkey.
Pervin Buldan, a DEM Party member of parliament for Van (Wan), and Faik Özgür Erol, a lawyer from the Asrin Law Office, are part of the delegation visiting the high-security prison where Öcalan is held.
The visit, confirmed by party officials on 21 April, marks the fourth official trip by DEM Party delegates to İmralı since October 2024. The Turkish government has gradually permitted limited contact with Öcalan after a period of 44 months in which all outside communication was blocked.
Öcalan, who has been imprisoned since 1999, is held at the İmralı F-Type High-Security Prison alongside three other inmates—Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş. All four have faced long-standing restrictions on family and legal visits.
On 23 October, Öcalan was permitted a rare family meeting with his nephew, Ömer Öcalan, a DEM Party MP for Urfa (Riha). That meeting marked the first formal contact with the outside world in nearly four years.
Since then, Turkish authorities have allowed three rounds of political visits: on 28 December, 22 January and 27 February. The third and most comprehensive meeting, including DEM Party co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan, veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Türk, and lawyers from the Asrin Law Office, concluded with Öcalan’s public statement ‘Call for Peace and a Democratic Society’. The PKK leader called for disarmament and political reconciliation with the Turkish state for peace and democracy.
Further progress appeared likely after DEM Party delegation members, including Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 10 April. The delegation was then scheduled to meet with Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç on 18 April. However, those plans were disrupted when Önder suffered a heart attack on 15 April. He remains hospitalised in intensive care at Florence Nightingale Hospital in İstanbul.
The DEM Party has not commented in detail on the content of this latest visit but the delegation’s follow-up with the Justice Ministry was expected to precede the İmralı meeting.
As part of recent concessions during the Eid holiday, all four İmralı prisoners were granted family visits on 31 March. Attendees included Öcalan’s brother Mehmet Öcalan and nephew Ömer Öcalan, along with relatives of the other inmates.
While no formal peace process has been officially declared, the DEM Party has framed its engagement with both the government and Öcalan as steps towards dialogue over the long-running conflict. A previous and short-lived Turkish-Kurdish peace process collapsed in 2015 following the breakdown of negotiations between the state and the PKK. Since then, discussions about resuming talks have largely taken place behind closed doors and through informal channels.
The DEM Party has stated that Öcalan’s voice will be essential to any future resolution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. His recent meetings with party representatives are therefore closely watched by supporters and analysts alike.
