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Turkish lawmakers who are members of a parliamentary commission overseeing the peace process with the Kurdish guerrilla visited Abdullah Öcalan, the historic leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in prison for the first time on Monday.

The meeting between the parliamentary delegation and the imprisoned Kurdish leader on Imrali Island, off Istanbul, “yielded positive results,” according to a statement from the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

The lawmakers and Öcalan discussed the modalities for dissolving the PKK and disarming its forces, as well as implementing an agreement to integrate Kurdish forces into the Syrian army, the statement said.

The Turkish government has been engaged in a peace process with the PKK since autumn 2024, following four decades of guerrilla warfare that claimed some 50,000 lives.

From his isolated prison cell since 1999, 76-year-old Abdullah Öcalan called on PKK fighters in late February to renounce armed struggle.

The PKK, which announced its dissolution in May, said last week that it had completed the withdrawal of its forces from a strategic area in northern Iraq near the Turkish border, a step aimed at consolidating the ongoing peace process with Ankara.

The PKK had previously announced at the end of October the withdrawal of its last fighters from Turkey to northern Iraq, after several dozen uniformed fighters symbolically burned their weapons during a July ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan.

AFP