Turkey moves Kurdish militant leader as part of peace process

Turkey has moved the country’s Kurdish militant leader to a newly built part of an island prison where he has been incarcerated since 1999 as part of efforts to end decades of conflict, a senior Kurdish official said.

Improving prison conditions for Abdullah Ocalan, who heads the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has been a key Kurdish demand in the push to end the 42-year-long conflict between the militant group and Turkish authorities.

Ocalan has been imprisoned in a penitentiary on the island of Imrali in the Marmara Sea – which links the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea – since he was captured in 1999.

Mithat Sancar, the Kurdish official, confirmed Ocalan’s relocation in a TV interview on Saturday, without providing further details.

He did not confirm that the newly built section of the prison has better accommodation, though his remarks appeared to indicate that.

Sancar, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, also called for the peace process to be sped up and said it had been on “a pause” for the last two months.

Ocalan’s move to the new facility, he said, “necessitates an acceleration of the [peace] process.”

Sancar is among a group of DEM Party politicians who have been regularly visiting Ocalan since the militant leader called on the PKK to disband and disarm in February last year. Ocalan remains an influential figure among Kurds and is seen as key in advancing the peace process.

Three months later, the PKK announced it would lay down its arms and end hostilities. That prompted the Turkish parliament to approve legislation in August offering a conditional pardon to thousands of PKK fighters, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan subsequently signed into law.

The conflict with the PKK – designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.

Sancar stressed that Ocalan, who co-founded the PKK in the 1970s, must coordinate peace negotiations.

“The process cannot proceed with unilateral expectations and demands,” he said, referring to the Turkish government and adding that it “needs to move away from its insistent and rigid stance.”