ISTANBUL, Dec 27, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Turkey has approved a request by the pro-Kurdish DEM party to visit jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life in solitary confinement, the justice minister and a party spokesman said Friday.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc confirmed the move in remarks to TRGT news channel.

"We responded positively to DEM's request for a meeting. Depending on the weather conditions, they will go to Imrali tomorrow or Sunday," he said, referring to the prison island where Ocalan has been held for 25 years.

A DEM party spokesman had earlier said they received "a call (from the justice ministry), there will be a visit tomorrow or Sunday as long as the weather is not bad".
Ocalan founded the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey and is considered a terror organisation by Ankara and its Western allies.

He has been serving life without parole since 1999 on Imrali island off the coast of Istanbul, which has been hit by unsettled weather in recent days.

Tunc said the delegation would be made up of two DEM lawmakers, Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Puldan.

The move comes two months after the head of Turkey's far-right MHP party extended Ocalan a shock olive branch, inviting him to parliament to renounce terror and disband his group, a move backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A day later, Ocalan was allowed his first family visit since March 2020, prompting DEM to make its own request to the justice ministry to visit the 75-year-old former guerrilla.

At the time, observers said the government was looking to reach out to the Kurds in order to ease the pressure along its border with Syria.

On December 8, rebels in neighbouring Syria overthrew strongman Bashar al-Assad, giving Turkey a new opportunity to tackle the threat it says it faces from Kurdish militants along the border in northern Syria.