ANKARA, Turkey: As part of an ongoing peace endeavor to settle a decades-long conflict, a Turkish parliamentary delegation met with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned head of a Kurdish militant group, on Monday.
The militant group’s decision earlier this year to disband and lay down guns was the main topic of discussion during the infrequent meeting with Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. According to a statement from the Turkish Grand National Assembly, it also addressed the execution of a deal that called for incorporating Kurdish forces into a new Syrian army.
Since 1984, the PKK has fought an armed insurgency against the Turkish government and has been classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU. It first called for the creation of an independent Kurdish state, then shifted to demands for greater rights and autonomy within Turkiye. Syria and Iraq, two nearby countries, have been affected by the fighting.
The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, reached an agreement on March 10, but its execution has mostly stopped. According to Turkiye, the SDF and the PKK are closely related. Because of worries that the Syrian Kurdish fighters would maintain their autonomy in Syria and continue to present security threats along its border, Israel has been pushing for the deal’s implementation.
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