Leader Ocalan: We have decision, will to move process forward

Following their visit to Imrali on Tuesday, a delegation of the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party announced their meeting with the leader Abdullah Ocalan. In a statement, the party clarified that the four-hour meeting, held on December 2nd, focused on Ocalan's assessment of the positive outcomes of his meeting with the National Solidarity, Fraternity, and Democracy Committee, established in the Turkish Parliament to solve the Kurdish issue.

The statement indicated that the leader confirmed the necessity of resolving the Kurdish issue within a legal framework and the democratic forces' holding their responsibility, pointing at the same time to the recent attempts and statements against the process, deeming them acts of sabotage aimed at obstructing the ongoing progress.

The statement included, "This situation appears in all operations as a mechanism for a coup d'etat. This is not a traditional coup d'etat attempt, but rather a campaign against efforts to advance the process. It should be understood as attempts to create a dangerous and catastrophic situation. These parties today constitute a continuation of forces outside the framework of the state. On the other hand, a political and social will has emerged that is reinforced every day against the traditions of culture, politics, and secret and public organization, which operate as a coup pattern that has shaped Turkey during the last century."

The statement indicated that the leader Abdullah Ocalan addressed the developments within the current process and made the following assessments: "Undemocratic interventions and political violence will be excluded from the Turkish agenda through the enactment of a peace law based on multilateral legal frameworks. In this context, the statement we issued on February 27th provides a roadmap for this, and all the steps taken towards this goal and the responsibility we have assumed demonstrate our objective of achieving co-existence, and all the political and social actors who wish to properly utilize the opportunity of governance and power must address political issues honestly, and cooperate in the democratic solution process. This process means the legal integration of Kurds into the Republic, and the building of a democratic republic with the broadest social participation. I want to say that we are determined to move forward with this process and have a strong will to progress in this framework."

The visiting delegation included Pervin Buldan, the deputy chair of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, the member of Parliament Mithat Sancar, and lawyer Faik Özgür Erol from the Century Law Office.

This is the first visit by the delegation, after the visit of the Committee for National Solidarity, Fraternity and Democracy, and its meeting with leader Abdullah Ocalan.

J.J