ISTANBUL
\nA delegation from Turkiye\u2019s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.
\n\u201cThe delegation left in the morning,\u201d the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
\nThe visit would be the party\u2019s first in almost 10 years.
\nDEM\u2019s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
\nOn Friday, the government approved DEM\u2019s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
\nThe PKK is regarded as a \u201cterror\u201d organization by Turkiye and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
\nDetained 25 years ago in a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, Ocalan was sentenced to death.
\nHe escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 and is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the Imrali prison island south of Istanbul.
\nSaturday\u2019s rare visit became possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s nationalist ally, MHP party leader Devlet Bahceli, invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce \u201cterror,\u201d and to disband the militant group.
\nErdogan backed the appeal as a \u201chistoric window of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISTANBUL A delegation from Turkiye\u2019s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said. \u201cThe delegation left in the morning,\u201d the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-452192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n