Erdoğan visits highway construction during Öcalan’s call on PKK to disarm

Turkish President Erdoğan visited a highway construction in Istanbul while Öcalan’s call on PKK to disarm and dissolve itself was being read at a press conference.

Thursday February 27 2025 07:59 pm

Duvar English

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Feb. 27 visited a highway construction during outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan’s historic call.

Öcalan on Feb. 27 called on the PKK to disarm and dissolve itself, saying they must seek democratic consensus as “separate nation-state, federation, administrative autonomy or culturalist solutions fails to answer the historical sociology of the society” currently.

Öcalan’s call was read by a pro-Kurdish DEM Party delegation at 5 pm local time in Istanbul after their visit to Öcalan on the prison island of İmralı.

The Presidency’s Communications Directorate shared Erdoğan’s visit to the highway construction in Istanbul at 5.39 pm.

Cumhurbaşkanımız Sayın Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, İstanbul’da yapımı süren Başakşehir-Nakkaştepe Otoyolu şantiyesini ziyaret ederek, yetkililerden yürütülen çalışmalara ilişkin bilgi aldı. pic.twitter.com/RQE6n72Hbj
— T.C. İletişim Başkanlığı (@iletisim) February 27, 2025

Öcalan’s call came after the government’s initiative led by MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, an Erdoğan ally.

In October, Bahçeli surprisingly proposed that Öcalan should announce an end to the insurgency at the parliament in exchange for the possibility of his release from İmralı.

The PKK, designated a “terrorist” group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the initial aim of creating an independent Kurdish state. It subsequently moderated its goals to seek greater Kurdish rights and limited autonomy in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.