Sawt Falasteen - Jailed PKK leader Ocalan expected to call for peace with Turkey

A delegation from Turkey's pro-Kurdish DEM party met with Ocalan at his prison on an island off Istanbul on Thursday to discuss the statement.

The visit comes after Ankara offered an olive branch to the 75-year-old Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) founder aimed at drawing a line under a decades-long insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

"The DEM party delegation.. set off for Imrali island to hold a third meeting with Mr Ocalan," a party source said. The militant leader has been in solitary confinement at Imrali since 1999.

"If everything goes smoothly, we expect Ocalan to make a historic declaration (on Thursday)," the party said late Wednesday.

The delegation includes an Ocalan lawyers, Faik Ozgur Erol, DEM co-chairs Tulay Hatimogullari and Tuncer Bakirhan, and veteran Kurdish politician Ahmet Turk, 82, who has a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.

"Everyone's eyes are on the call that Mr. Ocalan will make. Millions of people are praying for a solution this time," Bakirhan said earlier this week.

The DEM and the PKK had wanted Ocalan to issue a video message but Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc ruled that out late Wednesday.

- Reception unclear -

Bakirhan said this month that Ocalan's message would be "a roadmap for the democratic resolution of the Kurdish problem, taking it from an arena of violence to one of politics, law and democracy."

Observers said Ocalan was likely to call on his followers to lay down their weapons in favour of a political struggle for democracy.

But the big question is how his message will be received by fighters whose military leadership is mostly based in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The PKK also has fighters in the US-backed Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria, which is seen as crucial to keeping jihadists at bay.

The force is under pressure from Syria's new leaders -- who are close to Ankara -- to disarm and is also locked in clashes with Turkish-backed militia groups.

- An unexpected olive branch -

Ocalan has been serving a life jail term without parole on Imrali island since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999.

Since his detention, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed which erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives. The last round of talks collapsed amid violence in 2015.

After that, there was no contact until October when hardline nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli offered Ocalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Since then, he has twice been visited by two DEM lawmakers who briefed parliamentary parties on the talks.

The contact has fuelled a growing anticipation that Ocalan will call on his fighters to lay down their arms in exchange for a possible early release and concessions for the Kurdish minority, which makes up around 20 percent of Turkey's 85 million population.

Q.Najjar--SF-PST