A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.
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“The delegation left in the morning,” the source said, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
The visit would be the party’s first in almost 10 years;
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
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The PKK is regarded as a “terror” organisation by Turkey and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.