Abdullah Ocalan is the jailed leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), the largest Kurdish armed group. He wielded influence across Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
In February 2025, after months of secret negotiations with Turkey, Ocalan called for the PKK to disband. "There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system," he said. On May 12th 2025 the PKK said it would comply, potentially ending one of the world's longest conflicts: its fight with the Turkish state lasted more than four decades and claimed 40,000 lives. PKK fighters began burning their weapons in northern Iraq on July 11th 2025.
During talks with Kurdish lawmakers at his island prison in spring 2025, Ocalan claimed Israel had redoubled its efforts to enlist the YPG (the PKK's Syrian franchise) in a proxy war against Turkey, and that only he could prevent such a scenario. Devlet Bahceli, Erdogan's main nationalist coalition partner and once a sworn enemy who called for Ocalan to be hanged, became the architect of the government's outreach to the PKK. Both men are in their late 70s.
On November 24th 2025, in a historic first, members of a Turkish parliamentary commission overseeing the peace process met Ocalan in prison. The PKK demanded his release before it would take any further steps towards disarmament, but opinion polls showed most Turks opposed giving Ocalan a main role in the talks; his release would be even harder to swallow, and would set off a nationalist backlash. Ocalan has been in prison since 1999.
bureaucracy, n: A method for transforming energy into solid waste.