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 2025, after months of secret negotiations with Turkey, Mr Ocalan called for the PKK to disband. "There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system," he said. The PKK agreed to 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 later that year.
During talks with Kurdish lawmakers at his island prison, Mr 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, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main nationalist coalition partner and once a sworn enemy who called for Mr Ocalan to be hanged, became the architect of the government's outreach to the PKK. Both men are in their late 70s.
In a historic first, members of a Turkish parliamentary commission overseeing the peace process met Mr Ocalan in prison in late 2025. The PKK demanded his release before it would take any further steps towards disarmament, but opinion polls showed most Turks opposed giving him a main role in the talks; his release would be even harder to swallow, and would set off a nationalist backlash. He has been in prison since 1999.
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.