Several thousand people gathered Sunday in Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest Kurdish-majority city, to demand the release of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali since 1999.
Protesters filled a central square chanting "Serok Apo" - "Chief Apo" - in support of the 76-year-old guerrilla leader © Mena Today
Several thousand people gathered Sunday in Diyarbakir, Turkey's largest Kurdish-majority city, to demand the release of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali since 1999.
Protesters filled a central square chanting "Serok Apo" - "Chief Apo" - in support of the 76-year-old guerrilla leader, whose continued detention they say undermines the peace process he himself helped initiate.
The demonstration comes after a landmark year for Kurdish-Turkish relations. In 2025, at Ocalan's call, the PKK announced it was renouncing armed struggle, dissolved itself and began laying down weapons in a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq, where most of its fighters were based. It was the end of a four-decade conflict that claimed at least 50,000 lives.
Yet despite these historic steps, Ocalan's conditions remain largely unchanged. "There cannot be peace through isolation," declared Veysi Aktas, a former fellow detainee of Ocalan on Imrali, addressing the crowd. "Peace means recognition of the people, respect for identity and respect for the will of the people."
Ocalan has recently gained limited access to family members, lawyers and deputies from the pro-Kurdish DEM party, a modest improvement, but far short of what his supporters are demanding.
NATO member Turkey would consider taking its relations with the China and Russia-led security bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, to a higher level, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.
The U.S. and Iran found themselves back in a war footing on Wednesday after the most significant exchange in weeks, with Washington threatening even more devastating strikes while Iran protested an attack that it said killed five and wounded dozens of civilians at a wedding.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog has resolved its outstanding questions from an investigation into secret nuclear activities in Syria under the Assad family's rule but made no progress in Iran, it said on Tuesday in confidential reports seen by Reuters.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.