Istanbul: Turkiye’s leading pro-Kurd party said it was expecting a “historic declaration” Thursday from the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, amid efforts to end a decades-long conflict with Ankara.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party will send a delegation Thursday to meet Ocalan at his prison on an island off Istanbul, it said in a statement.
The visit, the third in the past few months, comes as Ankara seeks to reset ties with the PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
“If everything goes smoothly, tomorrow, we expect Ocalan to make a historic declaration,” said DEM, whose visit to the jailed PKK leader was approved by the justice ministry on Wednesday.
It said there would be a statement to the press following the visit, at about 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT).
The seven-person delegation, which includes Ocalan’s lawyer, Faik Ozgur Erol, would like the PKK leader to make his expected peace appeal in a video message instead of by writing, but the justice ministry has not yet agreed, Turkish media reported.
Ocalan, 75, has been serving life without parole on Imrali prison island since his 1999 arrest in Kenya.
But starting in late December, he has been twice visited by two DEM lawmakers who then briefed the parliamentary parties on the content of their talks.
The dialogue with Ocalan is an initiative of ultra-nationalist political leader Devlet Bahceli, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and has led to growing anticipation that Ocalan will soon issue a public call to his fighters to lay down their arms, in exchange for concessions for the country’s Kurdish minority.
PKK leaders, who are mostly based in the mountains of northern Iraq, could then relay Ocalan’s message, Turkish media said.
But the extent of Ocalan’s appeal is uncertain.
Thursday’s delegation includes 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.
Deputy speaker Sirri Sureyya Onder and lawmaker Pervin Buldan, who were both part of the earlier delegations, will also go, as will another DEM lawmaker.
The conflict between PKK rebels and the Turkish state, which erupted in 1984, has claimed more than 40,000 lives.
A previous round of peace talks collapsed in a storm of violence in 2015, after which the Turkish government cut off all contact.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party teases ‘historic’ news from PKK leader
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Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party teases ‘historic’ news from PKK leader
- Ocalan, 75, has been serving life without parole on Imrali prison island since his 1999 arrest in Kenya
Israeli police use water cannons, arrest dozens as protesters demand hostage deal
- The protests come more than a week after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to capture Gaza City, following 22 months of war that have created dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory
- Forty nine captives remain in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead
JERUSALEM: Israeli police blasted crowds with water cannons and made dozens of arrests on Sunday as protesters demanding a hostage deal escalated their campaign Sunday with a one-day nationwide strike that blocked roads and closed businesses.
The “day of stoppage” was organized by two groups representing some of the families of hostages and bereaved families, weeks after militant groups released videos of emaciated hostages and Israel announced plans for a new offensive.
Protesters fear further fighting could endanger the hostages who were seized by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 – the attack that triggered the war – and are believed to still be alive in captivity. Israel believes that some 20 are still alive, with Hamas holding the remains of about 30 others.
“We don’t win a war over the bodies of hostages,” protesters chanted.
They gathered at dozens of points throughout Israel, including outside politicians’ homes, military headquarters and on major highways, where they were sprayed with water cannons as they blocked lanes and lit bonfires. Some restaurants and theaters closed in solidarity.
In Tel Aviv, among the protesters was a woman carrying a photo of an emaciated child from Gaza. Such images were once rare at Israeli demonstrations but now appear more often as outrage grows over conditions there.
Police said they had arrested 38 people as part of the nationwide demonstration – one of the fiercest since the uproar over six hostages found dead in Gaza last September.
“Military pressure doesn’t bring hostages back – it only kills them,” former hostage Arbel Yehoud said at a demonstration in Tel Aviv’s hostage square. “The only way to bring them back is through a deal, all at once, without games.”
Netanyahu and allies oppose any deal that leaves Hamas in power
“Today, we stop everything to save and bring back the hostages and soldiers. Today, we stop everything to remember the supreme value of the sanctity of life,” said Anat Angrest, mother of hostage Matan Angrest. “Today, we stop everything to join hands – right, left, center and everything in between.”
Protesters at highway intersections handed out yellow ribbons, the symbol that represents the hostages, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which organized the stoppage, said.
Still, an end to the conflict does not appear near. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded the immediate release of the hostages but is balancing competing pressures, haunted by the potential for mutiny within his coalition.
“Those who today call for an end to the war without defeating Hamas are not only hardening Hamas’s position and delaying the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of Oct. 7 will be repeated,” Netanyahu said on Sunday, in an apparent reference to the demonstrations.
The last time Israel agreed to a ceasefire that released hostages, far-right members of his cabinet threatened to topple Netanyahu’s government.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Sunday called the stoppage “a bad and harmful campaign that plays into Hamas’ hands, buries the hostages in the tunnels and attempts to get Israel to surrender to its enemies and jeopardize its security and future.”
Hamas rejects Israel’s Gaza relocation plan
- The group said Israel’s Gaza relocation plan was a “blatant deception”
CAIRO: Hamas said on Sunday that Israel’s Gaza relocation plan constitutes a “new wave of genocide and displacement” for hundreds of thousands of residents in the area.
The group said the planned deployment of tents and other shelter equipment by Israel in southern Gaza Strip was a “blatant deception.”
Gaza civil defense says Israeli attacks kill 18
- UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza
- Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 18 Palestinians on Sunday, including seven people shot dead while waiting to collect food aid.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that seven people were killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit a hospital courtyard in Gaza City, in the territory’s north.
Witnesses said the victims were members of a Hamas unit, which a source from the Palestinian militant group described as responsible for distributing aid and “fighting thieves.”
There was no comment from the Israeli military, which is preparing a broader offensive in Gaza City and has sent ground forces to the city’s Zeitun neighborhood in recent days.
After more than 22 months of war, UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in and convoys have been repeatedly looted.
Witnesses on Sunday reported Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into the morning.
Bassal said four people were killed in a strike that hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis.
The civil defense spokesman said Israel continues its intense bombardment of Gaza City’s Zeitun, where troops have carried out a ground operation for the past week.
He said there were many casualties, but civil defense crews were facing “enormous difficulties reaching those trapped under the rubble” due to the ongoing violence and lack of equipment.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing swaths of the Palestinian territory mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defense agency or the Israeli military.
Israel on Saturday hinted at an approaching call to push civilians from Gaza City ahead of the new offensive demanded by the security cabinet.
A defense ministry statement said that “as part of the preparations to move the population from combat zones to the southern Gaza Strip for their protection, the supply of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza will resume.”
Hamas later slammed the move, saying the announcement was part of a “brutal assault to occupy Gaza City.”
On the ground on Sunday, Bassal said six people were killed by Israeli gunfire near an aid distribution point in the south.
Another person was killed near an aid site in central Gaza, Bassal added, with a nearby hospital saying the body had been taken there.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,897 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza which the United Nations considers reliable.
Iraq starts work on Daesh mass grave thought to contain thousands
- Exhuming the bodies from Khasfa is particularly difficult as underground sulfur water makes the earth very porous
BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities have begun excavating the site of a mass grave believed to contain thousands of victims of the Daesh group near Mosul city, the project’s director said on Sunday.
The first phase, which was launched on August 10, includes surface-level excavation at the Khasfa site, director Ahmed Assadi said.
An AFP correspondent visiting the site in northern Iraq on Sunday said the team unearthed human skulls buried in the sand.
Khasfa is located near Mosul, where Daesh had established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate” before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017.
Assadi said that there were no precise figures for the numbers of victims buried there – one of dozens of mass graves Daesh left behind in Iraq – but a UN report from 2018 said Khasfa was likely the country’s largest.
Official estimates put the number of bodies buried at the site at least 4,000, with the possibility of thousands more.
The project director said the victims buried there include “soldiers executed by Daesh,” members of the Yazidi minority and residents of Mosul.
Exhuming the bodies from Khasfa is particularly difficult, Assadi said, as underground sulfur water makes the earth very porous.
The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification of victims, he added.
Assadi said further studies will be required before his team can dig deeper and exhume bodies at the site – a sinkhole about 150-meter (nearly 500-foot) deep and 110-meter wide.
Iraqi authorities said it was the site of “one of the worst massacres” committed by Daesh militants, executing 280 in a single day in 2016, many of them interior ministry employees.
In a lightning advance that began in 2014, Daesh had seized large swathes Iraq and neighboring Syria, enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law and committing widespread abuses.
The United Nations estimates the militants left behind more than 200 mass graves which might contain as many as 12,000 bodies.
In addition to Daesh-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.
250 flee as Turkish rescuers battle wildfire in Gallipoli
- The fire began on Saturday in the northwestern province of Canakkale, and spread quickly due to high winds in the hills near the town of Gelibolu
ISTANBUL: More than 250 people were evacuated overnight as a wildfire raged on the Gallipoli peninsula flanking the Dardanelles Strait, where Turkish firefighters were battling Sunday to quench the blaze, officials said.
The fire began on Saturday in the northwestern province of Canakkale, and spread quickly due to high winds in the hills near the town of Gelibolu, on the shores of the busy shipping strait.
“As a precaution, 251 residents from five villages were relocated to safe areas,” Canakkale governor Omer Toraman wrote on X.
Footage showed the hillsides illuminated by bright flames while huge clouds of smoke poured into the night air.
Toraman said the province, a popular destination for tourists visiting the ancient ruins of Troy, as well as the Gallipoli battleground where thousands of soldiers died in World War I, had suffered “extremely severe drought” over the past year.
While the weather has been fairly normal for the time of year, much of northwestern Turkiye has suffered strong winds in recent days, although they eased off on Sunday.
Firefighters worked through the night, with 12 planes and 18 helicopters rejoining the efforts at first light in an operation involving 900 people, the forestry directorate said on X.
The authority in charge of the war memorials said on X that access to historical sites near the town of Eceabat had been closed “due to the ongoing forest fire.”
On Monday, another fire on the other side of the strait forced 2,000 people to flee, with around 80 treated for smoke inhalation.
Several days earlier, another fire forced the evacuation of 120 people and the suspension of shipping through the Dardanelles Strait, which links the Mediterranean with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 192 wildfires in Turkiye this year, which have ravaged more than 110,373 hectares (273,000 acres) of land.
Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters, and have warned Turkiye to take measures to tackle the problem.
