The Peace in Kurdistan Campaign issued a statement about Abdullah Öcalan's call for peace. A call, said the statement that "offers hope for Turks and Kurds alike. Turkey has now entered a political crisis and needs peace more than ever."

The statement added that "in a dramatic public appearance from his Imrali Prison cell and flanked by a delegation of elected politicians and his visiting legal team, in February Öcalan issued his call by reading out a prepared statement in which he addressed directly his supporters within the Kurdish movement and Turkish political leaders.

The call was the Kurdish leader’s latest attempt to break the deadlock in the stalled peace process, over which he exerts a fundamental influence despite his decades of incarceration in Imrali." 

Peace in Kurdistan said: "Repeatedly over the years and tracing back long before his apprehension by Turkey, Öcalan has been articulating his thoughts on peace in successive writings and speeches which have amounted to a meticulous mapping out of a path towards reaching an enduring negotiated peace settlement to resolve the historic conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish people.

Such a resolution would remove a blight that has festered since the very foundation of the Turkish Republic over a century ago because the forty years armed conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is more accurately viewed as simply the latest chapter in this century old struggle whose roots are enmeshed in the denial of the very existence of the Kurds as a people by a state that was founded on the Kemalist ideology of “one nation, one people, one language” where nothing but Turkish identity could be tolerated."

This latest call from Öcalan, Peace in Kurdistan said, "was eagerly awaited by the Kurds who continue to view him as the natural political leader of their people and movement. Their support remains unassailable despite all the machinations by Turkey to break their loyalty and detach the Kurds from their leader by methods of isolation, suppression, denigration and brute force.

All these efforts have proved futile and support for Öcalan and the Kurdish national movement that he founded have grown progressively stronger even though generations of Kurds have been born who have only ever known Öcalan as a political prisoner. Achieving his freedom has become inextricably bound up and symbolic of achieving their own freedom as a people."

The statement underlined that "Öcalan’s ideas have continued to foster inspiration because they embody the vital quality of hope that all people resisting oppression need in order to sustain themselves in their struggle.  For the Kurds their political struggle has been, and remains, an existential struggle against annihilation.  Öcalan’s call for peace is also an opportunity for Turkey to resolve one of the key underlying factors that contributes towards the destabilisation of the country.

These tentative moves towards breaking the stalemate are a hugely positive development in the pursuit of peace and represent a real sign of hope in a Turkey that is facing a growing national political crisis." 

The statement said that "most recently, on 19 March, a leading opponent of the president, the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, was detained and jailed on alleged corruption charges, in what has been widely interpreted as a cynical abuse of power and politically motivated move designed to prevent him posing a challenge to Erdoğan in the presidential elections scheduled for 2028.

The peace process needs to gather momentum, and its success is all the more urgent amid this deepening crisis where popular protests and growing unrest have led to thousands of arrests already. Turkish citizens have been outraged by the arrest of political opponents of President Erdoğan who has now been in power for 22 years, first as prime minister and then as president."

The statement continued: "Abdullah Öcalan is now 76 years old and has been held in jail since 1999. His latest call for peace offers possibly the last chance for Turkey to achieve a lasting peace with the Kurds and whose resolution will have an impact across the country, on its allies, its neighbours like Syrian and on the wider region. Everyone has a stake in seeing this renewed peace process succeed so they need to maximise every effort and use their influence towards this end.

A route towards a resolution of the Kurdish question that involves releasing Abdullah Öcalan and bringing the Kurdish movement within the political framework has started to come within the grasp. It is thanks to the foresight of Öcalan that the political deadlock can be removed. 

This development represents a historic opportunity to enable the Kurds to be brought within the orbit of democratic, peaceful and legitimate activities.  But the process remains a fragile one and must not be squandered amid the growing political turmoil currently being witnessed inside Turkey. Time to act for peace, time to free Öcalan."