ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has decided to allow parliament’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party to hold face-to-face talks with militant leader Abdullah Ocalan on his island prison, the party said on Friday, setting up the first such visit in nearly a decade.
DEM requested the visit last month, soon after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan expanded on a proposal to end the 40-year-old conflict between the state and Ocalan’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Ocalan has been serving an expanded life sentence in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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