Jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan has paired a call for Europe-based Kurdish youth to “return and build their lives in Turkey” with support for concrete legal steps to consolidate an evolving peace track. His remarks, relayed after a late-August meeting on İmralı Island with a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), come as DEM urges parliament to move from symbolism to statute.
According to accounts of the meeting, Öcalan criticized outward migration from Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces as the product of a “deliberate policy of alienation.” He encouraged young Kurds abroad to preserve their language and culture but ultimately to “repay their debts” to their homeland by coming back. Framing the moment within his long-standing “democratic nation” approach, he said he would “choose İmralı over Europe,” and described his goal as enabling a “qualified return from exile.”
The social backdrop is a sustained rise in youth emigration. Official figures indicate that more than 424,000 people left Turkey in 2024, with those aged 25–29 the largest cohort (14.4%), followed by 20–24 (12.2%). Surveys consistently suggest that a majority of 15–24-year-olds would live abroad if given the chance. Öcalan’s “come home” message seeks to broaden the peace agenda beyond security de-escalation to questions of opportunity, dignity, and cultural recognition
The political track has moved in tandem. Following Öcalan’s early-year appeal to end the insurgency, the PKK in May announced it would disband and pursue democratic avenues, and in July, militants staged a symbolic weapon-burning ceremony in northern Iraq. Parliament subsequently formed a cross-party commission to manage the process. DEM’s parliamentary group has called on the commission to consult Öcalan directly and to prioritize a package of interim laws—legal protections for those who lay down arms, reintegration paths, and measures addressing Kurdish political and cultural rights.
Öcalan’s team, which reported his first lawyer visit in six years in mid-September, cast these developments as evidence that “a door has been opened through the law.” Both Öcalan and DEM argue that without explicit legal guarantees and institutional reforms, momentum could stall—repeating the pattern of previous efforts that faltered at the transition from declarations to implementation.
