Devlet Bahçeli on Tuesday rejected renewed calls for an early election and closed his parliamentary group speech with a line linking Turkey’s current political debate to a set of high-profile Kurdish-related issues: “Until Anatolia returns to peace, Abdullah Öcalan to hope, the Ahmeds to office, and Selahattin Demirtaş to his home, our decision is clear.”
In the same address, the Nationalist Movement Party leader responded to opposition demands for a snap vote, saying the Republican People’s Party chairman, Özgür Özel, was “stuck” on an early-election refrain and making “futile” appeals to him personally. Bahçeli said the election date was already set and that an early election would not be put on the agenda.
Bahçeli’s closing slogan referenced three separate issues that have resurfaced in parallel: the debate over the “right to hope” in relation to Öcalan; discussions about reinstating two mayors—Ahmet Türk and Ahmet Özer—who were removed from office and replaced by state-appointed trustees; and calls for Demirtaş’s release.
The “right to hope” is a legal concept used in European human-rights jurisprudence around life sentences, broadly tied to the principle that even life imprisonment must allow a genuine possibility of sentence review and potential release in the future.
On Öcalan specifically, Bahçeli said a “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society” dated 27 February 2025—attributed by him to the PKK’s “founding leadership”—was binding on Kurdistan Workers’ Party and its affiliated structures. He argued that the call later received a “positive response” in Syria “337 days” afterward, and described this as an important stage in the process.
Bahçeli also said the next step, in his view, was for political actors to show “respect” extending from DEM Party to broader organizational networks connected to the issue, framing it as an expectation now that—according to his account—the key commitments behind the February 2025 call had been met.
His latest remarks echoed a statement he made in October 2024, when he publicly suggested that if Öcalan’s prison “isolation” were lifted, he could address a group meeting in the Turkish Grand National Assembly and declare that armed violence had ended and the organization was dissolved—steps Bahçeli said could clear the way for legal discussion of the “right to hope.”
Bahçeli also criticized the CHP’s approach to Syria during the same speech, targeting what he described as opposition skepticism toward Damascus’s fight against terrorism and referencing YPG in his remarks.
