Öcalan urges the government to act quickly

Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan called on the government to act quickly in the ongoing democratic solution process, said the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) headquarters in a statement it released following BDP delegation’s visit to İmralı yesterday.

During the visit with BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş and parliamentary group deputy chair Pervin Buldan in İmralı prison on Sunday, the Kurdish leader complaint about having restricted opportunities to provide more contribution to the peace process.

Öcalan urged the government to create an opportunity that should enable him to express himself better and said “When there is such a fire around Turkey, my demand to fulfill my role on the resolution process in a better way should be considered as a natural request”, he underlined and suggested that he could also provide remarkable contributions to the process by holding a press conference on the island with an aim to directly inform the public about the ongoing process. The Kurdish leader said that the government shouldn’t be doubtful about taking this kind of simple steps, adding that “After all, we are trying to build peace to resolve the forty-year-old conflict which has taken the life of 50 thousand people of ours”.

Öcalan said he hoped to have made progress in the second phase of the democratic solution process by early September so that the discussions on the third phase could start to take place by then.

“I have not lost my hope for now, nor am I talking about a deadlock but the government needs to move quickly taking the developments in the Middle East region into account”, BDP quoted the Kurdish leader as saying.

According to BDP, Öcalan said he also expected the government to take concrete and practical steps before the parliament’s opening, and called on the Turkish parliament to also make a contribution to the resolution of the Kurdish question in the ongoing historic process.

The Kurdish leader urged both Turkish and Kurdish sides to avoid attitudes that may cause troubles to the resolution process.

Öcalan remarked that he had some health problems which -he said- however didn’t have a great effect on his general state of health.