Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has been moved to a newly built wing of the İmralı prison, on the Sea of Marmara island where he has been held since 1999. The transfer was announced on Saturday, 31 October, by Mithat Sancar, a lawmaker for the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), in an interview with the broadcaster Medya Haber.
Sancar gave no details about the new section and did not say whether the accommodation is better than before. The Turkish government has not publicly confirmed the move.
Why it matters to the talks
Improving Öcalan's detention conditions — he is now the island's only inmate — is one of the main Kurdish demands in the process meant to end a 42-year armed conflict. It is also one of the few gestures the Turkish state can make without changing the law, which is why every adjustment to the prison regime is read as a political signal.
For Sancar, the transfer "necessitates an acceleration of the process". The lawmaker said the initiative officially called "terror-free Türkiye" has been "on pause" for two months and urged the government to pick up the pace.
The timeline
Öcalan was captured in 1999 and is serving a life sentence on İmralı. In February 2025, from inside prison, he called on the PKK to disband and hand over its weapons. Three months later the group announced it would lay down its arms and end hostilities.
In August, the Turkish parliament passed legislation offering a conditional pardon to some PKK members, signed into law by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Since then, however, the process has lost momentum — and it is that stagnation the Kurdish lawmaker is now pressing on.
The conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK began in 1984 and has left tens of thousands dead. The group is designated a terrorist organisation by Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
With information from Hürriyet Daily News and the Morning Star.
