After months of near silence, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became formally involved in his government’s Kurdish initiative on Wednesday, saying he was prepared to meet with members of the country’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party who have played a key role in talks with imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. Asked by reporters whether the party had sought an audience with him, Erdogan said, “If a meeting is requested, I will grant it.” 

Since October 2024, when his far-right nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, stunned the nation by inviting Ocalan to address the Turkish parliament and call on his men to end their four-decade-long armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule, Erdogan has remained determinedly tight-lipped about the process. His aloofness was widely seen as part of a strategy of skirting responsibility should the effort fail. 

“Erdogan has stepped out of the shadows after letting Bahceli carry the torch, till now. This suggests that he will become the main actor in promoting the initiative with the public,” said Roj Girasun, founder of Rawest Research, a polling and research outfit based in Diyarbakir, the informal capital of Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast region. 

DEM Party co-chairman Tuncer Bakirhan, who was part of a delegation that met twice with Ocalan prior to the latter’s call on Feb. 27 for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to disarm and dissolve itself, said he and fellow lawmakers had requested a meeting with Erdogan. “It is important to meet. It should have happened sooner. It should happen all the time. We are talking about a 50-year-old problem,” Bakirhan said. DEM lawmakers are also believed to have met with the PKK’s top commander in the field, Cemil Bayik, in February during a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan.