ISTANBUL: Prominent Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, jailed in Turkiye since 2016, on Sunday backed a bill that would grant limited and conditional amnesty to PKK Kurdish militants ahead of a parliamentary vote on Monday.
“We hope that you will take another crucial step forward in this historic peace effort,” the former co-chair of Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish party said in a statement.
He said the law would “radically transform the fate of our country and our region” after more than four decades of armed conflict that has claimed at least 50,000 lives.
The bill, which cleared parliament’s committee stage on Friday, would allow PKK fighters to return to civilian life under certain conditions, following the group’s announcement last year that it was disbanding at the request of its jailed founder and longtime leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The bill, backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the pro-Kurdish DEM opposition party, would suspend prosecutions and sentences for perpetrators of certain offenses for a period of between five and ten years.
