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Archive photo · 8 June 2025Turkey Moves Kurdish Leader Abdullah Ocalan To New Imrali Prison Section
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Abdullah Ocalan moved to a new section of the island prison where held since 1999. The move is part of Turkey's peace push and decades-long conflict resolution with the PKK.
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6 outlets told this the same way.
Ocalan moved on Imrali
Turkey moved Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan to a newly built part of an island prison where he has been incarcerated since 1999, a senior Kurdish official said. Mithat Sancar, a lawmaker for the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, confirmed Ocalan's relocation in an interview with Medya Haber TV on Saturday, and he did not provide further details about the new section. Sancar described Ocalan as the head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and he tied the relocation to efforts to end the 42-year conflict between the militant group and Turkish authorities.
Sancar said Ocalan has been imprisoned in a penitentiary on the island of Imrali in the Marmara Sea, which links the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, since he was captured in 1999. Sancar also said the peace process had been on “a pause” for the last two months, and he connected the move to the need to speed up negotiations.
Peace push and demands
Sancar said Ocalan’s move to the new facility “necessitates an acceleration of the (peace) process,” while he emphasized that the process must not proceed on Turkish terms. Sancar told Medya Haber TV that “The process cannot proceed with unilateral expectations and demands,” and he added that it “needs to move away from its insistent and rigid stance.” The ABC News account linked the relocation to a Kurdish demand to improve prison conditions for Ocalan, who has been incarcerated since he was captured in 1999.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle account also described the move as part of efforts to end decades of conflict, and it said Sancar confirmed the relocation on Saturday. The Herald Bulletin account repeated that Turkey moved Ocalan to a newly built part of an island prison where he has been incarcerated since 1999, without adding further details.
PKK disarmament and law
The ABC News account said Ocalan’s relocation followed a period in which DEM Party politicians had been regularly visiting him since he called on the PKK to disband and disarm in February 2025. The ABC News account said three months later the PKK announced it would lay down its arms and end hostilities, and it said that prompted the Turkish parliament to approve legislation in August offering a conditional pardon to thousands of PKK fighters. The ABC News account said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan subsequently signed the legislation into law, and it described the conflict as having killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.
Sancar stressed that Ocalan must coordinate peace negotiations, and he framed the next steps as requiring coordination rather than unilateral expectations. The Earth News account likewise described the relocation as confirmed by Sancar and said he called for an acceleration of the peace process after negotiations had effectively remained on hold for the past two months.