The İmralı delegation of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) will hold official talks with the Turkish Ministry of Justice on Friday.

The delegation that will exchange views with the ministry consists of the MPs Pervin Buldan and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, as well as the parliamentary faction leaders in parliament, Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit and Sezai Temelli. Buldan and Önder had met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week.

The upcoming meeting is seen as the next important step in the context of a potentially new developing dialogue process around the Kurdish question and the situation on the prison island of İmralı, where Abdullah Öcalan has been held as a political hostage for over two decades. In February, the founder of the PKK once again called for peace and a just solution to the Kurdish question in order to pave the way for the democratization of the country.

The DEM Party had previously emphasized that a political change in Turkey also requires the inclusion of Öcalan and the preservation of the rule of law – including the internationally recognized “right to hope”, which the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) formulated in its judgment on Öcalan's prison conditions.

Observers see the meeting with the Ministry of Justice as a possible signal for initial concrete steps towards legal reforms and a possible relaxation in the treatment of political prisoners. The DEM Party has repeatedly emphasized the necessity of legal adjustments and a return to democratic approaches to resolving the country's profound political conflicts.