A women’s collective known as “Peace Mothers” visited the offices of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) at Parliament on Thursday. The visit is a rare instance of outreach between the two sides that would never have been possible before 2024. Peace Mothers represent people who have a next of kin, mostly sons and daughters who joined the PKK terrorist group and died in counterterrorism operations or served prison terms for PKK membership. The MHP, a government ally, represents an ideology strictly opposing the existence of the PKK.
In the company of Ayşegül Doğan, a spokesperson for the pro-PKK Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), activists met the MHP’s deputy parliamentary group chairs, Erkan Akçay and Filiz Kılıç. The visit came two days after MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, who launched the terror-free Türkiye initiative in 2024, renewed his commitment to the initiative for the PKK’s disarmament and proposed a new role for the terrorist group’s jailed ringleader, Abdullah Öcalan.
Although the MHP has started warming up to relations with the DEM Party after the initiative began, it is the first time that a group so closely associated with the PKK has met the party’s representatives. Some members of Peace Mothers were sentenced in 2006 for propaganda of the terrorist group, one year before Bahçeli called on the government to execute Öcalan by hanging.
The terror-free Türkiye initiative seeks to end the decades-old campaign of violence by the PKK and cement Turkish-Kurdish unity, as Bahçeli and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have highlighted repeatedly. The PKK, for decades, exploited the disenfranchised Kurdish community, claiming to fight for their rights and for a self-styled “Kurdistan.” Bahçeli vowed to proceed with the initiative and, at one point, said he was willing to “even sacrifice life” to see terrorism ended in Türkiye. The initiative is largely embraced by society, though it had its detractors as well, claiming that it was a “betrayal” to victims of terrorism. Proponents of the initiative, however, insist that the plan is unilateral and Türkiye will not take any steps, let alone give concessions to the PKK, unless the terrorist group is fully disarmed.
Behiye Yalçın, Afife Kartal and Müzeyyen Bütün, three members of the collective, gifted white scarves symbolizing their movement to MHP officials, to be delivered to Bahçeli. In return, Akçay and Kılıç presented them with yellow scarves. The “mothers” are also scheduled to visit officials from the MHP ally, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Last year, they attended a parliamentary committee set up exclusively for discussing future legal steps for the PKK’s disarmament.
