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Is Abdullah Ocalan key to peace between Turkey, PKK?

Many Kurds believe Abdullah Ocalan holds the key to peace between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party, but does he retain the power to deliver?
Pro-Kurdish politicians wearing t-shirts featuring Abdullah Ocalan gather to start a hunger strike to demand the right to visit the jailed PKK militant leader Ocalan, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, September 5, 2016. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar - RTX2O6JE

"Be Serok jiyan nabe!" The well-worn Kurdish adage means "no life without our leader." It was crafted for Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which initially fought for independence then Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey, since 1984. The mantra has gained a new urgency after the botched July 15 coup. The rogue officers who were seeking to overthrow and kill Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were also allegedly planning to kidnap Ocalan from his island prison off the coast of Istanbul and murder him as well.

They almost succeeded, according to the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Both PKK and HDP leaders claim that a group of helicopter-borne coup plotters succeeded in landing on Imrali and clashed with security personnel around Ocalan's prison before fleeing to Greece.

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