ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish President Masoud Barzani declined offers to see the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) during his recent visit to Turkey, Kurdish leaders told Rudaw. “President Barzani told me ‘Twice I got the chance to meet Ocalan,” the brother of the PKK leader Osman Ocalan told Rudaw. Osman Ocalan said that Barzani did not allow himself to see a Kurdish leader in captivity. “Turkish officials offered me to see him, but in prison and I refused to meet him there,” Ocalan quoted Barzani. “It is not morally right to visit him and talk to him in prison, I refused twice’,” Osman Ocalan told Rudaw. Abdullah Ocalan is serving a life sentence in a prison on Imrali Island on charges of terrorism since his capture in Kenya in 1999. Kurdistan Region President Barzani visited Turkey last week where he met with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to discuss bilateral relations. Osman Ocalan who briefly led the PKK after his brother’s abduction, said that Barzani met with him in the Kurdistan Region before his visit to Turkey. According to Osman Ocalan, Barzani had said “I told Turkey if you release Ocalan from prison I will meet him and will talk about the peace process, because the peace process will not succeed without Ocalan.” Mohamad Amin Penjweni, an Iraqi Kurdish politician who enjoys close ties with the PKK, lauded Barzani’s attitude. “He (Barzani) did the right thing,” said Penjweni. “How could the president of the Kurdistan Region go to prison and hold a meeting with Ocalan there? The meeting must be outside the prison.” Penjweni urged the Kurdish president and prime minister to urge Turkey to allow visits to Ocalan’s prison by his lawyers and family members. The president’s Chief of Staff Fuad Hussein told Rudaw: “It was not on president Barzani’s agenda to meet Ocalan in prison and Turkey had no plans to move him out of prison to meet with Barzani.”
