TODAY'S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
A group of deputies from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) travelled to İmralı Island on Sunday to meet with imprisoned terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan and hear his response to a letter sent to him by the commanders of the PKK bases in the Kandil Mountains.

The delegation included BDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş and deputies Sırrı Süreyya Önder and Pervin Buldan.

The group went to the island early on Sunday morning and returned in the afternoon. They were expected to make a statement about their visit just as Today's Zaman was going to print.

Öcalan was expected to send a message about the withdrawal of PKK terrorists from Turkey and whether it would be with their weapons.

In early April, the same BDP delegation first travelled to İmralı and then to Kandil to help Öcalan and Kandil exchange views on the settlement process by letters.

Öcalan, imprisoned on the island of İmralı in the Marmara Sea off İstanbul, and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) officials have been engaging in negotiations since October last year. The negotiations have come to be called the “peace process” or the “settlement process.” In March, in a historic letter read by BDP deputies at a Nevruz celebration, Öcalan ordered his organization's militants to pull out from Turkey as part of a new “era of peace” in which no guns or violence will be used to pursue the Kurdish cause.
Wise people commission listens to nation's view on process

Groups of wise people, tasked with explaining the ongoing settlement process with the terrorist PKK to the public and promoting those negotiations, continued to listen to the public's views on the process on Sunday by visiting the regions they were assigned to.

The Central Anatolian regional group was in Konya on Sunday where they visited a local bazaar in the provincial capital and listened to the views of salesmen on the settlement process.

Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Türk-İş) President Mustafa Kumlu, who is a member of the group, told reporters after their meetings: “We listened to the views of our citizens. Only one of them voiced his concerns about the process. Even those who are distant to the issue hold the view of ‘let this fight end and peace reign'.”

Another member of the group, Cemal Uşşak from the Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV), said that the majority of the people they talked to in the bazaar were supportive of the policies pursued during the solution process.

The Aegean region group, headed by journalist and researcher Tarhan Erdem, was in İzmir on Sunday where they met with local administrators in the Urla district.

Delivering a speech at the meeting, Erdem said that this is the first time in Turkey that the Kurdish issue is being opened to public debate and this is taking place through the wise men committee, most of whom have a stance against the government.

“The government has shown its courage in sending these people here to discuss this issue,” he said.

Intellectual Fuat Keyman, another member of the group, said that the lack of violence over the past three-and-a-half months have helped moved the discussion of the Kurdish problem on a humanitarian level.

“İzmir is the province which is saying one of the loudest ‘no' to this process. We spoke to the people in this province in coffee houses and around dinner tables in a polite way. This has been possible thanks to the lack of violence and no deaths,” Keyman said. Keyman also said that the settlement process is progressing very rapidly in Turkey, adding that there is no other country which has undergone a peace process so quickly.

The wise people group for the Mediterranean region was in Burdur province on Sunday where they listened to local journalists' views on the process.

The group, led by Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB) President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, was also joined by actor Kadir İnanır, actress and activist Lale Mansur and journalist Nihal Bengisu Karaca.

In the meantime, the Republican People's Party (CHP) continued to direct criticisms against the settlement process on Sunday. CHP deputy chairman Adnan Keskin said that if the settlement process ends in failure, this will place Turkey in an “extraordinarily difficult” situation in the international arena.