This recap is dedicated to all the socks that ever got stuck on a washing machine door (and other spectacles).
In this week’s recap:
Bahçeli volunteers for Öcalan meeting
Zelenskyy visit centers on peace talks
Pesticide suspected in tourist family tragedy
Domestic and diplomatic wraps
MP protests water-saving tip amid drought
Also from us this week:
Anna Montraveta Riu and Laia Palau Biel on the search for people who went missing in the Feb. 6 earthquakes
Can Selçuki outlines the state of Turkey’s economy on Recap radio.
“My only love sprung from my only hate!”
— Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, scene 5
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
— Elie Wiesel, Romanian-American writer
After the exchange of letters and poems, MHP chair Devlet Bahçeli Tuesday said he’d finally meet PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to advance Turkey’s peace process in a string of events worth a Shakespeare quote.
“If direct contact cannot be established with one of the main interlocutors of the process, how will results be obtained and how will progress be recorded?” Bahçeli asked MHP members at his parliamentary group meeting.
“Do you give me permission to go to Imralı?” he asked later in the speech, triggering a standing ovation that we can interpret as a ‘Yes’.
The move comes after parliamentary peace commission members stalled on a decision to hold direct talks with Öcalan—over concerns of political blowback—and Bahçeli appears to have volunteered for the task to unblock ceasefire talks on Turkey’s longest-running conflict.
In response, a PKK official told Medya Haber Bahçeli‘s statements were “meaningful but insufficient” in an apparent nudge for reciprocal steps following the PKK’s recent withdrawal from the Zap area on the Turkey-Iraq border.
For additional responses from Turkish politicians, read today’s Stüdyo recap newsletter.
Analysis: Ezgi Başaran, a journalist, political scientist and author of the Angle, Anchor, and Voice newsletter on regional politics, said Bahçeli’s shift since the start of public peace talks in late 2024 remains “difficult to interpret.”
“I think he believes that Turkey’s soft underbelly, the unresolved Kurdish question and the semi-autonomous administration that the Syrian Kurds have built over the years must be secured before the region rearranges itself again,” Başaran told Turkey recap.
“His recent call for Öcalan to deliver a second message, this time to the Syrian Kurdish administration to integrate into the Syrian army, fits that logic,” she added.
At the same time, Bahçeli appears to be displaying irritation with the slow pace of developments, Başaran continued.
“The tenacity he displays … remains an enigma even when viewed through the lens of security concerns and the emerging Middle East order,” she said. “He is pressing harder with each week. It is reasonable to wonder whether he knows something we do not.”
In the background, there’s an ongoing legal debate over Law No. 1239, which Presidential Advisor Mehmet Uçum referenced in his Sunday column on the peace process.
He argued the law helped reintegrate those who committed the “1925 events”, and may serve as an example for PKK members. Yet, the framing triggered backlash from liberal and Kurdish commentators who more or less said this was the worst law Uçum could have cited.
Meanwhile, Kurdish words were recorded in parliamentary minutes possibly for the first time ever Tuesday and were removed two hours later.
What’s next: Following the parliamentary commission’s Nov. 18 meeting, members will meet again Friday at 1400 to decide on the Imralı visit, according to MHP deputy chair Feti Yıldız.
If that happens, CHP chair Özgür Özel will reportedly visit jailed former HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş on the same day.
For their part, DEM party officials have pushed for Demirtaş’ release after the latest ECHR decision, with Cengiz Çandar stating:
“If Selahattin Demirtaş remains in prison, it means there is no peace process in Turkey. It is that important.”
There will be Vlod: Zelenskyy visit centers on peace talks
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