ANKARA (Reuters) – Sirri Sureyya Onder, a prominent pro-Kurdish party lawmaker and key figure in Turkey’s tentative process to end the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) insurgency, died on Saturday at age 62, his party said.
Onder, the deputy parliament speaker, was among MPs from the DEM Party who recently met jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and held talks last week with President Tayyip Erdogan in a bid to end a decades-old conflict that has killed tens of thousands.
He was taken to hospital around two weeks ago after suffering a heart attack and aortic rupture, according to the hospital where he was being treated in Istanbul. After his heartbeat recovered, he underwent some 12 hours of surgery.
Onder then spent 18 days in intensive care but died due to multiple organ failure on Saturday, the Istanbul hospital said.
Known for his wit, poetry, and warm public presence, Onder was also an accomplished director and screenwriter of works that blended political storytelling with social critique.
He was active in the negotiating process that led to the PKK declaring a unilateral ceasefire in March. A decade beforehand, he also played a central intermediary role in talks between Erdogan’s government and the PKK.
Onder was jailed in 2018 over a speech deemed to be “terrorist propaganda” and later stood trial in the Kobani protests case, facing life imprisonment, but was not jailed due to parliamentary impunity.
He also served time in jail in the 1980s following a military coup.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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