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Ocalan Says Laws Needed in Türkiye Peace Process

FILE - Youngsters hold a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader in Diyarbakir, Türkiye, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File)
FILE - Youngsters hold a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader in Diyarbakir, Türkiye, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File)
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Ocalan Says Laws Needed in Türkiye Peace Process

FILE - Youngsters hold a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader in Diyarbakir, Türkiye, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File)
FILE - Youngsters hold a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed PKK leader in Diyarbakir, Türkiye, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File)

Jailed Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan said on Friday that peace-related laws were needed for a transition to democratic integration in Türkiye, in a statement read out a year after he called on his PKK to end its decades-old insurgency and disband.

Ocalan's call could be taken to endorse a roadmap, approved last week by a Turkish parliamentary commission, that urges legal reforms to run alongside the PKK's disarmament, even though details on implementation remain hazy.

The roadmap is expected to be put before parliament next month, likely after the end of Ramadan. If it passes, it will be the first concrete step taken by Türkiye.

"The transition to ⁠democratic integration necessitates laws of peace," Ocalan said ‌in a statement read ‌out by a senior figure in the pro-Kurdish DEM Party at ‌a press conference. The democratic society solution envisions a "legal ‌framework with political, social, economic, and cultural dimensions," he added.

The leaders of DEM, which has been closely involved in the peace process, said before reading Ocalan's statement that it was time for the ‌government to take concrete measures on issues including language, cultural and religious freedoms.

The PKK declared an ⁠end to ⁠its insurgency in May last year and its militants burned some weapons in a symbolic ceremony last July. A few months later it announced its withdrawal from Türkiye, and last week a militant source welcomed the parliament move but said there was still a lack of clarity.

"The door is opening to a new political era and strategy," Ocalan said Friday in the written statement from Imrali prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.

"We aim to close the era of violence-based politics and open a process based on democratic society and the rule of law," he said, urging all segments of Turkish society to engage with the process.

Some MPs involved in drafting the parliamentary report expressed concern the text failed to mention "the Kurdish question."

Others noted the absence of reference to the "right to hope" for Ocalan -- shorthand for a possible early release -- a key concept first raised in October 2024 when Ankara extended an olive branch to him, kicking off the process.

 

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World

NATO and China: A Slow Alliance Confronts a Fast-Rising Rival

People visit the BYD booth at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing on April 30, 2026. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
People visit the BYD booth at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing on April 30, 2026. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
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NATO and China: A Slow Alliance Confronts a Fast-Rising Rival

People visit the BYD booth at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing on April 30, 2026. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
People visit the BYD booth at the Beijing Auto Show in Beijing on April 30, 2026. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)

NATO was established in 1949 to provide collective defense against the Soviet Union, based on the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all. At the time, US President Harry Truman also sought to anchor an American presence in war-ravaged Europe to ensure security and prevent a strategic vacuum.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, along with the socialist bloc, brought the Cold War to an end and forced NATO to adapt. The alliance expanded its operations beyond Europe, intervening in the Balkans during the Bosnia and Kosovo wars, then in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. It also undertook maritime missions to combat piracy, including off the Horn of Africa, alongside intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism cooperation.

NATO has since built partnerships with countries beyond its traditional scope and broadened its definition of threats to include cybersecurity, hybrid warfare, and energy security, as well as, more recently, the challenge posed by China.

In sum, NATO has evolved from a purely European defensive alliance into a broader global security actor, largely driven by the United States, while still maintaining a central focus on deterring threats within Europe.

In recent years, the Brussels-based alliance has expanded its attention toward the Indo-Pacific region for strategic reasons that extend beyond Europe. Chief among these are the interconnected nature of global security, particularly in cyberspace, the need to ensure resilient and unobstructed supply chains, and the rapid spread of advanced technologies that increasingly diminish the importance of geographic boundaries.

FILED - 03 April 2025, Belgium, Brussels: A NATO flag flies in the wind in front of the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Photo: Anna Ross/dpa

China’s Rise

Another key factor is the view of China’s rise as a strategic challenge reshaping the global balance of power. For NATO’s 32 member states, up from 12 at its founding, safeguarding trade routes is a priority, especially maritime corridors in the Indo-Pacific that are critical to the global economy.

These include the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s most important shipping lane, linking the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and carrying roughly 25 percent of global trade annually. It is also a vital artery for oil and energy flows to major Asian economies such as China, Japan, and South Korea.

NATO member states express “strategic concern” over China for several core reasons. First, China is rapidly modernizing its military, particularly in areas such as missile systems, space capabilities, and cyber operations, developments that are shifting the global balance of power.

Second, and closely linked, is China’s economic rise, reflected in initiatives such as the Belt and Road, which provide Beijing with avenues to expand its economic and political influence across Asia, Africa, and Europe. This expansion risks creating dependencies among countries in or near NATO’s strategic periphery.

Concerns are also fueled by growing ties between China and Russia, particularly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which could signal coordination between two major powers against the West.

At the same time, an indirect competition is underway over leadership in fields such as artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, and semiconductors. NATO sees technological superiority as a core component of security.

The alliance has concluded partnership and cooperation agreements with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, encompassing joint military exercises, intelligence sharing, and political coordination. However, NATO does not appear to be planning an expansion of membership into the Indo-Pacific, instead favoring flexible partnerships over a permanent military presence.

World

Iran Delivered New Proposal for US Talks via Pakistan

US and Iran flags are seen in this illustration taken June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
US and Iran flags are seen in this illustration taken June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Iran Delivered New Proposal for US Talks via Pakistan

US and Iran flags are seen in this illustration taken June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
US and Iran flags are seen in this illustration taken June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Iran has delivered a new proposal for talks with the United States via mediator Pakistan, state media reported on Friday.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran delivered the text of its latest negotiating proposal to Pakistan, as the mediator in talks with the United States, on Thursday evening," the official IRNA news agency reported, without elaborating.

This came as President Donald Trump's administration is arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval.

The statement furthers an argument laid out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during testimony in the Senate on Thursday, when he said the ceasefire effectively paused the war. Under that rationale, the administration has not yet met the requirement mandated by a 1973 law to seek formal approval from Congress for military action that extends beyond 60 days.

While the ceasefire has since been extended, Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran’s oil tankers from getting out to sea.

World

US Navy Turns to AI Firm Domino for Options to Counter Iranian Mines

Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
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US Navy Turns to AI Firm Domino for Options to Counter Iranian Mines

Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, May 1, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer

The US Navy is ramping up its AI capabilities to hunt for Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical shipping lanes, a recently awarded contract shows.

President Donald Trump has said the US Navy is clearing Iranian mines from the strait, a vital sea route for oil shipments, whose disruption is increasingly threatening the global economy.

Sweeping for underwater explosives could take months despite a tenuous ceasefire between the US and ⁠Iran in their weeks-long ⁠war.

The up to $100 million contract for the San Francisco artificial intelligence company Domino Data Lab could quicken this process with software that can teach underwater drones to identify new types of mines in a matter of days.

"Mine-hunting used to be a job for ships," Thomas Robinson, Domino's chief operating officer, said in an interview with Reuters. "It's becoming a job for AI.

⁠The Navy is paying for the platform that lets it train, govern, and field that AI at a speed required for contested waters that block global trade and imperil sailors."

Last week, the US Navy awarded the up to $99.7 million contract to expand Domino's role as the AI backbone of the Navy's Project AMMO - Accelerated Machine Learning for Maritime Operations - a program to make underwater mine detection faster, more accurate, and less dependent on human sailors.

The software integrates data from multiple sensor types, including side-scan sonar and visual imaging systems, and allows the Navy to monitor how well various AI ⁠detection models ⁠are performing in the field, identify failures, and push corrections to improve performance.

The core of Domino's pitch - and the Navy's wager - is speed. Before the company's involvement, updating the AI models that power the Navy's unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to recognize new or previously unseen mines could take up to six months. Domino says it has cut that cycle to days.

Robinson illustrated the relevance to the Middle East crisis: "If there were UUVs in the Baltic Sea trained on Russian mines, and then they needed to be deployed to the Strait of Hormuz to detect Iranian mines, with Domino's technology, the Navy could be ready in a week rather than a year."

A Navy spokesman was not immediately able to provide comment.