Abdullah Ocalan, jailed founder of the Kurdish militant PKK group, is an icon for many Kurds but a reviled terrorist for many Turks who is now at the heart of the biggest push for peace in over a decade.
The militant leader, who oversaw decades of violence against the Turkish state, last year threw his weight behind a bid to end decades of armed conflict, with fighters from his Kurdistan Workers' Party accepting his call to disarm.
On Monday, Turkish lawmakers voted through a bill offering limited amnesty for certain PKK fighters, in a first legislative step towards ending a conflict that caused some 50,000 deaths.
But crucially, the legislation turned a blind eye to the fate of Ocalan, now 77, who since 1999 has been serving life in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali near Istanbul.
"I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I call on you to put this principle into practice," he said in July 2025 as PKK leaders entrenched in the mountains of northern Iraq began symbolically destroying their weapons.
Since the latest tentative moves began in October 2024, PKK leaders have repeatedly demanded Ocalan's release, insisting it was essential for the process to work.
{{/usCountry}}Since the latest tentative moves began in October 2024, PKK leaders have repeatedly demanded Ocalan's release, insisting it was essential for the process to work.
{{/usCountry}}"He is the person who initiated this process," senior PKK leader Devrim Palu told AFP in October.
"His freedom is crucial for this process to advance with greater effectiveness."
- 'Uncle' or 'baby killer'? -
For many Turks, Ocalan, who founded the PKK in 1978 and embodies the Kurdish rebellion, is public enemy number one.
A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK began an insurgency in 1984, demanding independence and later broader autonomy in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast.
It was quickly blacklisted as a "terror" organisation by Ankara, Washington, Brussels and many Western nations.
Attitudes began shifting in October 2024 when Devlet Bahceli, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offered Ocalan an olive branch if he would renounce violence.
Ocalan sent a message saying he was willing and was the only one who could shift the Kurdish question "from an arena of conflict and violence to one of law and politics".
The Kurds seen as the world's largest stateless people were left without a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I.
Although most live in Turkey, where they make up around a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also spread across Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Ocalan was born into a mixed Turkish-Kurdish peasant family in Turkey's southeast on April 4, 1949.
He became a left-wing activist while studying politics at university in Ankara and set up the PKK in 1978.
Six years later, Ocalan oversaw its shift to armed struggle, then spent years on the run, fleeing first to Syria, where he stayed until he was forced to run again in 1998.
Moving from Russia to Italy, then Greece in search of a haven, he ended up at the Greek consulate in Kenya, where Turkish agents snatched him in an operation fit for a Hollywood film on February 15, 1999.
Sentenced to death, he escaped the gallows when Turkey began abolishing capital punishment in 2002 and has since been held on Imrali.
For many Kurds, he is a hero whom they call "Apo" Kurdish for "uncle". But Turks have called him "bebek katili" due to the PKK's ruthless tactics.
- Jailed but still leading -
With Ocalan's arrest, Ankara thought it had decapitated the PKK.
But even from his cell, Ocalan continued to lead, ordering a ceasefire that lasted from 1999 until 2004.
In 2005, he ordered followers to renounce the idea of an independent Kurdish state and campaign for autonomy in their respective countries.
Ocalan was involved in more talks in 2013 when Erdogan was premier, but those collapsed in July 2015, sparking a particularly deadly outbreak of violence.
Although that eventually tailed off, there were no further efforts at dialogue until this latest bid.
Since then, Ocalan has been regularly visited by a small delegation from the pro-Kurdish DEM party that has been deeply involved in shuttle diplomacy between him and Ankara.
Ahead of the vote, he sent back a message of hope.
"With this law, we are setting out to solve a historical problem. We are at the start of a democratisation process that will be at least as important as the founding of the Republic," he said of Turkey's founding in 1923.
"It is now necessary to work with the same seriousness for a democratic republic."
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