LAST UPDATE | 15 Feb 2023

AROUND A DOZEN Kurdish activists launched a protest in the European Parliament, causing a security alert in the chamber. 

The protest took place on the 24th anniversary of Turkey’s arrest of their revered leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The debate session was halted and MEPs left the chamber as the protesters brandished banners bearing Ocalan’s image and shouted slogans hostile to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“They are pro-PKK activists,” MEP Bernard Guetta told AFP, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), banned in Turkey and blacklisted as a terrorist organisation in the EU. 

The President of the Parliament Roberta Mesola was said to have been escorted from the room as proceedings were halted.

Sean Kelly, an Irish MEP, had tweeted that missiles were thrown from the public gallery by the protest group. 

Grace O’Sullivan, also an Irish MEP, tweeted an image of her fellow MEPs standing outside the parliament.

Emmanuel Foulon, a press officer working in the parliament, said that the Kurdish protestors threw leaflets from the public gallery.

A video showed an official, speaking in Italian, asking members to leave so that the protest could be brought under control. 

Sean Kelly had raised concerns about security in a tweet and queried if an MEP had signed the group in.

We should be voting now @Europarl_EN but chamber has been evacuated until police arrive & remove protesters, some standing v dangerously on overhanging barriers . Will lead to a major re-think on #Security . & did some MEP sign them in & were they not screened ? pic.twitter.com/6JASCp0OW2

— Seán Kelly MEP (@SeanKellyMEP) February 15, 2023

Ocalan is the best-known leader of Kurdish rebellion in Turkey, but was arrested in Kenya by Turkish agents on 15 February, 1999 and sentenced to death in June of the same year.

Now 73, his sentence was reduced to life in prison in 2002 and supporters continue to demand his release.

Last week, PKK militants still fighting in Turkey announced a temporary halt to their operations during rescue work after the massive earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

With additional reporting from AFP.