The jailed leader of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group's decades-old insurgency.

The leader of separatist Kurdish group PKK said he’s ready to cooperate with the Turkish government in a bid to end a long-running conflict that has claimed thousands of lives, according to a statement by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party,

Turkey has decided to allow parliament's pro-Kurdish DEM Party to hold face-to-face talks with militant leader Abdullah Ocalan on his island prison, the party said on Friday, setting up the first such visit in nearly a decade.

A delegation from Turkey's main pro-Kurdish DEM party on Saturday visited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, party officials said.

The DEM party's visit to Ocalan, in solitary confinement in an island prison since 1999, was their first in nine years.