The Kurdistan Workers Party, popularly known as PKK and considered a terrorist group by Turkey, has decided to end its 40-year-old conflict with Ankara amid ceasefire calls by its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, reports said.
The announcement by the group on Saturday is seen as a major development between the two conflicting parties amid the escalation between Israel and Hamas threatening widespread tensions in the Middle Eastern region.
“To pave the way for the implementation of leader Apo’s call for peace and democratic society, we are declaring a ceasefire effective from today,” the PKK executive committee said in a statement, referring to Ocalan.
“We agree with the content of the call as it is and we say that we will follow and implement it,” the committee said. “None of our forces will take armed action unless attacked,” it added.
The group said it hoped Ankara would free Ocalan, held in near-total isolation since 1999, so he could lead a process of disarmament.
Turkey has been for long demanding the disbandment of the group, while the group did not specifically set a timeline for when the group will disband.
Ocalan on Thursday made a surprising call from the prison from the party to lay down its arms, dissolve itself, and end its decades-long conflict with the state of Turkey.
Ocalan, 75, has been imprisoned on the island of Imrali, off Istanbul, since 1999, after being convicted of treason. Despite his incarceration, he continues to wield significant influence over the PKK, which he founded in 1978.
A day after, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Ocalan’s call, describing it as a “historic opportunity” for peace.
He said Türkiye would “keep a close watch” to make sure the talks to end the insurgency were “brought to a successful conclusion.”
“When the pressure of terrorism and arms is eliminated, the space for politics in democracy will naturally expand,” Erdogan promised.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, has waged an insurgency since 1984 to carve out a homeland for Kurds, who account for around 20 per cent of Türkiye’s 85 million people.
Since the incarceration of their founder, the group has killed more than 40,000 people both inside and outside Türkiye.
Previous peace efforts with the PKK had failed, most recently in 2015.
Türkiye’s neighbour, Iraq, which holds a significant population of Kurds, has welcomed Ocalan’s call, saying it was “a positive and important step towards achieving stability in the region.”
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