ISTANBUL - Outlawed Kurdish militants on Saturday declared a ceasefire with Turkey following a landmark call by their jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan asking the group to disband.
It was the first reaction from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after Ocalan this week called for the dissolution of the group and asked it to lay down arms after fighting the Turkish state for over four decades.
“In order 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, referring to Ocalan and quoted by the pro-PKK ANF news agency.
“We agree with the content of the call as it is and we say that we will follow and implement it,” the committee based in northern Iraq said.
“None of our forces will take armed action unless attacked,” it added.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has waged an insurgency since 1984 with the aim of carving out a homeland for Kurds, who account for around 20% of Turkey’s 85 million people.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999 there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed, which has cost more than 40,000 lives.
After several meetings with Ocalan at his island prison, the pro-Kurdish DEM party on Thursday relayed his appeal for PKK to lay down its weapons and convene a congress to announce the organisation’s dissolution.
The PKK said on Saturday it was ready to convene a congress as Ocalan wanted but “for this to happen, a suitable secure environment must be created” and Ocalan “must personally direct and lead it for the success of the congress”.
Better prison conditions
The group also said Ocalan’s prison conditions must be eased, adding he “must be able to live and work in physical freedom and be able to establish unhindered relationships with anyone he wants, including his friends.”
After the last round of peace talks collapsed in 2015, no further contact was made until October when a hardline nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered a surprise peace gesture if Ocalan rejected violence.
While Erdogan backed the rapprochement, his government cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists and journalists.
Erdogan on Friday said Ocalan’s appeal was a “historic opportunity”.
He said Turkey 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.
Iraq has welcomed Ocalan’s call, saying it was “a positive and important step towards achieving stability in the region”.
The PKK’s presence in Iraq has has been a recurrent source of tension between Baghdad and Ankara.
The group holds positions in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, where Turkey also maintains military bases and often carries out ground and air operations against the Kurdish militants.
