Türkiye’s jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to disarm and disband yesterday, a move that could end its 40-year conflict with Ankara and have far-reaching political and security consequences for the region.
If the PKK leadership heeds its founder’s call to lay down its arms, which is not guaranteed, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would gain a historic opportunity to pacify and develop southeastern Türkiye, where violence has killed thousands of people and devastated the regional economy.
Meanwhile, Ocalan himself, now 75, could see his dream of peace during his life time realised after having been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul in near-total isolation since 1999.
In neighbouring Syria, the new administration could assert greater control over its Kurdish north as it seeks to rebuild a nation fractured by civil war, while peace would also remove a constant flashpoint in Kurdish-run, oil-rich northern Iraq, where the PKK set up its base two decades ago.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” Ocalan said in a letter made public by Türkiye’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party members.
Ocalan wants his party to hold a congress and to formally agree to dissolve itself, they quoted him as saying.
A DEM delegation visited Ocalan yesterday in the prison on Imrali island and later delivered his message in nearby Istanbul, a photo of them together with Ocalan projected onto the wall behind them.
There was no immediate response from the PKK headquarters in the mountains of northern Iraq, while Kurdish-led forces in Syria said Ocalan’s message was “positive”. In the first reaction to Ocalan’s appeal from Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, its deputy chairman Efkan Ala said Türkiye would be “free of its shackles” if the PKK truly laid down its arms.
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