The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) said it will heed a call from its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to lay down arms and end its four-decade-long war with Turkey.
In a statement on the affiliated Firat News Agency (ANF), the group’s leadership said it would follow Ocalan’s orders, issued from his prison in Imrali island on Thursday, which included a call for the group to dissolve itself.
The PKK’s executive committee said a “new historic process is beginning in Kurdistan and the Middle East with the call in question”.
However, it insisted that before heeding his call to dissolve the organisation, a party congress must first take place featuring Ocalan himself.
“In order for this to happen, a suitable security environment must be created, and Leader Apo must personally direct and lead it to make it successful,” it said, using Ocalan’s nom de guerre.
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“Up until now, we have led the war to this day – with all its mistakes and shortcomings. However, only Leader Apo can take over the leadership of the era of peace and democratic society.”
The group also said Ocalan’s prison conditions must be eased and that he “must be able to live and work in physical freedom and be able to establish unhindered relationships with anyone he wants”.
The PKK has fought a guerrilla war against Turkey since 1984, initially seeking an independent Kurdish state before shifting its demands to Kurdish autonomy.
Several attempts to end the conflict, which has cost more than 40,000 lives, have been made since Ocalan’s imprisonment in 1999. However, all efforts have broken down.
Ocalan’s message on Thursday was read aloud by the so-called Imrali Delegation, a group of pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party politicians who visited him on Thursday at Imrali Island.
The delegation included a lawyer representing Ocalan and a DEM politician considered to be close to the PKK headquarters in the Qandil mountains in Iraq.
The statement was broadcast live on large screens in the eastern cities of Van and Diyarbakir.
A number of organisations with links to the PKK, such as the Syrian’s Peoples’ Protection Unit (YPG) have implied Ocalan’s call would not apply to them.
Aliza Marcus, author of Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence, told Middle East Eye that the leadership in Qandil had become increasingly independent since Ocalan’s imprisonment.
“Ocalan’s call sets the framework for what the PKK needs to do next – but whether the group takes the next step for a congress, well, that will depend on whether they think they are getting what they need,” she said.
“We don’t know what behind-the-scenes deals may have been worked out in advance, but we do know that the PKK’s leadership in [Iraq] is very willing to put its own conditions and interpretations on Ocalan’s statements.”
