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The jailed leader of Turkey’s decades-long Kurdish insurgency has called on his followers to lay down arms, according to an opposition party, a crucial step towards ending a destabilising conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The message from Abdullah Öcalan — delivered by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party (Dem), Turkey’s second-biggest opposition group — urged members of his militant Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) to dissolve.
Overtures from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies have “created an environment in which I am making a call for the laying down of arms”, according to a statement Öcalan gave to Dem officials who met him at his prison on Thursday. “All groups must lay [down] their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.”
The call from Öcalan is seen as a first but pivotal moment in ending the four-decade conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mostly Kurdish, and cost billions of dollars in lost economic potential.
Öcalan founded the PKK in the late 1970s to fight for greater autonomy for Turkey’s Kurds, who now number about 17mn. Dem differs sharply from the PKK in advocating for a political process over violence to strengthen Kurdish rights.
The détente follows a surprise offer in October from Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the government’s nationalist governing partner, to free Öcalan in return for ordering the PKK to lay down arms.
PKK commanders, who are largely based in northern Iraq, have not said whether they will comply with the order from Öcalan, who has been in prison for a quarter of a century but remains influential in Kurdish politics and a folk hero to many Kurds in Turkey and Syria.
A formal truce would mark a major political achievement for Erdoğan, Turkey’s leader of more than two decades. The president’s previous effort to negotiate an end to the fighting collapsed in 2015, unleashing the deadliest violence in years before the PKK was largely forced out of the country.
But the group, deemed a terrorist organisation by the US and EU, remains a potent force in northern Iraq and Syria. It has links to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group that helped defeat Isis with US backing and which controls about 20 per cent of Syrian territory.
Analysts have said that improving the outlook for Turkey’s Kurdish population would help foster better relations with Syrian Kurds and add momentum to Erdoğan’s efforts to reunify Syria after Turkish-backed rebels helped topple former president Bashar al-Assad.
But lasting peace may also require concessions to Kurdish demands for greater cultural and political rights in Turkey, analysts say, such as permitting the use of the Kurdish language in schools and strengthening local administration in the country’s south-east, where most Kurds live.
Efkan Ala, a prominent lawmaker from Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and
Development Party, called Öcalan’s message “an important step” and
said the government was now waiting for the PKK to “bury its weapons”.
“If the terrorist organisation heeds this call, lays down its arms and
dissolves itself, it will be freed from Turkey’s shackles,” Ala said
in an interview with A Haber channel.
Turkey has sacked 12 Dem mayors since winning office in March last year and has jailed several of them over alleged links to the PKK.
Erdoğan could turn to Dem for support in parliament to change the constitution to abolish term limits and extend his time in power past 2028 when his current administration ends.
Öcalan’s message followed three meetings with members of Dem since Assad was ousted in December. It comes exactly 10 years after a previous call by Öcalan for the PKK to move towards disarmament. Within months, that peace process had collapsed.
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