Imprisoned Turkish Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan has commanded the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to disarm and dissolve, potentially ending a four-decade insurgency against Ankara that spilt into neighbouring Syria and Iraq.
As many as 40,000 were killed in the conflict in Turkey between the PKK and Turkish military.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,” he declared in a letter released on Wednesday by political allies in Istanbul.
Ocalan’s dramatic declaration is seen as a turning point in the peace process started last October by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s far-right ally, Nationalist Movement Party chief Devlet Bahçeli. He suggested if Ocalan (75) made a formal demand for PKK disbandment then he might secure release under the “right to hope” principle, which rejects incarceration for more than 25 years.
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Ocalan was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to death for forming an armed militia. This was commuted after the death penalty was abolished and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the US, Britain and the EU, the leftist PKK was founded in 1978 to fight for an independent Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey. Ocalan explained his shift by saying Turkish democratisation had overtaken “armed resistance” as the means to end “restrictions on basic rights and freedoms”.
Kurds make up 25 per cent of Turkey’s population and Mr Erdogan could benefit from their support in the 2028 election.
Britain-based Middle East Eye cited a Turkish source who said the PKK was expected to abide by Ocalan’s stand. “Those who refuse to comply will be dealt with using the full force of the military and the law,” the source said.
Salih Muslim, who is co-chairman of the PKK’s Syrian political affiliate, told Saudi television channel Al-Arabiya that his group agreed with Ocalan. “If the reasons for carrying weapons disappear, we will lay them down.”
However, the faction’s military wing, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, could retain arms to fight the Islamic State terror group, also known as Isis, which has regrouped and reasserted itself in eastern Syria.
US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told the Voice of America that the Ocalan initiative was “a significant development. We believe it will help bring peace to this troubled region. We hope that it will help assuage our [Turkish] allies about US counter-Isis partners in northeast Syria”.
Having faced Turkish miliary action over their autonomous region in northeastern Syria, Syrian Kurds could be encouraged to seek an accommodation with Syria’s new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham government, commentators suggest.
