Outlawed Kurdish group the PKK has declared a ceasefire with Turkey after its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan called on the movement to lay down its arms and dissolve itself.
In a statement on Saturday, the PKK said it hoped Turkey would release Ocalan, who has been imprisoned in solitary confinement since 1999, so he can lead a process of disarmament.
It follows his call this week aimed at ending four decades of armed struggle in south-eastern Turkey in which tens of thousands of people have been killed.
His announcement came months after Devlet Bahceli, the leader of Turkey’s ultra-nationalist MHP party and an ally of the Turkish government, launched an initiative to bring an end to the conflict.
Ocalan – affectionately referred to as Apo by Kurdish nationalists – met MPs from a pro-Kurdish party this week on Imrali, an island in the Sea of Marmara, south-west of Istanbul, where he is imprisoned.
“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 in a statement on Saturday, quoted by the pro-PKK ANF news agency.
“None of our forces will take armed action unless attacked,” it added.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said later on Saturday that military operations would resume against the PKK if “promises given [by the group] are not kept” and the disarmament process stalled.
The PKK – which stands for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – 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”.
The group has waged an insurgency since 1984, with the aim of carving out a homeland for Kurds, who account for about 20% of Turkey’s 85 million people. It is banned as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US.
Calling for disarmament, Ocalan had appealed to members of the PKK in a letter read out by Dem party members Ahmet Turk and Pervin Buldan in both Kurdish and Turkish.
He said “all groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself”, adding that his movement was formed primarily because “the channels of democratic politics were closed”.
However, Bahceli, backed by positive signals from Erdogan and other political parties, had created the right environment for the PKK to lay down its arms, Ocalan added.
Kurdish leaders largely welcomed the development. Local reports said thousands of people gathered to watch the statement on big screens in the cities of Diyarbakir and Van in the predominantly Kurdish south-east.
However, significant questions remain among both the Kurdish and Turkish public over what the next steps might be – and not everyone was convinced things would change.
Last week, senior PKK commander Duran Kalkan said Turkey’s ruling party, the AKP, was not looking for a solution but to “take over, destroy and annihilate”.
Turkish-backed forces in north-eastern Syria have intensified their campaign against Kurdish forces and last month called on Syria’s new leaders to eliminate the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Pro-Kurdish politicians have been targeted by a wave of arrests and jail sentences in recent years.
Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK’s insurgency began.
There was a spike in violence in south-eastern Turkey from 2015 to 2017 when a two-and-a-half year ceasefire broke down.
More recently, in October the PKK claimed an attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) headquarters near Ankara which left five people dead.
