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Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish separatist PKK, has called on his movement to lay down its arms and dissolve itself.<\/p>\n
His statement, read out in a letter by MPs from a pro-Kurdish party, was aimed at ending four decades of armed struggle in south-eastern Turkey in which tens of thousands of people have been killed.<\/p>\n
Ocalan, 75, had earlier met the MPs for several hours on Imrali, an island in the Sea of Marmara south-west of Istanbul where he has been imprisoned in solitary confinement since 1999.<\/p>\n
His announcement came months after ultra-nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli, who is part of Turkey’s government, launched an initiative to bring an end to the conflict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system,” Ocalan’s letter read. “Democratic consensus is the fundamental way.”<\/p>\n
Appealing to members of the PKK – the Kurdistan Workers’ Movement – Ocalan said “all groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself”.<\/p>\n
He said the movement – banned as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US – was formed primarily because “the channels of democratic politics were closed”. <\/p>\n
However, Devlet Bahceli, backed by positive signals from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other political parties, had created the right environment for the PKK to lay down its arms, he added.<\/p>\n
Bahceli has for years pushed for tough military action against the PKK, but last October he surprised colleagues by shaking hands with MPs from the pro-Kurdish Dem party in parliament and then suggested Ocalan could be given parole if he gave up violence and dissolved his armed group.<\/p>\n
Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms. There was a surge of violence in southeastern Turkey from 2015-17 when a two-and-a-half year ceasefire broke down.<\/p>\n
More recently, in October the PKK claimed an attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) headquarters near Ankara<\/a> which left five people dead. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n