PKK declares ceasefire with Turkey after 40 years of armed struggle

ISTANBUL, Turkey: Outlawed Kurdish militants on Saturday declared a ceasefire with Turkey following a landmark call by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan asking the group to disband and end more than four decades of armed struggle.

It was the first reaction from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) after Ocalan this week called for the dissolution of the group and asked it to lay down arms.

“In order to pave the way for the implementation of (Ocalan’s) call for peace and democratic society, we are declaring a ceasefire effective from today,” the PKK executive committee said, quoted by the pro-PKK ANF news agency.

Who is Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish militant leader urging peace with Turkey?

“We agree with the content of the call as it is and we say that we will follow and implement it,” the committee based in northern Iraq said.

“None of our forces will take armed action unless attacked,” it added.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has waged an insurgency since 1984 with the aim of carving out a homeland for Kurds, who account for around 20 percent of Turkey’s 85 million people.

Turkey, the Kurds and the PKK

But more recently, the group has called for more autonomy, and cultural and linguistic rights, rather than independence.

Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999 there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed, which has cost more than 40,000 lives.

After several meetings with Ocalan at his island prison, the pro-Kurdish DEM party on Thursday relayed his appeal for PKK to lay down its weapons and convene a congress to announce the organisation’s dissolution.

The PKK said on Saturday it was ready to convene a congress as Ocalan wanted but “for this to happen, a suitable secure environment must be created” and Ocalan “must personally direct and lead it for the success of the congress”.

‘More stable Syria’ –

The group also 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.”

Turkey’s vice president Cevdet Yilmaz said “a new phase” began toward achieving the goal of a “terror-free Turkey”, without making any mention of the PKK statement.

“The dissolution of the terrorist organisation without any bargain means a new environment and a new period in terms of development and democracy, as well as security,” he wrote on X.

Analysts say establishing a truce with the PKK would be beneficial for Turkey and also for Syria, where strongman Bashar al-Assad was ousted late last year after a long and bloody civil war.

“A peace deal with the PKK is likely to make it easier to reunify and establish a more stable Syria,” Anthony Skinner, director of research at Marlow Global, told AFP.

“This is a key objective for the Turkish government which has had to contend with the ongoing threat of cross-border mass migration and terrorism,” he said.

The Turkish army, which has troops deployed in northern Syria, regularly carries out strikes on areas controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces it deems as “terrorists” linked to the PKK.

Bayram Balci, an analyst at the Sciences Po Paris university, said the PKK was well aware that the regional context has changed.

Syria’s Kurdish fighters “no longer have the support of Assad, they may no longer have the strong support of the Americans,” he said.

“The threat of Daesh still exists, but it is not as strong as before. And then there is also a kind of fatigue,” he added, referring to the IS group.

‘Historic opportunity’ –

Iraq has welcomed Ocalan’s call, saying it was “a positive and important step towards achieving stability in the region”.

The PKK’s presence in Iraq has been a recurrent source of tension between Baghdad and Ankara.

The group holds positions in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, where Turkey also maintains military bases and often carries out ground and air operations against Kurdish militants.

In the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, residents sounded cautious after the PKK’s truce declaration.

Soran Fatah, 60, said that Ankara now must create the conditions “to end the war so that the Kurds can live in peace like all other peoples.”

Baha al-Din Abdullah, 56, said he did not support a ceasefire unless it satisfied the Kurds’ interests.

“We must be careful not to be misled again,” he said, referring to the past attempts.

After the last round of peace talks collapsed in 2015, no further contact was made with the PKK until October when a hardline nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered a surprise peace gesture if Ocalan rejected violence.

Erdogan on Friday said Ocalan’s appeal was a “historic opportunity”, adding Turkey would “keep a close watch” to make sure the talks to end the insurgency were “brought to a successful conclusion”.

While Erdogan backed the rapprochement, his government cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists and journalists.