BREITBART | Published March 1, 2025
(AFP) — 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 leader Apo’s call for peace and democratic society, we are declaring a ceasefire effective from today,” the PKK executive committee said referring to Ocalan and quoted by the pro-PKK ANF news agency.
“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.
But more recently, the group calls for more autonomy, 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”.
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.”
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 it no longer has the support it once had as the regional context has changed.
“It no longer has the support of Assad, it 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.
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.
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 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 the Kurdish militants.
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SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Kurdish PKK declare ceasefire following 40 years of bloodshed in Turkey after jailed leader called on militants to disarm
Kurdistan Workers’ Party supporters in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, display a poster depicting the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, 75, after he called on the PKK to disarm and dissolve itself
DAILY MAIL ONLINE | Published March 1, 2025
A Kurdish militant group who have waged a 40-year insurgency in Turkey declared a ceasefire today, two days after their jailed leader called for the group to disarm from his prison island.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, is a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish separatist group established in 1978 with the goal of creating a unified, independent Kurdistan.
It is classified as a terrorist organisation in Turkey – as well as by most Western states, NATO, and the European Union.
The group’s leader Abdullah Ocalan has been imprisoned on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara since February 1999 where he is serving a life sentence.
On February 27, a delegation of Kurdish politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party announced Ocalan’s call for the PKK to lay down its arms and disband after visiting him on his island prison earlier the same day.
‘I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility for this call,’ Ocalan said in a letter made public on Thursday by members of the DEM Party at a press conference in Istanbul.
In a subsequent statement published on March 1 by the Firat News Agency, a media outlet close to the PKK, the PKK said: ‘We declare a ceasefire effective today to pave the way for the implementation of Leader Apo’s Call for Peace and Democratic Society. None of our forces will take armed action unless attacked.’
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that since the conflict between the PKK and Turkey began in 1984, it has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people.
Abdullah Ocalan stands blindfolded and handcuffed in front of Turkish flags before being interrogated by Turkish officials at the prison-island of Imrali in February 1999
However, according to Professor Mine Eder, professor of political economy at Bogazici University, the majority of the dead have been Turkish Kurdish civilians killed as part of the Turkish military’s ferocious counterinsurgency campaign – which also led to the displacement of more than three million Kurds from southeastern Turkey.
The ceasefire is the first sign of a break in the conflict since peace talks between the PKK and Ankara broke down in the summer of 2015.
In its new statement, the PKK said Ocalan’s push for peace indicated that a ‘new historical process has begun in Kurdistan and the Middle East.’ Kurdistan refers to the parts of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran inhabited by Kurds.
While stating that it would ‘comply with and implement the requirements of the call from our own side,’ the PKK emphasized that ‘democratic politics and legal grounds must also be suitable for success.’
The ceasefire came as DEM, the main pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, has faced pressure, with several of its mayors being removed from office in recent months and replaced by government appointees.
The PKK also called for Ocalan to be released from Imrali prison so he can ‘personally direct and execute’ a party congress that would lead to the militants laying down their arms.
Members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) at a press conference in Istanbul, Turkey on February 27, after a visit with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan (seen centre of screen). The DEM delegation read out a letter from the imprisoned PKK militant leader in which he called on the militant group to lay down their arms
Syrian Kurds wave flags bearing the face of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan after he called on his group to lay down its arms on Thursday
A child in Hasakah, Syria wearing a headband with the face of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan
Pakize Akbaba visits the grave of her son Namik Ayhan Akbaba, a Turkish soldier who was killed during fighting with PKK militants
He split from the Turkish left to found the PKK in 1978, pledging to fight for an independent state of Kurdistan after dropping out of Ankara University’s political science faculty.
The PKK was led by Ocalan from Syria until Turkey threatened war in 1998, forcing Damascus to expel him.
He sought refuge in Russia, then Italy and Greece before he was captured in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in 1999 by Turkish special forces.
Appearing bewildered and dejected, he was flown to Ankara guarded by Turkish commandos, and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in jail, where he has remained ever since.
From his jail cell, Ocalan – affectionately referred to as Apo by Kurdish nationalists – rose in prominence.
Photos in Turkish media showed a benign image of a grey-haired, moustachioed and smiling figure, in sharp contrast to past pictures of him in combat fatigues wielding an assault rifle.
However, Ocalan has for some time hinted that the PKK’s struggles were coming to an end, referring to their movement as ‘unsustainable’ in a statement read to huge crowds at Kurdish new year celebrations in March 2015.
He wrote: ‘This struggle of our 40-year-old movement, which has been filled with pain, has not gone to waste but at the same time has become unsustainable.’
PKK supporters hold up a giant poster of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan during a rally in Diyarbakir, Turkey
A female Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighter stands near a security position in Sinjar, Iraq on March 13, 2015
A supporter flashes a victory sign after jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan, 75, called on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to disarm and dissolve itself
Members of the Turkish Youth Union (TGB) gather to protest talks, supported by the government, with the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, to seek an end to a 40-year conflict between the PKK and Turkish state in Istanbul, Turkey on February 16
There have been numerous ceasefires between the PKK and Turkish forces over the years, but the 2013-2015 peace process were the closest he was to get to achieving a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Four months later the peace process collapsed and the conflict entered its bloodiest phase, focused in urban southeastern areas.
In recent years the conflict has shifted to neighbouring northern Iraq where the PKK has mountain bases and Turkey has dozens of outposts.
Ankara has launched operations against the militants there, including air strikes with warplanes and combat drones, which Baghdad has said violates its sovereignty.
Yet Iraq and Turkey had agreed to boost anti-PKK cooperation, and Baghdad labelled it a banned organisation for the first time in July 24.
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