An emotional crowd broke into applause, while others wept in the main city of Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast Thursday as jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan urged his militant group to dissolve and his fighters to lay down their weapons.
The response came as Ocalan’s landmark declaration was read out at an Istanbul press conference, his words relayed by loudspeaker to crowds gathered in the southeast which has borne the brunt of decades of armed insurgency.
“All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” Ocalan said in a declaration drawn up in his cell on Imrali prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.
The call came four months after Ankara offered an olive branch to the founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” he said, his words read out by lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party who visited him earlier on Thursday.
“Today is a holy day, a blessed day,” 45-year-old Emine Atac told AFP in Kurdish in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir where 3,000 people had gathered to hear his words, some breaking down in tears.
“We are very happy. We want peace and freedom,” she said.
Elsewhere in the crowd, 65-year-old Ferha Akbuyuk praised Ocalan’s message as pushing for “peace and brotherhood” between Turks and Kurds.
“It was message about humanity, about rights and law, about justice and equality,” she said, sounding optimistic.
But Sukru Erdogan, 52, said the message offered little hope for the Kurds.
“It didn’t say anything about a federation or about cultural rights. I am disappointed,” he shrugged.
‘Seismic Shift’
Ocalan’s declaration was hailed by Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional president Nechirvan Barzani who urged “the PKK to adhere to and implement this message,” in a posting on X, pledging to “fully support the peace process.”
And the German foreign ministry welcomed his words as offering a “historic chance” to end the decades-long insurgency.
Analysts described it as a major breakthrough.
“Ocalan’s call for the PKK to disarm and disband represents a seismic shift. Not just for Turkey, which has waged a decades-long war against the group, but for the region at large,” said Hamish Kinnear, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft.
The big question was how his message would be received by fighters whose military leadership is mostly based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
French historian Boris James, who specializes in the Kurds, said the response could be nuanced.
“The PKK’s military leaders may accept it without it having any practical impact in the field,” he told AFP.
Of particular concern are those fighters allied with the US-backed Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria — a force under pressure from Damascus to disarm but which is fighting off attacks by Turkish-backed militia groups.
Kinnear said much would depend on the response of the PKK in Turkey.
“If the bulk of the Turkey-based PKK adhere to Ocalan’s call, PKK militants in Iraq and PKK-aligned groups in Syria are likely to follow suit,” he said.
Cautious Optimism
There was no immediate response from Ankara, although a senior figure within President Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s ruling AKP expressed cautious optimism.
“If the terrorist organization heeds this call, lays down its arms and dissolves itself, Turkey will be freed from its shackles,” Efkan Ala, AKP’s deputy chairman was quoted as saying by the state news agency Anadolu.
Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed which erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives.
The last round of talks collapsed amid violence in 2015.
After that, there was no contact until October when hardline nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli offered Ocalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by Erdogan.
Although Erdogan extended his full support for the rapprochement in late October, he has said little since.
And his government has cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists, and journalists and removing 10 recently-elected DEM mayors, all of whom have been charged with “terror ties.”
Despite the wave of arrests, many are hoping Ocalan’s call will ultimately result in concessions for the Kurds, who make up around 20 percent of Turkey’s 85 million population.
