"Call for peace"

Kurdish party PKK announces ceasefire with Turkey

For many Kurds, the imprisoned PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan is a national hero.

(Bild: EPA/SEDAT SUNA)

The banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) announced on Saturday that it would follow the call of its leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is imprisoned in Turkey, to end the armed struggle and declared an immediate ceasefire.

In a historic statement on Thursday, Öcalan had called on his followers to lay down their arms after more than 40 years of fighting against the Turkish state, to disband the PKK and to renounce violence. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then spoke of the "opportunity for a historic step".

"We declare a ceasefire from today"
"In order to clear the way for the implementation of PKK leader Apo's (Abdullah Öcalan, ed.) call for peace and a democratic society, we are declaring a ceasefire from today," the PKK announced, according to its affiliated news agency ANF.

The PKK also expressed the hope that Turkey would release Öcalan, who has been in solitary confinement since 1999, so that he could lead the disarmament process. The necessary political and democratic conditions must also be created for the peace process to be successful, it added.

Armed struggle since the 1980s
The PKK has been fighting for a Kurdish state or an autonomous region in south-eastern Turkey since the 1980s with armed violence and attacks. According to its own statements, the PKK has since abandoned its demand for an independent state. It has its headquarters in the Kandil Mountains in Iraq.

Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict so far. Öcalan (75) has been imprisoned on the prison island of Imrali since 1999. A ceasefire was last declared in 2013, but the peace process failed in the summer of 2015. The PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) is listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, the EU and the USA.