The Kurdish guerrilla group who fought a long-standing insurrection against Turkey declared a cease-fire on Saturday, a few days after an appeal from its imprisoned leader to disarm and dissolve the organization raised the hope of ending a conflict that killed tens of thousands of people for four decades.
Kurdistan workers’ holidays, or PKK, said the ceasefire would start immediately. But he also asked Abdullah OcalanThe founder and leader of the PKK who has been in a Turkish prison for a quarter of a century, to be released so that he can supervise the dissolution of the group.
If the PKK dissolves, it would solve a major interior security threat and mark a political victory for Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If negotiations continue with Mr. Ocalan, this could inaugurate a new era of peace in the region where the Kurds continued an armed struggle in a mountainous area which cuts parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
But there are still many unanswered questions.
“This is only the first sentence,” said ASLI Ayddintasbas, an elder from the Brookings Institution, about Mr. Ocalan’s call to all groups to disarm.
It is not clear if Turkey will cease the armed operations against the PKK, which would monitor any truce or what would happen to the combatants who lay down their arms. There is also the question of whether the government has offered Kurdish fighters something in return.
But a ceasefire would allow the Kurds to start internal consultations and maintain local congresses to forge a democratic path, which the Kurds in Türkiye and Syria said they wanted to do.
The PKK announcement came two days later Mr. Ocalan said That the group had survived his life and should dissolve, a rare message from a leader with a broad influence on Kurdish fighters in Turkey, but also in the region, including in Syria and Iraq.
The PKK Declaration, disseminated by the Firat news agency, an information site linked to PKK, said: “None of our forces will take armed measures unless you are attacked”.
In recent years, Turkey soldiers have degraded the combat capacities of the PKK, who, according to analysts, may have contributed to his desire to discuss the end of his fight.
PKK fighters worship their leader, Mr. Ocalan, and should take into account his appeal, but the group’s conditional declaration suggests that it will continue to use its lever effect in the negotiation process.
“For these types of organizations, ceases to ceases are a way to buy time, overcome military losses and smooth out the cracks among the members,” said Oytun Orhan, analyst at the Middle East Studies Center based in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
The Turkish government did not immediately comment on the PKK declaration or on the group’s appeal to Mr. Ocalan’s release.
But Friday, Erdogan welcomed Mr. Ocalan’s call, who came after a series of talks who included Turkish officials; Mr. Ocalan himself; and the members of the main pro-Kurdish party of Turkey, the Party of Equality and the Democracy of the People, or DEM
“We have a historic opportunity to take a step towards the demolition of the wall of terror” between the Turks and the Kurds, he said. He added that Turkish officials would continue the work to put an end to the conflict, without developing what it would imply.
Erdogan said in January that the government had offered no dealership to the PKK.
The PKK began as a secessionist group that sought to create an independent state for the Kurdish minority of Turkey, but more recently, it said that it was looking for larger rights for Kurds in Turkey.
Turkey, the United States and other countries classify Mr. Ocalan as a terrorist and the PKK as a terrorist group for its attacks that killed Turkish security forces and civilians. Many Turks saw Mr. Ocalan, who was sentenced in 1999 for managing an armed terrorist group, as one of the largest enemies in the country.
Turkey and the PKK have tried over the years to resolve the conflict, more recently through peace talks that started in 2011. Negotiations broke down in 2015, inaugurating a new deadly phase.
But last October, a powerful political ally of Mr. Erdogan made A surprising public call to Mr. Ocalan, asking him to tell his fighters to lay down the arms and to put an end to the conflict. This, according to the politician, could open a way at the end of his perpetuity sentence.
