Ocalan calls for PKK to drop weapons, be dissolved

Pro-Kurdish Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party, or DEM, delegation members release an statement from the jailed leader of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, center at the background photo, in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for his Kurdish militant group to lay down its weapons and dissolve itself in a landmark declaration read out in Istanbul.

“All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself,” he 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 75-year-old who founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.

His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party who visited him earlier on Thursday.

“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” he said.

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 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Agence France-Presse