The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has announced a formal ceasefire with the Turkish government after the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan this week ordered to halt the 28-year armed struggle against Ankara.
“Since March 21 and from now on, we as a movement, as the PKK … officially and clearly declare a ceasefire,” the PKK’s field commander Murat Karayilan said in a video message on Saturday.
The video message, which was posted on pro-PKK Firat News website, was apparently recorded at a PKK base in northern Iraq.
On March 21, Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence at a prison on an island off Istanbul since his capture by Turkish special forces in Kenya 14 years ago, called on the PKK fighters to silence guns and pull out from Turkey.
“We are at a stage where guns should be silenced,” Ocalan said in a letter written from his prison cell that was read out by a Kurdish lawmaker to crowds in the Kurdish majority city of Diyarbakir.
In December 2012, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization started negotiations with the PKK with an ultimate goal of disarming the movement.
“The decision by our leader Apo (Abdullah Ocalan) is all of ours. We accept this decision, we agree with it,” Karayilan said in the video. “We see it as historic, correct and very important and as the start of a new period.”
Karayilan said his fighters would complete a withdrawal if the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and parliament “fulfilled their responsibilities and created the foundation for a withdrawal.”
PKK fighters launch their attacks from Iraq’s Qandil Mountains in the areas under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani.
The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region since the 1980s. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead.