Kurdish militant group ends Turkey insurgency war

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been locked in bloody conflict with Turkey for more than four decades, decided to disband and end its armed struggle, group members and Turkish leaders said on Monday. Since the PKK launched its insurgency in 1984 — originally with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state — the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, exerted a huge economic burden and fuelled social tensions. The PKK’s decision could boost NATO member Turkey’s political and economic stability and encourage moves to ease tensions in neighbouring Iraq and also in Syria, where Kurdish forces are allied with US forces.

While Ankara welcomed the decision to dissolve, it does not guarantee peace. Rather it paves the way for agreeing a tricky legal framework for securely disarming the PKK, which is designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

“The PKK 12th Congress decided to dissolve the PKK’s organisational structure… and end the armed struggle,” Firat news agency reported it as saying in the closing declaration of a congress held last week in northern Iraq, where the group is based.

A PKK official separately confirmed the decision and said all military operations would cease “immediately”, adding weapon handovers were contingent on Ankara’s response and approach to Kurdish rights, and the fate of PKK fighters and leaders.

Kurds make up some 20 per cent of Turkey’s 86 million population. The PKK held the Congress in response to a February call to disband from its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999. It said on Monday that he would manage the process. However, it was not clear whether Ankara agreed to Ocalan’s continued role, which polls suggest could be unpopular among Turks. Nor were details available on how the disarmament and breakup of the PKK would happen in practice.

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