ISTANBUL: Jailed Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his followers to take a “historic” decision to lay down arms, according to a statement on Saturday, a crucial step in Turkey’s drive to end a 30-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels.

Sirri Sureyya Onder, a lawmaker from parliament’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), read a statement from Mr Ocalan on live TV that urged the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to attend a congress on disarmament in the spring months.

“I invite the PKK to attend an extraordinary congress in the spring months in order to make the strategic and historic decision to abandon the armed struggle,” Mr Onder said, quoting Mr Ocalan, with whom an HDP delegation met this week.

Mr Onder spoke live on television alongside Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, who said the move towards disarmament showed “an important phase in the resolution process has been reached”, after the two sides met briefly in Istanbul.

“We view this statement as important to accelerate the work on disarmament... and for democratic politics to come to the forefront,” Mr Akdogan said.

“With today’s events a critical point has been reached in Turkey’s democratisation, the expansion of freedoms and for lasting peace,” said HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtas, whose deputies have shuttled from Mr Ocalan’s island prison near Istanbul to Qandil mountain in northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.

The disarmament congress would be held after consensus on the measures outlined in the statement is reached, Mr Demirtas said. It was not clear who would attend the conference or whether PKK forces outside of Turkey would be expected to lay down arms.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union list the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The militants declared a ceasefire in Turkey in 2013, but violence still sporadically erupts.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has risked a nationalist backlash to pursue an end to the insurgency that has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mostly Kurdish, since 1984, launching jailhouse talks with Mr Ocalan — once derided as a “baby killer” — in late 2012.

Facing a parliamentary election in June, the government has repeatedly said it expected Mr Ocalan to declare an end to the PKK’s armed struggle for greater autonomy and cultural rights for Turkey’s estimated 15 million Kurds.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2015

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