The Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, has announced its dissolution and the end of more than four decades of armed struggle against the Turkish state , the pro-Kurdish news agency ANF reported.
“The 12th PKK Congress has decided to dissolve the organizational structure of the PKK and end its armed struggle,” the Kurdish armed group announced in a statement, after previously saying it had held its congress last week.
"The practical process (for abandoning the armed struggle and for dissolution) will be managed and implemented by the leader Apo," the statement reads, referring to the name by which Abdullah Ocalan, founder and leader of the PKK, is known. Since 1999, he has been incarcerated in the prison on the island of Imrali, in the Sea of Marmara south of Istanbul, and has been sentenced to life imprisonment .
On February 27, Ocalan had explicitly called for the disarmament and dissolution of the PKK. The historic appeal of the leader and founder of the PKK had come after several talks with the Dem deputies who met him in prison between December and February, while he had not received visitors for about 10 years.
The PKK was founded by Ocalan in 1978 as a Marxist-oriented political party that sought independence for the predominantly Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey . Since the early 1980s, the Kurdish group, deemed terrorist by Ankara, has been involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish Army that has led to the deaths of over 40,000 people over a 45-year period .
(Unioneonline/L)
