Kurdish PKK disbands and ends 40-year Turkey insurgency

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been locked in bloody conflict with the Turkish state for more than four decades, decided to disband and end its armed struggle, a news agency close to the group reported on Monday.

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 U.S. forces.

Since the PKK launched its insurgency in 1984, the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, exerted a huge economic burden and fuelled social tensions. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

“The PKK 12th Congress decided to dissolve the PKK’s organizational structure… and end the armed struggle,” the 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.

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 break up of the PKK would happen in practice.

It also remained to be seen how the process would affect the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria, if at all. YPG leads a U.S.-allied force against Islamic State there and is regarded by Turkey as a PKK affiliate. YPG has previously said Ocalan’s call did not apply to it.

“The PKK has completed its historic mission,” the PKK statement said. “The PKK struggle has broken the policy of denial and annihilation of our people and brought the Kurdish issue to a point of solving it through democratic politics.”

The PKK’s decision will give President Tayyip Erdogan the opportunity to boost development in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, where the insurgency has impaired the regional economy for decades.

A deputy leader of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, the third largest in Turkey’s parliament and which played a key role in facilitating Ocalan’s peace call, told Reuters the PKK decision was significant not just for Kurdish people but for the Middle East as a whole.

“It will also necessitate a major shift in the official state mentality of Turkey,” DEM’s Tayip Temel said.

The announcement was welcome in the southeast’s largest city Diyarbakir, where distrust of the government among many Kurds had eroded hopes that the peace process would be successful.

“It is really important that people do not die anymore, that the Kurdish problem is solved in a more democratic structure,” said Hasan Huseyin Ceylan, 45, describing the PKK move as very important for both Kurdish and Turkish people.

Omer Celik, spokesperson for Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, said the decision to dissolve was “an important step toward a terror-free Turkey”.

Turkey’s foreign ministry did not immediately comment on the announcement, which Ankara had been expecting.

The lira TRYTOM=D3 was mostly flat at 38.765 against the dollar while the main share index rose 3%.

There have been intermittent peace efforts over the years, most notably a ceasefire between 2013 and 2015 that ultimately collapsed.