After more than 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish government, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has made its dissolution official and brought an end to its armed struggle.
The announced was made after the group held its congress in northern Iraq on Friday. The move came roughly two months since the group’s jailed founder, Abdullah Ocalan—who is popularly referred to as “Appo”—called for the PKK to disarm in a message sent from behind bars in February of this year.
During its life, the PKK has been designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union. It conducted a long and frequently violent struggle for Kurdish autonomy, a conflict the organization has now announced as finished.
Abdullah Ocalan
Abdullah Ocalan, aged 76, has been imprisoned for over 25 years, after his involvement in organizing the PKK’s armed rebellion against the Turkish state. He was politicized during his studies at Ankara University, spurred by the extensive marginalization faced by Kurds in Turkey.
In the late 1970s, Ocalan started speaking out in favor of Kurdish nationalism and later on founded the PKK in 1978. The organization initiated its armed struggle in 1984, beginning a decades-long war that took the lives of thousands.
Ocalan continues to be a figure widely polarizing—revered by many in the Kurdish political process but vilified by the majority of Turks for initiating the violence.
His call to the PKK to lay down arms followed four months after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political ally had urged him to do so. In jail, Ocalan has nonetheless remained highly influential within the PKK, whose soldiers have largely waged operations from bases in northern Iraq’s mountain areas.
Ocalan initially led the PKK from Syria but was ejected in 1998 when Turkey threatened to go to war. After unsuccessful asylum bids in Russia, Italy, and Greece, he was finally arrested in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1999 by Turkish special forces.
