The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) may soon begin handing over its weapons in line with a groundbreaking disarmament deal reached earlier this year, Turkey’s ruling AK Party has said.
“I don’t want to give a definite timeline at this stage,” party spokesman Omer Celik told reporters on July 1. “We’ve reached a stage where it could happen in a matter of days.”
Celik added that the upcoming days would be “extremely important for a Turkey free of terrorism.”
Since the mid-1980s, the PKK has waged a violent insurgency against the Turkish state in which tens of thousands of people, including civilians, have been killed.
Ankara, along with both Brussels and Washington, regards the PKK as a terrorist group.
Days later, the PKK leadership, which is based in the region of northern Iraq’s Kandil mountain range, responded positively to Ocalan’s call to disarm.
“We will heed the necessities of the call and implement it,” the group said in a statement, adding that the initiative could only be realized under Ocalan’s “practical leadership.”
Ocalan founded the PKK in 1978 with the stated aim of establishing a Kurdish state in the region.
The group later moderated its stance, calling for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey, where ethnic Kurds account for much of the population.
In 1999, Ocalan was captured by Turkish security forces and has since been held at an island prison near Istanbul.
Despite his lengthy imprisonment, he is still regarded as the PKK’s de facto leader.
In May, the group reiterated its intention to lay down its arms at a PKK congress held in northern Iraq.
In return for disarmament, the PKK, along with Turkey’s opposition pro-Kurdish DEM Party, expect Ankara to initiate a program of democratic reform.
The DEM Party, Turkey’s third-largest, played a key role in advancing the disarmament process by mediating between Ocalan, the PKK’s Iraq-based leadership, and the Turkish authorities.
The United States and the European Union, along with Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, have all welcomed the group’s decision to lay down its arms.
In mid-May, U.S. State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott called the move a “victory for civilization.”
“Tens of thousands of people lost their lives [as] a result of armed conflict in the decades since the organization was founded. It is the United States’s hope that this announcement will lead to increased stability for the region.”
Cautious Optimism
On June 30, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed the PKK disarmament process, which he said had made significant headway within a relatively short period.He also introduced a note of caution, saying “certain elements”—both in Turkey and in the PKK—were “pursuing sabotage efforts aimed at dynamiting progress.”
“Our state will not fall into traps,” Erdogan said—without elaborating—in remarks cited by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.
On July 1, Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin visited Erbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, where he met with leaders of the Kurdish regional government, which also supports the disarmament process.
