The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been declared a terrorist group, has announced that it has dissolved itself, thus ending its armed struggle against the Turkish authorities, TRT Haber reported.
According to the official statement of the PKK, during the 12th congress of the organization held between May 5 and 7, a final decision was made to dissolve it. “The armed struggle is over, the weapons are left“, the congress decision also said.
The PKK is an armed group founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978 in southeastern Turkey. The ideology of the group is based on the ideas of Marx and Lenin. Immediately after the 1980 military coup in Turkey, Öcalan fled to neighboring Syria. Four years later, he began an armed struggle against Ankara. Damascus subsequently stopped supporting Öcalan due to the threat of war with Turkey in 1998. The authorities closed PKK camps and chased the movement's leader from the country. Öcalan was arrested in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in early 1999 and returned to Turkey, where he was sentenced to death for treason and terrorism. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and Öcalan was imprisoned on the island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara, where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement.
In October of that year The chairman of the Nationalist Action Party (NAP) and a key political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Devlet Bahçeli, shocked Ankara by suggesting that Öcalan could be released if he declared an end to his group's armed struggle. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) backed the proposal, after which the pro-Kurdish DEM party, which fights for greater rights and autonomy for the Kurds, held talks with Öcalan in prison on Imrali Island.
Meetings between DEM representatives and Öcalan led to the Kurdish rebel leader making a historic call on February 27 for the PKK to be disbanded and an end to the armed struggle that has killed tens of thousands since 1984.