Jailed Kurdish separatist leader issues call to lay down arms

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdish separatist PKK, has called on his movement to lay down its arms and dissolve itself.

His statement, read out in a letter by MPs from a pro-Kurdish party, was aimed at ending four decades of armed struggle in south-eastern Turkey in which tens of thousands of people have been killed.

Ocalan, 75, had earlier met the MPs for several hours on Imrali, an island in the Sea of Marmara south-west of Istanbul where he has been imprisoned in solitary confinement since 1999.

His announcement came months after ultra-nationalist leader Devlet Bahceli, who is part of Turkey's government, launched an initiative to bring an end to the conflict.

"There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system," Ocalan's letter read. "Democratic consensus is the fundamental way."

Appealing to members of the PKK - the Kurdistan Workers' Movement - Ocalan said "all groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself".

He said the movement - banned as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US - was formed primarily because "the channels of democratic politics were closed".

However, Devlet Bahceli, backed by positive signals from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other political parties, had created the right environment for the PKK to lay down its arms, he added.

Bahceli has for years pushed for tough military action against the PKK, but last October he surprised colleagues by shaking hands with MPs from the pro-Kurdish Dem party in parliament and then suggested Ocalan could be given parole if he gave up violence and dissolved his armed group.

Some 40,000 people have died since the PKK took up arms. There was a surge of violence in southeastern Turkey from 2015-17 when a two-and-a-half year ceasefire broke down.

More recently, in October the PKK claimed an attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) headquarters near Ankara which left five people dead.