The imprisoned PKK leader asks the group to depose the weapons and dissolve

The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdulá Olalan, has called the group to depose the weapons and dissolve after about four decades of insurgency against the authorities of Turkey, according to a message transmitted this Thursday by the Prokurdo Popular Party Party for Equality and Democracy (DEM).

“As is the case in any modern community and party whose existence has not been abolished by force, it must do so voluntarily,” said Ocalan, imprisoned in the Imrali prison, in a statement read during an act called by the Prokurdo party to make the announcement.

“I ask that a Congress be convened to adopt the decision, all groups must depose the weapons and the PKK must dissolve,” he said, before stating that there is an adequate “climate” for this step, whose “historical responsibility” assumes, according to the text, whose reading has been broadcast by the dem -on social networks.

In this sense, he has cited among the reasons for his appeal the call of the leader of the ultra-nationalist party of the nationalist movement, Devlet Bahçeli-a key ally of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan-, the position shown by the president himself and “the positive response of other political parties” for the beginning of a peace process.

Olalan recalled that the group “was born in the twentieth century, the most violent era in the history of humanity” and has argued that “the negative flagrant of Kurdish reality and restrictions on basic rights and freedoms, especially freedom of expression”, played “a significant role” in “the emergence and development” of the Turkish armed group.

“The PKK has been under the hard realities of the century and the system of real socialism in terms of its theory, program, strategy and tactics adopted,” he said, although he has argued that “the collapse of socialism in the nineties due to internal dynamics, the dissolution of the denial of the Kurdish identity in the country and the improvement in freedom of expression have led to a weakening of the founding meaning of PKK “.

The PKK leader has stressed that “throughout a story of more than a thousand years, relations between Turks and Kurds have been defined in terms of mutual cooperation and alliance” and has stated that both communities “have considered essential to remain in this voluntary alliance to maintain their existence and survive in the face of hegemonic powers.”

In this way, he explained that “the last 200 years of capitalist modernity have been marked by the objective of breaking this alliance” from “class interests”, so it has argued that “today the main task is to restructure this historical relationship, which has become something extremely fragile, without excluding considerations about beliefs in spirit of fraternity.”

“The need for a democratic society is inevitable. PKK, insurgency and armed movement of longer duration and extension in the history of the Republic (of Turkey), found a social basis and support and was mainly inspired by the fact that channels for democratic policy was closed,” he said.

Therefore, he has asserted that “the inevitable outcome of extreme nationalist deviations, such as separate nation, federation, administrative autonomy or culturalist solutions, does not respond to the historical sociology of society” and has deepened that “respect for identities, free expression, democratic self-organization of each segment of society based on their own socio-economic structures They are only possible through the existence of a democratic society and a political space. ”

“The second century of the Republic can only achieve and ensure permanent and fraternal continuity if it is crowned with democracy. There is no alternative to democracy in the search and realization of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental path,” he reiterated, before adding that “the language of the era of peace and democratic society needs to be developed online with this reality.”

Possible start of a new peace process

The DEM himself, who before a new visit this Thursday to Imrali had advanced in his account in the social network X that the planned announcement “could mark the beginning of a new peace process,” he recently said that Ocalan would make “a historical call” with the aim of achieving “an exhaustive and permanent solution to the Kurdish matter and for the construction of a democratic Turkey.”

The DEM is mediating in conversations between the authorities and the PKK, in an effort to end the conflict. In this context, delegations of the party have to Ocalan in the Imrali prison, the last of which took place this Thursday, where it meets life imprisonment after being arrested in 1999 in the capital of Kenya, Nairobi.

In fact, Commander Cemil Bayik, high position of the PKK and co -president of the Executive Council of the Union of Communities of Kurdistan (KCK), recently said that Ocalan wanted to take the Kurdish matter “of the Kingdom of War to the Kingdom of Democratization.” “He wants to take the step he already gave to a greater objective,” in reference to his call a decade ago in favor of a peace agreement.

The Turkish government and the PKK, a group founded in 1978 that rose in arms six years later, already started in 2013 a process of peace conversations, although they collapsed in 2015 and were followed by a burst of confrontations in the areas of majority Kurda in the southeast and east of the country.

The rupture of the Alto El Fuego took place shortly after the Executive and the group signed the known as Dolmabahce agreements to advance peace conversations and after the historic entry into the Parliament of the Democratic Party of the Peoples (HDP), predecessor of the DEM and that became the third force with more seats in the legislative body.

Although the PKK formulated after its foundation an appeal to the creation of an independent state, currently advocates for greater autonomy in the Kurdish majority areas, located mainly in the east and southeast of the country, part of what is considered the historical Kurdistan, which also extends to parts of Syria, Iraq and Iran.