Ankara, May 12 (EFE).- The Kurdish guerrilla group PKK announced on Monday its dissolution, bringing an end to a 40-year armed struggle against the Turkish state that has left about 45,000 dead.
The announcement follows an appeal made at the end of February from prison by Abdullah Öcalan, the founder and leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
“The 12th Congress of the PKK decided to dissolve the organizational structure of the PKK and to end the armed struggle method,” the group said in a statement, according to local media entities.
On Feb.27, Öcalan, who has been serving life imprisonment for 25 years, called upon the PKK – considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – to give up arms.
The PKK held a congress between May 5-7 to discuss Öcalan’s request.
“The PKK’s Extraordinary 12th Congress evaluated that the PKK’s struggle has shattered the policy of denial and annihilation against our people, and brought the Kurdish issue to the point of resolution through democratic politics, thereby completing the PKK’s historic mission,” the statement said.
Turkey has been at war with the PKK since it was founded by Ocalan in 1978 with the aim of establishing an independent Kurdish state in the country’s southeast.
In 2013, Öcalan had announced the end of PKK’s independence aspirations, an intention to integrate the Kurds into a democratic Turkey and the abandonment of arms, but the process was aborted in 2015 and the fighting and attacks intensified. EFE
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