Kurdish PKK ends 40-year Turkish insurgency

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been locked in conflict with Türkiye for more than four decades, has decided to disband and end its armed struggle, group members and Turkish leaders said on Monday.

Since the PKK launched its insurgency in 1984 - originally with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state - the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, exerted a huge economic burden and fuelled social tensions.

The dramatic announcement comes as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan seeks to capitalize on what he sees as the vulnerabilities of affiliated Kurdish forces in Syria after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad to Türkiye-backed rebels in December.

It also comes amid the group's increasingly weakened position in northern Iraq, where it is based, after having been pushed out of Türkiye and well beyond its borders.

While Ankara welcomed the decision to dissolve, it does not guarantee peace. Rather it paves the way for agreeing a tricky legal framework for securely disarming the PKK, which is designated a terrorist group by Türkiye and its Western allies.

"The PKK 12th Congress decided to dissolve the PKK's organizational structure... and end the armed struggle," Firat news agency reported it saying as it closed a congress.

A PKK official confirmed the decision and said all military operations would cease "immediately", adding weapon handovers were contingent on Ankara's response and approach to Kurdish rights, and the fate of PKK fighters and leaders.

Kurds make up some 20 percent of Türkiye's 86 million population.

The PKK held the congress in response to a February call to disband from its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999. It said on Monday that he would manage the process.

Ocalan's call was prompted by a surprise proposal in October by Devlet Bahceli, Erdogan's ultra-nationalist ally. It had been welcomed by the United States, the European Union and also by Iraq and Iran, which have significant Kurdish populations.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the PKK decision was of "historic importance" and could bring "lasting peace and stability" for all peoples of the region.

The disbanding will give Erdogan a chance to boost development in Türkiye's mainly Kurdish southeast, where the insurgency has impaired the regional economy for decades.

In its statement, the PKK said it "has completed its historic mission," which over the years shifted to seeking greater Kurdish rights and limited autonomy in southeast Türkiye, rather than an independent state.