The Kurdistan Employees’ Get together, identified by its Kurdish acronym P.Okay.Okay., mentioned on Monday that it might lay down arms and disband, ending a decades-long armed insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state.
The announcement got here a number of months after the group’s imprisoned chief, Abdullah Ocalan, urged his followers to disarm and disband. The transfer might reshape Turkish politics and reverberate in neighboring nations.
The P.Okay.Okay. started as a secessionist group that sought to create an impartial state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Extra not too long ago, it mentioned it sought better rights for Kurds inside Turkey.
Greater than 40,000 folks have been killed in 4 a long time of battle, each in P.Okay.Okay. assaults on navy and civilian targets, and in Turkish navy operations in opposition to the militants and the communities that harbor them. Turkey, the US and different nations think about the group a terrorist group.
Here’s what to know concerning the P.Okay.Okay. and its battle with Turkey.
What’s the P.Okay.Okay.?
The group started combating the Turkish state within the early Eighties, initially searching for independence for the Kurds, who’re believed to make up about 15 % of Turkey’s inhabitants.
Ranging from the mountains in japanese and southern Turkey, P.Okay.Okay. fighters attacked Turkish navy bases and police stations, prompting harsh authorities responses. Later, the battle unfold to different elements of the nation, with devastating P.Okay.Okay. bombings in Turkish cities that killed many civilians.
In the course of the previous decade, the Turkish navy has routed P.Okay.Okay. forces from main Kurdish cities in southeastern Turkey and used drones to kill its leaders and fighters, hindering the group’s capacity to arrange and perform assaults.
The battle has been on a low boil for years, though occasional P.Okay.Okay. assaults have revived fears of a wider battle. Final 12 months, a small squad of its militants stormed into the headquarters of a state-run aerospace firm armed with rifles and explosives and killed five employees earlier than the safety forces regained management.
Who’s Abdullah Ocalan?
Mr. Ocalan is the founder and leader of the P.Okay.Okay. He has been in a Turkish jail for a quarter-century.
A lot of Turkey’s Kurds view Mr. Ocalan as a potent image of the wrestle for Kurdish rights. And regardless of his imprisonment, he nonetheless wields nice affect over the P.Okay.Okay. and its affiliated militias in Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Mr. Ocalan based the P.Okay.Okay. within the late Nineteen Seventies with a gaggle of different rebels and largely ran the group from neighboring Syria because it launched assaults in southeastern Turkey and, later, in different main Turkish cities.
In 1998, Syria pressured him out and he traveled to Greece, Italy and Russia to hunt asylum, earlier than Turkish intelligence brokers, with help from their U.S. counterparts, captured him on a airplane at an airport in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 15, 1999.
After his seize in 1999, he was incarcerated on Imrali Island within the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul, the place he was the one prisoner for a few years.
That very same 12 months, Turkey convicted him and sentenced him to dying. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey abolished the dying penalty as a part of its bid to hitch the European Union.
Since his incarceration, Mr. Ocalan has shifted the P.Okay.Okay. ideology away from secession and towards Kurdish rights inside Turkey.
In a February message from jail, Mr. Ocalan mentioned that the group’s armed wrestle had outlived its preliminary function and that additional progress within the wrestle for Kurdish rights might be achieved by politics.
On Monday, the group echoed Mr. Ocalan’s name to disband, saying in an announcement that it had “carried the Kurdish problem to a stage the place it may be solved by democratic politics, and the P.Okay.Okay. has accomplished its mission in that sense.”
The group mentioned that Mr. Ocalan ought to lead the method of disarming and known as on Turkey’s Parliament to participate.
How does Turkey see Mr. Ocalan?
For many Turks, Mr. Ocalan stays the nation’s most hated terrorist.
Human rights teams criticized his isolation on Imrali Island. In 2009, 5 different prisoners had been despatched to the ability, and Mr. Ocalan was allowed to satisfy them a number of instances per week, in accordance with Turkish information experiences.
However lately, Mr. Ocalan and the island’s different inmates weren’t allowed any guests, not even their attorneys, or any cellphone calls with relations.
In October, a robust political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a surprising public call to Mr. Ocalan, requesting that he inform his fighters to put down their arms and finish the battle.
That led to restricted visits from kin and political allies of Mr. Ocalan to discover the potential of a brand new peace course of.
What occurs subsequent?
The following steps weren’t instantly clear. The P.Okay.Okay. and pro-Kurdish politicians have known as for Mr. Ocalan’s launch or not less than for a loosening of the restrictions on him to permit him to supervise disarmament.
It was additionally not instantly clear how the choice would have an effect on P.Okay.Okay. bases hidden within the mountainous areas of Iraq’s northern Kurdish area. Turkey has repeatedly bombarded P.Okay.Okay. strongholds in northern Iraq, in addition to the group’s offshoot controlling northeastern areas of Syria, branding them a terrorist menace close to its borders.
Turkish officers have mentioned publicly that the federal government provided no concessions to the P.Okay.Okay. to influence it to disarm. However officers from Turkey’s foremost pro-Kurdish celebration have expressed hope that the federal government would develop cultural and academic rights for Kurds.
The P.Okay.Okay.’s declaration might affect different Kurdish militias, notably in Syria, and shift regional dynamics past Turkey’s borders.
It might additionally develop assist amongst Kurds for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which many analysts suspect that he covets to vary the Structure and search a 3rd presidential time period.
Who’re the Kurds?
The Kurds are an ethnic group of roughly 40 million folks — there are extensively various estimates — concentrated in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
They converse a number of dialects of Kurdish, a language indirectly associated to Turkish or Arabic. Most are Sunni Muslims.
The Kurds had been promised a nation of their very own by world powers after World Battle I, however that was by no means granted. There have been Kurdish rebellions in numerous nations over the next generations, and Kurds have confronted state suppression of their language and tradition.
In Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, whose leaders have roots within the P.Okay.Okay. and comply with Mr. Ocalan’s ideology, management the northeastern a part of the nation. They’ve been backed for years by the US and performed a vital position in defeating the Islamic State.
However the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December has left their future status unclear. They’re clashing with Turkish-backed Syrian Arab rebels, they usually stay exterior the management of the brand new Syrian authorities in Damascus.
Because the 1991 Gulf Battle, the largely Kurdish northern area of Iraq has been semiautonomous. The P.Okay.Okay. management is now based mostly within the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. Lately, Turkey has attacked the group and affiliated militias in Iraq and Syria, and has lobbied the Iraqi authorities to expel it.
How did earlier peace efforts fare?
A number of efforts to freeze or finish the Turkey-P.Okay.Okay. battle have been made, beginning with a cease-fire in 1993. However all of them collapsed, typically resulting in better bloodshed.
Violence flared on and off till a spherical of peace talks started in 2011. At the moment, Turkish intelligence officers met with Mr. Ocalan in jail to map out a plan for his fighters to disarm, and Kurdish politicians ferried messages between him and his associates in northern Iraq.
However the course of collapsed in mid-2015, with either side blaming the opposite for the failure. One of many battle’s most threatening phases adopted, with pitched battles in cities in Turkey’s southeast that killed greater than 7,000 folks, according to the International Crisis Group.
