The message had been expected for weeks. He was read in Kurdish then in Turkish by Kurdish deputies. The founder and historic leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan, detained in isolation for 26 years, asked this Thursday, February 27, the armed movement to dissolve and lay down their arms after four decades of guerrilla warfare. “All groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve,” ordered Abdullah Öcalan in a declaration read by the deputies of the Prokurd party Dem, who visited him this Thursday morning for three hours in his prison. Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan said he “assume the historic responsibility for this call”.
Hundreds of people gathered by dancing and singing in several cities in the Southeast Kurdish Kurdish, including Diyarbakir, for reading his message. Giant screens have also been drawn up in northern Syria and Iraq, where a strong Kurdish minority also lives.
Abdullah Öcalan, 75, had expressed in previous games with prokurd deputies his “determination” to turn the page of the armed struggle. “If the conditions arise, I have the theoretical and practical power to transfer the conflict from the field of violence to the legal and political ground,” he said at the end of October 2024 to one of his interlocutors. His two previous calls for the truce, in the early 2000s and then in 2013, had long given up, giving way to outbreaks of violence. “Millions of people pray for a solution,” Tuesday of the DEM vice-president Bakirhan said. According to the latter, Abdullah Öcalan “does not only want the Kurds to be free to speak their language, but that any democratic expression is possible” in the country, he said recently.
“The hand stretched to the Kurdish brothers”
The Turkish government, which initiated the process through its MHP nationalist ally, Devlet Bahçeli, proposed to release Abdullah Öcalan from its isolation after twenty-six years of detention. However, a release seems unlikely, given the threats of revenge that weigh on him.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke little on the subject, has repeatedly confirmed the policy of “the outstretched hand to the Kurdish brothers”, who constitute the main minority of Turkey (about 20 % of the population), while accentuating the pressure on opposition, in particular on the DEM party, of which ten mayors have been removed from their functions since their election. Waves of arrests have been conducted against hundreds of people – political activists, elected officials, artists, journalists – accused of “terrorism”. Turkey also accuses the PKK of fighting in northeast Syria alongside Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS).
Ankara public enemy number one
Abdullah Öcalan founded in 1978 the PKK, of Marxist-Leninist obedience. Two years later, he was forced to exile, most often in Damascus or in the Lebanese plain of the Bekaa then under Syrian control, where he installed his headquarters.
This number one public enemy of Ankara was arrested on February 15, 1999 in Kenya after a relentless hunt, and has since imprisoned isolation on the island of Imrali, off Istanbul. Ankara then thought, by stopping it, having beheaded the PKK. But even in isolation, he continued to direct his movement by delivering his instructions to his visitors, even if the military command, refugee in Iraq, escaped him. Despite confinement and silence, the one that his faithful call “apo” or “seruk” (“uncle” and “chief”, in Kurdish) therefore continues almost 76 years to embody the Kurdish cause in Turkey, where the conflict between the PKK and the State has left more than 40,000 dead since 1984.
His aura also continues in Europe where Kurdish refugees regularly brandish flags and signs displaying his round face. Even if over time, the thick black mustache barring his face turned gray.