The leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) terrorist group, Abdullah Öcalan, called for a ‘swift’ disarmament of the armed group in his first video message released in 26 years from İmralı, the island prison where he has been serving a life sentence since 1999, just two days before the PKK is due to hold a weapons handover ceremony in northern Iraq ahead of its final disbandment.
Turkish media reported that, as expected by the parties involved in the process, Öcalan renewed in the video message released on 9 July his call for PKK members to lay down their arms. Flanked by several fellow prisoners, the leader of the terrorist organisation released a 7-minute video in what was his second message calling for the disarmament and dissolution of the PKK, following his first historic appeal in late February.
“The PKK movement, which is based on the denial of its existence and seeks an independent state (for the Kurds), and the strategy of national liberation warfare on which it is based, are over,” Öcalan said in the message, reported by several media outlets in Turkey. “Their (the Kurds’) existence has been recognised, and therefore its main objective has been achieved. This means that it has become obsolete. The rest has been excessive repetition and a stalemate,” the PKK leader added.
“The establishment of the (PKK) disarmament mechanism will boost the peace process. What has taken place is a voluntary transition from the phase of armed struggle to the phase of democratic politics and law. This should not be seen as a defeat, but as a historic achievement. The details concerning the disarmament will be established and implemented swiftly,” Öcalan explained. “I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I ask you to apply this principle“, he concluded in the message, in which he made it clear that he does not consider his own freedom as an individual matter, implying that he might link his fate to that of the other PKK prisoners, for whom the government has already made it clear that there will be no amnesty.
The video message released today by Öcalan was seen as a symbolic but critical gesture to ratify the end of the armed struggle and dissolution process announced in May by the PKK after more than four decades of armed struggle, that has left more than 40,000 dead. Members of the pro-Kurdish DEM party had also stressed the importance of it being a video message in order to give it greater credibility, although public media such as the TRT channel and the Anadolu news agency have not released the recording after Justice Minister, Yılmaz Tunç, stressed that there is no legal framework allowing a prisoner to broadcast a video to the public. The message, however, comes in critical days for the process, just 48 hours before the PKK organises a weapons handover in Sulaymaniyah, a major city in the Iraqi Kurdistan region (KRG).
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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