Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan has asked his followers in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to lay down arms and dissolve the group, potentially ending a decades-long conflict with Turkey that is estimated to have killed at least 40,000 people.
"I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call," the jailed leader said in a statement Thursday that was read by Turkish lawmakers. "All groups must lay their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself."
Ocalan said that for more than one thousand years, "Turkish and Kurdish relations were defined in terms of mutual cooperation and alliance" which was broken in the last 200 years. "Today, the main task is to restructure the historical relationship, which has become extremely fragile."
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