ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq welcomed on Friday a historic call by Abdullah Ocalan for his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to lay down arms and be dissolved.
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses the Republic of Iraq's welcome to the announcement of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and his call for his party to lay down arms,” read a statement by Iraq’s foreign ministry.
The statement commended Ocalan’s message as an “important” and “positive” step for the region’s stability.
"The Ministry also sees this initiative as a crucial step towards enhancing security, not only in Iraq, where armed elements of the [PKK] party are present in various regions of Iraqi Kurdistan and some towns and other cities, but in the entire region,” the statement added.
Iraq "emphasizes that political solutions and dialogue are the best ways to address differences and resolve conflicts in a way that serves the interests of all parties and promotes peaceful coexistence.”
Baghdad said, “This call should be translated into practical and quick steps for the party’s forces to lay down their weapons.”
Ocalan, 75, jailed leader and founder of the PKK on Thursday called on his party to lay down arms against the Turkish state and dissolve itself in a historic declaration from Imrali Prison, where he has been held for 26 years.
The call is aimed at ending the decades-long conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish group that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
"The call made by Mr. Devlet Bahceli, along with the will expressed by Mr. President, and the positive responses from the other political parties towards the known call, has created an environment in which I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” Ocalan calls in an address delivered by pro-Kurdish DEM Party after they met him earlier today, for the third time in three months to resume the peace process in Turkey.
Headquartered in the Kurdistan Region’s Mount Qandil, the PKK is an armed group that has fought for increased Kurdish rights in Turkey for decades. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, Europe, and the US.
In a major move, Devlet Bahceli, head of the far-right Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in October proposed allowing Ocalan to appear before the legislature and declare the dissolution of the PKK, an initiative immediately endorsed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish political landscape.
Ocalan has been serving a life sentence at Imrali prison, a small but high-security facility on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, since February 1999.
"There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realization of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental way,” Ocalan said in his landmark call for peace.
In 2013, the Turkish government, led by then-prime minister and current President Erdogan, entered a peace process with the PKK aimed at ending the decades of conflict and bloodshed. The truce was short-lived and collapsed in July 2015, leading to violent clashes in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish areas.
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