Abdullah Öcalan announced his wish for PKK to lay down arms in his letter to Diyarbakir during Nowruz celebrations.
Kurdish Leader: End Armed Struggle
Ross Wilson, Atlantic Council, March 21, 2013
Turkey’s long-time nemesis Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the so-called Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), delivered an historic message on the March 21 Nowruz holiday that marks the beginning of spring calling for a new beginning between Kurds and Turks. Read out by two Kurdish nationalist members of the Turkish Parliament to a crowd reported to number as high as two million in Diyarbakir, the informal capital of southeast Turkey’s large Kurdish minority, Öcalan’s message declares the start of a new era in which his fighters should silence their guns and leave the country. “I call on everyone to build democratic modernism” and for moving “from armed to democratic struggle,” Öcalan stated. To underscore his message that the era of militant separatism is over, Öcalan spoke of unity among Turks and Kurds going back to the battle over Gallipoli in World War I and the launching of the new Turkish Republic’s parliament in 1920.
