Jailed Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan was set to call a “historic” ceasefire on Thursday, raising hopes for an end to a three-decade conflict with Turkey that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
The widely anticipated ceasefire appeal is expected to come in a letter penned by the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from his isolated island prison cell, and millions of people nationwide are set to tune in to hear his words read out on television and radio.
The ceasefire call would cap months of clandestine peace talks between Turkey’s spy agency and the state’s former nemesis Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence for treason on Imrali island off Istanbul since 1999.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ocalan, branded a “baby killer” by many Turks, both appear to have staked their political futures on the renewed push to end the 29-year armed campaign for self-rule that has killed some 45,000 people, mostly Kurds.
Erdogan said he was putting his faith in the peace process “even if it costs me my political career”, in the face of charges by the nationalist opposition that he was guilty of “treason.”
The peace talks were launched last year after a dramatic upsurge in attacks by Kurdish militants against Turkish security forces. Ocalan’s announcement has been timed to coincide with Kurdish New Year, or Newroz, and hundreds of thousands of people have gathered for celebrations in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey.
“We will wake up to an actual New Day, the Newroz of the new era tomorrow,” prominent Kurdish lawmaker Selehattin Demirtas said on Twitter yesterday.