The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) says it is disbanding after more than 40 years of armed struggle against the Turkish state.The announcement came after the PKK held its congress in northern Iraq on Friday, about two months after its imprisoned founder, Abdullah Ocalan, also known as “Appo”, called on the group to disarm in February.
For most of its history, the PKK has been labelled a terrorist group by Turkiye, the European Union and the United States. It fought for Kurdish autonomy for years, a fight that has been declared over now.
This is all you need to know about why Ocalan and the PKK have given up their armed struggle.
Who is Abdullah Ocalan?
Ocalan was born to a poor Kurdish farming family on April 4, 1948, in Omerli, Sanliurfa, a Kurdish-majority part of Turkiye.
He moved to Ankara to study political science at the university there, where he became politically active; driven, biographers say, by the sense of marginalisation that many Kurds in Turkiye felt.
By the mid-1970s, he was advocating for Kurdish nationalism and went on to found the PKK in 1978. Advertisement
Six years later, the group launched a separatist rebellion against Turkiye under his command.
Ocalan had absolute rule over the PKK and worked to stamp out rival Kurdish groups, monopolising the struggle for Kurdish liberation, according to Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence, by Aliza Marcus.
At the time, Kurds were denied the right to speak their language, …