On Monday, May 12, Turkey closed a chapter that had run over nearly half a century. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK, according to the Kurdish acronym) announced its dissolution in a statement released in the morning by the Firat news agency (ANF), which has close ties to the armed group. In the statement, the PKK also announced its intention to end the fratricidal conflict that began in southeastern Turkey in 1984. The precise death toll of this war will likely never be known: Estimates vary, but most experts conclude that over 40,000 people have died, predominantly Kurds, with between 3,000 and 4,000 villages having been emptied or destroyed and two to three million people displaced.

The decision by the PKK's leadership came just two months after the organization's founder and historical leader, Abdullah Öcalan, known as "Apo" ("uncle" in Kurdish), issued a call to his supporters. From his cell on the prison island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara, where he has been imprisoned for 26 years, Öcalan urged his movement to lay down their arms. This order from Öcalan, which was made public on February 27, surprised both experts and the general public. It followed a series of mediation efforts started in the fall by an ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, the ultra-nationalist politician Devlet Bahçeli, through the People's Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), the country's third-strongest political party and a cornerstone of the Kurdish political movement.

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