Ocalan announces first phase of PKK dissolution is complete

Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has said the first phase of the Kurdish armed group's dissolution is complete.

Speaking to Ilke TV after a three-hour meeting with Ocalan, Mithat Sancar, an MP with the pro-Kurdish Dem party, conveyed the PKK leader's message, saying: "The first phase has ended with the dissolution of the organisation and the end of the armed struggle."

"We will now turn to the integration aspect, which is the central issue of the second phase," Sancar quoted Ocalan saying.

In February last year, the PKK leader called on the group he founded to lay down its arms and disband in a historic statement, potentially marking a turning point in the conflict between the group and Turkey that has claimed tens of thousands of lives over the past 40 years.

Ocalan said armed struggle was once necessary due to policies that restricted Kurdish rights and freedoms.

But he argued that democratic steps taken by the Turkish government on Kurdish issues, along with regional developments, meant armed resistance is no longer needed.

Ocalan's call was understood to include the PKK's affiliates and offshoots in Syria and Iran, as well as its umbrella organisation, the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), which operates in those countries as well as Iraq and Turkey.

In March, the PKK publicly announced that it would comply with Ocalan’s directive and declared a ceasefire.

Sancar: Syria events threatened the process

One issue that has complicated the PKK's disbanding has been the status of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is led by the PKK's Syria offshoot, the People's Protection Units (YPG).

Efforts to integrate SDF-held northeastern Syria into the central state following the fall of Bashar al-Assad have been faltering over the past year, prompting a Syrian government offensive against the SDF earlier this year.

Sancar said the outbreak of heavy clashes between Syrian government forces and the SDF risked a collapse of the PKK process, but multiple actors played a decisive role in bringing the two parties back to the negotiating table.

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"Among them are Masoud Barzani, Nechirvan Barzani, and Bafel Talabani," Sancar said, referring to senior Iraqi Kurdish leaders from the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

"One of the main actors - who remained unseen and unspoken of until then - was Abdullah Ocalan."

The efforts to bring parties to the negotiation table were fruitful, according to Sancar, thanks to Ocalan's "clear judgement" that what would come out of armed conflict would be a "disaster", and its effects "would last for decades".

The US-backed negotiations resulted in an integration agreement and ceasefire on 30 January, with Damascus taking control of northeastern Syria.

The deal also calls for a phased integration of SDF into the Syrian army over time.

According to Sancar, Ocalan believes the first joint presence of Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish leaders at an international platform - the Munich Security Conference on Friday - was due to these negotiation efforts.

The second phase

"Integration is not a simple merger. Recognition of existence and rights [of the Kurds], democracy, and the protection of those gains are a fundamental part of this process," Sancar quoted him saying.

Ocalan also demanded that his living and communication conditions be improved at Imrali Island, where he's imprisoned, to allow him to use his "theoretical and practical capacity" towards the second phase.

His call comes as Devlet Bahceli, chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and an architect of the PKK deal, called for Ocalan to be given the "right to hope" at a parliamentary group meeting earlier this month.

Under Turkish law, "right to hope" refers to a legal principle where prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment must have a realistic possibility of release or sentence review at some point.

Bahceli, a hardline Turkish nationalist and close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also called for removed Kurdish mayors such as Ahmet Turk to be reinstated and Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtas to be released from prison.