A Kurdish group that has waged a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state for four decades said on Monday that it would lay down its arms and end the conflict, a decision that could reverberate across neighboring countries.
The announcement by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish acronym, P.K.K., came a few months after its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, urged the group to disarm and disband. In his February message, he said the P.K.K.’s armed struggle had outlived its initial purpose.
The P.K.K. began as a secessionist group that sought to create an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. More recently, it has said that it sought greater rights for Kurds inside Turkey.