ANKARA,— Turkey’s imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his followers to take a “historic” decision to lay down their arms, according to a statement on Saturday, a crucial step in Turkey’s drive to end a 30-year insurgency by Kurdish rebels.

Sirri Sureyya Onder, a lawmaker from parliament’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), read a statement from Ocalan on live TV that urged the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to attend a congress on disarmament in the spring months.

“I invite the PKK to attend an extraordinary congress in the spring months in order to make the strategic and historic decision to abandon the armed struggle,” Onder said, quoting Ocalan, with whom an HDP delegation met this week.

Onder spoke live on television alongside Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, who said the move towards disarmament showed “an important phase in the resolution process has been reached,” after the two sides met briefly in Istanbul.

“We view this statement as important to accelerate the work on disarmament … and for democratic politics to come to the forefront,” Akdogan said.

The statement also attributed to Ocalan 10 measures that Kurds want to ensure peace, including a new constitution which President Tayyip Erdogan is also seeking to imbue his office with more executive powers and to replace a charter drawn up by technocrats after a 1980 military coup.

“With today’s events a critical point has been reached in Turkey’s democratisation, the expansion of freedoms and for lasting peace,” said HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtas, whose deputies have shuttled from Ocalan’s island prison near Istanbul to Qandil mountain in northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.

The disarmament congress would be held after consensus on the measures outlined in the statement is reached, Demirtas said. It was not clear who would attend the conference or whether PKK forces outside of Turkey would be expected to lay down arms.

Facing a parliamentary election in June, the government has repeatedly said it expected Ocalan to declare an end to the PKK’s armed struggle for greater autonomy and cultural rights for Turkey’s Kurds.

Less than two weeks ago, the PKK warned the government negotiations could break down unless it took concrete steps to further the peace process.

The PKK’s units have joined other Kurds to battle Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Kurdish victories, especially in the Syrian town of Kobani, has raised worries in Ankara about an emboldened PKK at the bargaining table.

The Turkish state launched clandestine peace talks with the group in 2012 which led to the rebels declaring a ceasefire in March 2013.

Ocalan declared a cease-fire in 2013 and ordered the PKK to withdraw fighters to bases in Iraqi Kurdistan’s border region with Turkey. PKK says it keeps about half of its 7,000 fighters.

Since it was established in 1984 the PKK has been fighting the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state in Turkish Kurdistan region in the southeast of the country, but now limited its demands to establish an autonomous Kurdish region and more cultural rights for ethnic Kurds, who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 75-million population but have long been denied basic political and cultural rights, its goal to political autonomy. A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

According to experts Abdullah Ocalan has a high symbolic value for most Kurds in Turkey and worldwide.

The PKK is considered as ‘terrorist’ organization by Ankara and U.S. The PKK continues to be on the blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which overturned a decision to place the Kurdish rebel group PKK and its political wing on the European Union’s terror list.

Read more about Turkish-Kurdish Peace Process

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