ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran welcomes Abdullah Ocalan’s call for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down arms, Tehran’s foreign ministry said on Friday.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes any process that leads to stopping terrorism and strengthening security in the neighboring country of Turkey, and hopes that this development will also have positive effects in the region,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Esmael Baghaei.
A letter from the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, shared with the public on Thursday, urged the group to disarm and disband. The move is being hailed as a significant step toward lasting peace in Turkey and a democratic resolution to the Kurdish issue.
Ocalan said in his letter that the PKK must hold a congress and make a decision about its future, adding that “all groups must lay down their arms and the PKK must dissolve itself.”
He said that the PKK was born during a time of restrictions on basic freedoms and denial of Kurdish identity, and it “found social base and support, and was primarily inspired by the fact that the channels of democratic politics were closed.”
But today, political developments have “led to PKK’s loss of meaning and excessive repetition. Therefore, it has completed its life like its counterparts and necessitated its dissolution,” he said.
Baghaei said that Ocalan’s call is “an important step towards rejecting violence.”
Iran has been long struggling with Kurdish opposition groups of its own that, like Turkey, it has labeled “terrorists.” The groups are the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Komala, the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK).
They were based in the Kurdistan Region close to the border with Iran before they were moved away from the frontier as part of a 2023 security pact signed between Baghdad and Tehran.
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