The Kurdish guerrilla group that has been fighting a long-running insurgency against Turkey declared a cease-fire on Saturday, days after a call from its jailed leader to disarm and disband the organization raised hopes of ending a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people over four decades.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., said the cease-fire would begin immediately. But it also called for Abdullah Ocalan, the P.K.K.’s founder and leader who has been in a Turkish prison for a quarter-century, to be freed so he can oversee the group’s dissolution.
If the P.K.K. does disband, it would resolve a major domestic security threat and mark a political victory for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If negotiations proceed with Mr. Ocalan, it could usher in a new era of peace across the region where Kurds have pursued an armed struggle in a mountainous area that intersects parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
But there are still many unanswered questions.
“This is just the first sentence,” Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said of Mr. Ocalan’s call to all groups to disarm.
It is not clear whether Turkey will cease armed operations against the P.K.K., who would monitor any truce or what would happen to fighters who do lay down their arms. There is also the question of whether the government has offered the Kurdish fighters anything in return.
But a cease-fire would allow Kurds to start internal consultations and hold local congresses to forge a democratic way forward, something Kurds in Turkey and Syria have said they want to do.
The P.K.K. announcement came two days after Mr. Ocalan said that the group had outlived its life-span and should dissolve itself, a rare message from a leader with broad influence over Kurdish fighters in Turkey, but also around the region, including in Syria and Iraq.
The P.K.K. statement, carried by Firat News Agency, a P.K.K.-linked news site, said “none of our forces will take armed action unless attacked.”
In recent years, Turkey’s military has degraded the P.K.K.’s fighting abilities, which analysts say may have contributed to its willingness to discuss an end to its fight.
Fighters of the P.K.K. revere their leader, Mr. Ocalan, and are expected to heed his call, but the group’s conditional statement suggests it will continue to use its leverage in the bargaining process.
“For these types of organizations, cease-fires are a means to buy time, overcome military setbacks and smooth over cracks among members,” said Oytun Orhan, an analyst at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies based in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
The Turkish government did not immediately comment on the P.K.K. statement or on the group’s call for Mr. Ocalan to be released.
But on Friday, Mr. Erdogan welcomed the appeal by Mr. Ocalan, which came after a series of talks that included Turkish officials; Mr. Ocalan himself; and members of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, the People’s Equality and Democracy Party, or D.E.M.
“We have a historic opportunity to take a step toward demolishing the wall of terror” between Turks and Kurds, he said. He added that Turkish officials would follow up on working to end the conflict, without elaborating on what that would entail.
Mr. Erdogan said in January that the government had offered the P.K.K. no concessions.
The P.K.K. began as a secessionist group that sought to create an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, but more recently it has said it was seeking greater rights for Kurds inside Turkey.
Turkey, the United States and other countries classify Mr. Ocalan as a terrorist and the P.K.K. as terror group for its attacks that have killed Turkish security forces and civilians. Many Turks see Mr. Ocalan, who was convicted in 1999 of leading an armed terrorist group, as one of the country’s biggest enemies.
Turkey and the P.K.K. have tried over the years to resolve the conflict, most recently through peace talks that started in 2011. Negotiations broke down in 2015, ushering in a deadly new phase.
But last October, a powerful political ally of Mr. Erdogan made a surprising public call to Mr. Ocalan, asking him to tell his fighters to lay down their arms and end the conflict. Doing so, the politician said, could open a pathway for his life sentence to be ended.
