Jailed Kurdish militant leader calls for end to conflict with Turkey

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's jailed militant leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to lay down arms on Thursday, a move that could end its 40-year conflict with Ankara and have far-reaching political and security consequences for the region.

If the PKK's leadership heeds its founder's appeal, which is not guaranteed, President Tayyip Erdogan would gain a historic opportunity to pacify and develop southern Turkey, where violence has killed thousands of people and devastated the regional economy.

Meanwhile, Ocalan, now 75, could see his dream of peace during his lifetime realised.

For neighbouring Syria, the new administration may be able to assert more control over its Kurdish north and unite a nation fractured by civil war, while it would also remove a constant flashpoint in Kurdish-run, oil-rich northern Iraq where the PKK set up its base two decades ago.

"I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call," Ocalan said in a letter made public by Turkey's pro-Kurdish DEM Party members.

Ocalan wants his party to hold a congress and to formally agree to dissolve itself, they quoted him as saying.

A DEM delegation visited Ocalan on Thursday in his island prison and later delivered his statement in nearby Istanbul.

There was no immediate response from the PKK commanders' headquarters in the mountains of northern Iraq.

In the first reaction to Ocalan's appeal from President Erdogan's ruling AK Party, its deputy chairman Efkan Ala said Turkey would be "free of its shackles" if the PKK truly laid down its weapons and disbanded.

The PKK is deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched its armed campaign in 1984 for an ethnic Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey. It has since moved away from its separatist goals and instead sought more autonomy for southeast Turkey and greater Kurdish rights.

'PEACE AND DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY'

A close political ally of Erdogan proposed four months ago that Ocalan order his fighters to end their armed struggle, a decade after a previous Turkey-PKK peace process collapsed.

In his message, Ocalan urged Turkey to show respect for ethnic minorities, freedom of expression and the right to democratic self-organisation.

"The language of the epoch of peace and democratic society needs to be developed in accordance with this reality," Ocalan said in his letter, adding that this meant the armed struggle had "run its course" and needed to be wound up.

The seven-member delegation from the DEM Party met Ocalan on Thursday on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara, where he has been held in near-total isolation since 1999.

It was the party's third visit to Ocalan since December, amid rising hopes that he would make such an appeal to his fighters to end their struggle.

(Reporting by Daren Butler; Writing by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Gareth Jones)