Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 24
By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:
The leader of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan said the PKK militants will lay down their arms on May 15, 2015, the Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported Dec. 24.
Reportedly, Ocalan said that after the PKK militants lay down their arms, they will leave Turkey and move to the territory of Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq.
Ocalan was arrested in Kenya Feb. 15, 1999 and handed over to Turkish authorities.
Initially he was sentenced to death. However the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for over 25 years and claimed over 40,000 lives.
The UN and the EU listed the PKK as a terrorist organization.
The process of a democratic settlement of the Kurdish problem in Turkey kicked off in 2009, following which a part of the PKK militants left the country's territory and moved to the neighboring Iraq.
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