Turning point What next for Kurds after PKK leader calls for peace?

Within days of an appeal by the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) for the group to disarm and dissolve, its executive committee announced that it would do just that. It paves the way towards ending the 40-year conflict between militant Kurdish groups and the Turkish state and has far-reaching implications for the rest of the Middle East.

- Bethan McKernan

"I am making a call for the laying down of arms and I take on the historical responsibility for this call," Abdullah Öcalan was quoted as saying in a letter read out by political allies in Istanbul.

The declaration follows a surprise peace gesture to Öcalan from Devlet Bahçeli, a hardline nationalist ally of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, last October.

What is the PKK?

When the Ottoman empire collapsed after the first world war, efforts to create an independent Kurdish state failed, turning Kurds into minority populations in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

In Turkey, Kurdish rights were so heavily repressed that for decades the state denied the existence of the ethnic group altogether. The PKK, a leftwing guerrilla movement, was founded in 1978, demanding that south-east Turkey become an independent Kurdistan.

At least 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in on-and-off fighting that has spilled into other parts of the region.