Jailed Kurdish leader calls for PKK to disarm, in shift that could shake up region

The jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK called on Thursday for the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself, in a letter read by Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM Party. An announcement that has been perceived as a shock and that could be the beginning of the end of a vicious conflict.

Öcalan has spent the last 26 years incarcerated, and his conditions of imprisonment and liberation have been a poster cause of PKK supporters.