Abdullah Öcalan’s Possible Release: A Deal to End Decades of Conflict?

26 years in prison for taking up arms against the state—could it all end with a call for peace and disarmament?

The call of bdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who has been in custody since the 1990s, could change the Kurdish issue in Turkey.

Öcalan’s release is reportedly contingent on his party’s fighters laying down their arms, marking the possible closure of a conflict that has lasted more than four and a half decades between the PKK and Turkey.

Who is Öcalan, and why was he arrested?

He was born in 1948 in Şanlıurfa, near the Syrian border.

He embraced Marxism and organized leftist student movements.

In 1978, he founded the PKK, which led an armed struggle for the liberation and unification of Kurdistan before drastically shifting its ideology to democratic confederalism, rejecting ethnic-based nation-states.

In 1979, Öcalan fled to Syria, where he remained until 1998, when worsening relations between Damascus and Ankara led to Syria expelling him.

He moved to Italy, then Russia, and eventually to Greece, which transferred him to its embassy in Kenya before he was handed over to Turkish authorities.

He was sentenced to death, but the ruling was later commuted to life imprisonment.

In 2012, Turkey began peace talks with the PKK, with President Masoud Barzani acting as a mediator. The negotiations lasted for years, during which Turkey witnessed unprecedented openness toward the Kurdish issue.

However, the talks collapsed after about three years, reigniting a new wave of violence.

Can Öcalan, whom the Turkish authorities still consider an enemy, enforce the change he envisions?

And how much influence does he still have over his followers?