The Workers' Party of Kurdish (PKK) said it is disbanding after more than 40 years of armed struggle with the Turkish state.

The Citizen Party’s imprisoned founder Abdullah Ocalan (also known as “appo”) was called in February to two months after the disarmament in February after the Citizen Party held its parliament in northern Iraq on Friday.

For much of its history, the PKK has been labeled as terrorist organizations by Turkiye, the EU and the United States. It fought for Kurdish autonomy, and over the years, the battle has been declared as the present.

This is what you need to understand is why Ocalan and PKK abandoned their armed struggle.

Who is Abdullah Ocalan?

Ocalan was born on April 4, 1948 in a poor Kurdish agricultural family, located in Omerli, Sanliurfa, a Kurdish minority area in Turkiye.

He moved to Ankara to study political science at the university there, where he became active. The biographer says that there are driving people because of the marginalization of many Kurds in Tukuye.

By the mid-1970s, he advocated Kurdish nationalism and in 1978 he found the PKK.

Six years later, the group launched a separatist rebellion against Turkiye under his command.

Ocalan had absolute rule over the PKK and worked to eliminate rival Kurdish groups, monopolizing the struggle for Kurdish liberation, according to blood and faith: the PKK and the Kurds' struggle for independence, Aliza Marcus.

At that time, the Kurds were deprived of the right to speak, give children the Kurdish name or show any expression of nationalism.

Despite Ocalan's dictatorship, his charm and status as the champion of Kurdish rights led to the majority of Kurds loving and respecting him in Turkiye, calling him "appo", which means uncle.

What does an armed rebellion look like?

Violence.

Between 1984 and 2024, more than 40,000 people died, and thousands of Kurds fled violence in southeastern Türkiye into cities further north.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Ocalan led the operation of neighboring Syria, a source of tensions between the then Assad regime and Turkiye.

The PKK began to adopt cruel tactics since the late 1980s and early 1990s. The group adopted a suicide bombing operation and attacked the Turkish diplomatic office in Europe, led by foreign tourists kidnapped by Ocalan, according to a 2007 report by the European Council on Diplomatic Relations.

Perhaps worse, the PKK will suppress Kurdish civilians, who did not assist the group in guerrilla warfare.

Has Okaran changed his point of view?

In the end, he was arrested for more than ten years.

In 1998, Ocalan was forced to flee Syria due to the threat of Turkish invasion to capture him. A year later, Turkish agents arrested him on a plane in Nairobi, Kenya due to what Intel received from the United States.

He was brought back to the Turks and handed the death penalty, but after Turkiye abolished the death penalty in 2004, his sentence was changed to prison to become a member of the EU.

By 2013, Ocalan changed his stance on separatism and began lobbying for Kurdish rights and greater regional autonomy, saying he no longer believed in the effectiveness of armed insurgency.

This radical shift has led to a shaky peace process between the PKK and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The peace process brought some freedom to the Kurds, but the 2015 battle between the government and the Workers' Kurdish Party broke out in part because of the party's attempt to establish Kurdish rule in neighboring Syria during the Civil War.

At that time, many Kurds from southern Türkiye left Syria to help the Kurds there fight against the Islamic State (ISIS).

In 2015, the AK Party also established a new alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which firmly opposed any peace process involving PKK.

What is the difference in this peace process?

The PKK in announcing disarmament said it had already resolved its position by “breaking the policy of denying and annihilation of our people and by putting the Kurdish problems through democratic politics”.

However, analysts believe there are other reasons behind the decision.

Turkiye expert and senior researcher at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, Sinan Ulgen, said the KDP and its Kurdish allies in the region are more vulnerable than recent developments.

"The reasons why the PKKK abandoned the armed struggle are related to changes in the international context," Urgen explained.

He explained that US President Donald Trump does not consider Syria a “strategic focus” of foreign policy and therefore it is unlikely to continue to support the country’s Kurdish armed groups as it struggles with ISIL.

Furthermore, the new Syrian government gets along well with Turkiye, which is different from the current ongoing Assad regime.

This new relationship could seriously undermine the capabilities of the Trader Mib Industrial Party and its Syrian branch, Democratic Union Party (PYD), operating along the Syria-Sorkie border.

Will Turkiye follow?

The political climate seems to be ripe.

Major political parties, such as the AK Party and its rival Republican People's Party (CHP), have supported a new peace process in voice or by default.

However, it is the MHP that has been opposing any proposals against the Kurds that have created a window for the new peace process.

In April 2024, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli invited Ocalan to abandon “terrorism” in exchange for possible parole.

"It's Bahceli ... incredible," said Sinem Adar, a Turkiye expert at the German Institute for International Security Affairs (SWB).

Experts told Al Jazeera that Barcelona's change could be to help his league partner Erdogan run and win the next national election.

Under the Constitution, Erdogan will be unable to run for the election unless an early election is called, which requires 360 of the 600 votes in parliament.

Carnegie told Ulgen of Ulgen of Ulgen of Ulgen to add the votes of Kurdish representatives from the People’s Equality and Democratic Party (DEM) to the votes of the MHP-AK Party coalition, “(Erdogan) needs to expand its political support base on the basis of the current ruling coalition’s political support.”

What will happen to Okaran now?

Urgen said it was not clear whether he would be released, but his prison condition could be greatly improved.

He said the government would rather gradually increase Okaran's freedoms so it could assess the responses of its support base and the wider public.

Many in Tukuye still consider Okaran to be a "terrorist" and blame him for taking away many people's lives.

"I think the government wants to test the water before allowing Okaran freedom," Urgen told Al Jazeera.