Kurdish militant leader Abdallah Ocalan has asked his followers in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down arms and dissolve the group, potentially ending a decades-long conflict with Turkey that is estimated to have killed at least 40,

Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Kurdish leader, called on his militant group on Thursday to lay down its arms and dissolve as part of a new bid to end a four-decade long conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of a Kurdish militant group that has fought a decades-long insurgency against Turkey, issued a call from prison on Thursday asking the movement he founded to lay down its arms and dissolve itself.