Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that Turkey’s intelligence services will closely monitor the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to ensure the group follows through on its pledge to dissolve and disarm.

A military coup in Turkey forces much of the PKK to flee to neighboring countries such as Syria and Lebanon, where the fighters train in the Bekaa Valley. Ocalan leaves a year earlier, in 1979. The PKK carries out its first armed attack against Turkish security posts, marking the start of its armed insurgency.

The Kurdish insurgent group PKK in Turkey says it will lay down its arms and disband after a decades-long fight that killed tens of thousands.

The PKK has "waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984", said Politico. Originally, it aimed to create an independent state for Kurds, an ethnic group of about 40 million people spread over Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Such independence was promised by the allied powers after the First World War, but never granted.

The militant Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, announced its resolve to dissolve itself in a historic declaration that could end one of the Middle East's longest-running insurgencies and bring stability to the region.