Diyarbakir - The Kurdish separatist leader, Abdullah Ocalan, yesterday declared an unconditional ceasefire in the fight against the Turkish state, in a broadcast by the Med-TV television channel. Med-TV is financed by the separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).
The outlawed PKK has conducted an armed rebellion against Ankara in the predominantly Kurdish south-east of Turkey since 1984 to create an independent Kurdish state.