The jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK called on Thursday for the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself, in a letter read by Turkey's pro-Kurdish DEM Party. An announcement that has been perceived as a shock and that could be the beginning of the end of a vicious conflict. Öcalan has spent the last 26 years incarcerated, and his conditions of imprisonment and liberation have been a poster cause of PKK supporters.