In a seven-minute video message broadcast on media close to the militants, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, declared that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps.

The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group renewed Wednesday a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state.

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said the group's armed struggle against Turkey has ended and called for a full shift to democratic politics in a video message published online on Wednesday.