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

A Turkish opposition party delegation has arrived in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region against the backdrop of peace efforts between Ankara and a banned Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey.

The imprisoned leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party has called on his group to disarm and disband in a bid to end 40 years of fighting with the Turkish state.

A delegation from one of Turkey’s biggest pro-Kurdish political parties has met a leading figure of the Kurdish movement in prison, the latest step in a tentative process to end the country’s 40-year conflict.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has thrown a spanner in the works of Sweden and Finland’s historic decisions to seek NATO membership.

A Turkish court has accepted an indictment against suspects from a religious association in a case that could have political and legal repercussions on the opposition-held Istanbul municipality.