Kurds in Türkiye are largely supporting the new process initiated by the ruling alliance in the country to end PKK terrorism – a challenge that has been dragging on for 40 years, causing the deaths of tens of thousands.

Residents in Diyarbakır, Türkiye’s largest Kurdish-majority city, said on Sunday that the PKK's decision to heed its jailed leader's call for peace was correct and prosperity would follow if the decades-old conflict ended.

On Saturday, the PKK declared an immediate cease-fire, a news agency close to it said, heeding jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan's disarmament call. This is the first cease-fire initiative in years. A previous attempt failed in the summer of 2015.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, its nationalist ally and the pro-PKK Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) have supported the peace call. However, Erdoğan also warned that Ankara would resume military operations against the terrorist group if promises were not kept.

The government will not tolerate any "delaying tactics,” Erdoğan said in Istanbul on Saturday.

Zihni Capin, a teacher, told Reuters in Diyarbakır that people were "mentally and physically" exhausted by the threat of the PKK. He added he hoped the process would conclude in a way that contributes to "prosperity, peace and happiness" in the region.

"I think it is a very correct and appropriate decision. Hopefully, the process will meet the expectations of all the people in Türkiye and the Middle East," he said.

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Türkiye and its Western allies. It called on Saturday for greater freedoms for Öcalan, who has been kept in near-total isolation since 1999, to advance the disarmament process, but Ankara has said there would be no negotiations.

Tuncer Bakırhan, co-chair of the DEM Party, said on Sunday that political and legal adjustments were now "inevitable" after the peace call and added that Türkiye’s Parliament had a "historic role" to play.

"This process should not be squandered. It must not remain on paper only," Bakirhan told DEM Party members in Ankara. "The call is not one for winning and losing ... There is no winner, no loser," he added.

Doğu Perinçek, chairperson of the Patriotic Party (VP), also spoke on the issue on Sunday, saying that Öcalan's call to the PKK to lay down its arms and dissolve itself demonstrated a will for unilateral surrender without any conditions and that the resistance of terrorist elements was broken with this call.

He added that beyond the PKK laying down its arms and disbanding it, Öcalan aimed at "integrating with the state and society" and that this was actually a "one state, one nation" formula.

Zülküf Kaçar, a purchasing manager outside Türkiye, said those who lay down arms should be given amnesty.

"Enough is enough, this suffering. This suffering needs to end," Kacar said in Diyarbakır.

The cease-fire could have wide-ranging implications for the region if it succeeds in ending the conflict between the PKK – now based in the mountains of northern Iraq – and the Turkish state.

Ankara maintains dozens of military bases in northern Iraq, and it regularly launches operations against the PKK, which uses a stronghold in the Qandil Mountains, located roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of the Turkish border in Irbil.

Hope for return

Iraqi Kurdish villagers, displaced by the PKK's active threat in the country’s north, are finally allowing themselves to hope they will soon be able to go home.

Since Turkish operations have driven its domestic presence to near extinction, however, the PKK has moved a large chunk of its operations to northern Iraq.

Adil Tahir Qadir fled his village of Barchi on Mount Matin in 1988 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a brutal campaign against the area's Kurdish population.

He now lives in a newly built village – also named Barchi, after the old one that was abandoned – about 2 kilometers away, south of the mountain, he told The Associated Press (AP).

He used to go back to the old village to farm his land. But that stopped in 2015 when the tension caused by the PKK's presence rose.

If the terrorist threat is eliminated, he will return immediately, he said. "We wish it would work so we could return.”

Najib Khalid Rashid, from the nearby village of Belava, called for all Kurdish factions to resolve their differences and work together on the peace process.

"If there’s no unity, we will not achieve any results,” he said.

Ahmad Saadullah, in the village of Guharze, recalled a time when the region was economically self-sufficient.

"We used to live off our farming, livestock and agriculture,” he said. "Back in the 1970s, all the hills on this mountain were full of vines and fig farms. We grew wheat, sesame, and rice. We ate everything from our farms.”