A senior Turkish official says groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, in Syria and Iraq should dissolve themselves.

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.

Abdullah Ocalan’s appeal raised the prospect of an end to a conflict between Turkey and the PKK that since the 1980s has killed an estimated 40,000 people.