"To pave the way for the implementation of leader Apo's call for peace and a democratic society, we declare a ceasefire that applies from today", announces the PKK's executive committee in a statement, reports the news agency ANF, which is close to the Kurdish movement.
The statement is the first after PKK's 75-year-old imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan, sometimes called Apo, earlier in the week called on the organization to lay down its arms and dissolve after 40 years of armed struggle that has cost tens of thousands of lives.
"A completely new beginning"
The group states that none of its forces will take up arms unless they are attacked.
"We agree with the content of the call as it is and we announce that we will follow and implement it", says the committee, which also writes that Öcalan's call is not an end, but a completely new beginning.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Öcalan's call on Thursday.
This is a historic opportunity to tear down the wall of terrorism that has stood between the thousand-year-old brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples, he said.
When the pressure from terrorism and arms is eliminated, the space for politics in democracy will naturally increase.
Several attempts
Öcalan, who co-founded the movement in 1978, has been held in isolation on a prison island off Istanbul since 1999. It was from there that he made the announcement to dissolve the PKK.
Since Öcalan was imprisoned in 1999, there have been several attempts to put an end to the bloodshed that broke out in 1984. The latest attempt failed in 2015.
The PKK has been labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU and has waged an uprising since 1984 with the aim of creating a Kurdish state. The Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey's 85 million inhabitants.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was founded in 1978 as a Marxist party.
The movement's goal was a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey and adjacent parts of neighboring countries.
In 1984, the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in the fight for independence.
The PKK is labeled a terrorist organization by Turkey, the EU, and the US.
Turkey has, among other things, demanded tougher action against the PKK in Sweden in order to approve Sweden's NATO membership.
