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.

In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber's YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, declared that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps.