ANKARA: Kurdish rebel Abdullah Ocalan was banished to his island prison 14 years ago, narrowly escaping the gallows. Greyer and tempered by long isolation, he now braves the skepticism of many Turks and some of his own fighters to don the mantle of peacemaker.

Ocalan, long reviled in Turkish media as a ‘monster’, ordered his fighters yesterday to withdraw to the mountains of northern Iraq and cease fighting, his words read to hundreds of thousands of Kurds gathered in the regional center Diyarbakir.

In scenes unthinkable over 28 years of conflict, the banned image of the moustachioed fighter, now avowedly peacemaker, was borne on placards through the streets amid a sea of red-yellow-green Kurdish flags. Police were nowhere to be seen.

It was a remarkable transformation from the dazed figure bundled handcuffed and blindfolded onto a jet by Turkish special forces after his 1999 capture in Kenya. Sitting months later in a bullet-proof glass box at his trial, he had acted more the bargaining statesman than a man fighting for his life.

“If permission is granted, I say I can bring all the men (fighters) down from the mountains within three months,” he told the court. “I might not be worth a dime, but they say...5,000 suicide bombers are ready to die for me.”

There is still a strong nationalist strain in Turkey that rejects any deal with the prisoner of Imrali island and his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as verging on treason. Erdogan, like Ocalan, is taking risks in publicly pursuing talks with a group classified by the European Union and the United States as well as his own country as terrorist.

Skeptics fear any deal with Ocalan could lead ultimately to an independent Kurdistan and collapse of the economically resurgent Turkey they see now as a growing force in the region.

Erdogan, elected in 2002, took the ‘Kurdish Question’ in hand in a way no government had before him, making concessions on cultural rights and language. But the fighting continued, reaching new heights last summer. Both sides looked for a deal.

After years of brooding introspection, 63-year-old Ocalan, known to allies as “Apo,” assumed the role he long claimed.

“If we are successful there will be a totally new republic... radical democracy,” Ocalan told pro-Kurdish politicians visiting him on Imrali near Istanbul last month.