Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq on Friday, the first step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) announced in May that it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities.
The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.
Öcalan renewed his call in a video message broadcast on Wednesday, saying, "I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons."
Most journalists were not allowed at the site of Friday’s ceremony.
The PKK issued a statement from the fighters laying down their weapons, who called themselves the Peace and Democratic Society Group, saying that they had disarmed "as a gesture of goodwill and a commitment to the practical success" of the peace process.
"We will henceforth continue our struggle for freedom, democracy, and socialism through democratic politics and legal means," the statement said.
The ceremony took place in the mountains outside the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that "the process will take place in stages, with a group of party members initially laying down their weapons symbolically."
The disarmament process is expected to be completed by September, the agency reported.
An Iraqi Kurdish political official said about 30 fighters took part in the ceremony, in the presence of a representative of the Turkish intelligence service and representatives of the Kurdish regional government, Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, a pro-Kurdish party in Turkey.
Failed previous negotiations
The PKK, which was founded in 1987, is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and Turkey, as well countries including the United States and the United Kingdom.
The PKK's original aim was to establish a Kurdish state in the southeast of Turkey, but over time its goals evolved into a campaign for greater autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish population.
The conflict between PKK militants and state forces — which has spread beyond Turkey's borders into Iraq and Syria — has killed 15,000 people over the past 40 years, according to official figures.
The last peace negotiations between the PKK and the Turkish state — which occurred between 2013 and 2015 — were ultimately unsuccessful.
The PKK has long maintained bases in the mountains of northern Iraq, where Turkish forces have launched offensives and airstrikes and have set up bases in the area.
Scores of villages have emptied as a result of the violence, as displaced Kurdish Iraqis have voiced hopes that this peace process will finally allow them to go home.
Iraq's government announced an official ban on the separatist group last year.
Turkey's response
Turkish Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus said the initial disarmament step had proceeded "as planned," but cautioned that the process was far from complete.
"There's still a long way to go in collecting many more weapons," Kurtulmus said. "What matters is ending the armed era in a way that ensures weapons are never taken up again."
The official noted that the Turkish parliament was close to setting up a commission to oversee the peace process.
The Turkish government has stated that negotiations with the PKK are part of a plan to build a "terror free Turkey", with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expected to deliver a "historic" speech on these latest events on Saturday.
Devlet Bahceli, Erdoğan's nationalist ally who initiated the peace process, welcomed the development.
"Starting today, members of the separatist terrorist organisation have begun surrendering their weapons in groups, marking historic developments that signal the end of a dark era," Bahceli said in a written statement.
"These are exceptionally important days for both Turkey and our region."
Bahceli, who has traditionally maintained a hard-line stance against the PKK, surprised everyone in October, when he suggested in parliament that Öcalan could be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded the PKK.
The disarmament process is expected to be completed in a few months.
