 will begin laying down their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan in early July.){kind=link}
Militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will begin laying down their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan in early July, the Kurdish Rudaw media outlet reported on Monday.
The move comes just six weeks after the PKK announced it was ending more than four decades of war that claimed over 40,000 lives.
Turkey’s Kurdish population is hoping the PKK’s decision will pave the way for a political settlement with Ankara that will herald a new openness to the Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of Turkey’s population of 85 million
Citing two sources in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, Rudaw said the move would be both a “trust-building step” and a “goodwill gesture” to advance the reconciliation process with Turkey.
According to the sources, the ceremony would take place in Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan’s second-biggest city.
Most of the PKK’s militants have spent the past decade in the mountains of northern Iraq, where Turkey also maintains military bases and has carried out frequent operations against Kurdish fighters.
“Between July 3 and 10, a group of PKK members, probably numbering between 20 and 30, will lay down their weapons in a ceremony to be held in Sulaimaniyah,” Rudaw said.
Return to bases
The sources said imprisoned PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan was expected to issue a new message regarding the resolution process “in the next few days.”
“After that, the process of laying down of arms will officially begin,” they said.
The PKK decision was in response to a call in February by Öcalan, who has been serving a life sentence on a prison island off İstanbul since 1999.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he would, in the coming days, meet with a delegation from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), which has played a key role in shuttling messages between Ocalan and Ankara.
Quoting one of the sources, Rudaw said that after laying down their weapons, the militants would “then return to their bases, unarmed,” denying reports they would be held in certain cities in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
“The militants will return to their bases after disarming. It is out of the question for them to go to any city,” the source said.
Until now, there has been little detail about how the dissolution mechanism would work, but the Turkish government has said it would carefully monitor the process to ensure full implementation.
© Agence France-Presse