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A delegation of journalists, politicians, civil society leaders and pro-Kurdish party members departed Diyarbakır on Thursday for northern Iraq to attend a ceremony in which the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will symbolically lay down its arms, according to the Bianet news website.
The event on Friday will mark a significant milestone in the ongoing peace process aimed at resolving the decades-long armed conflict between the PKK and Turkey.
The conflict, which began in 1984, has claimed more than 40,000 lives and strained Turkey’s relations with its Kurdish minority and regional neighbors.
Friday’s ceremony is set to take place in the town of Ranya, near Sulaymaniyah. The PKK is expected to symbolically lay down its weapons in response to a call made by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in February and as it announced it would do in May.
The delegation, comprising approximately 140 people traveling on four buses, will spend the night in Erbil before continuing on to Sulaymaniyah. They are expected to attend the ceremony in Ranya on Friday.
The final arrangements for the ceremony were reportedly finalized following a video message from imprisoned PKK leader Öcalan, broadcast from İmralı Island Prison.
In his first public appearance in 26 years, Öcalan said in the video clip that the group’s armed conflict against Turkey had ended and called for a shift to democratic politics.
In the recording, dated June and released on Wednesday by the Firat News Agency, which is close to the PKK, Öcalan urged Turkey’s parliament to set up a commission to oversee the PKK’s disbanding and manage a broader peace process.
The Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the PKK’s umbrella organization, announced it would honor Öcalan’s call but issued a warning, saying, “It must be understood that the process will not move forward unilaterally or only through steps taken by us.”
Organizers have said that members of the press will not be allowed to film the event. Instead, official footage will be distributed to journalists after the ceremony concludes.
The group includes prominent political figures and representatives of Kurdish organizations. Among them are DEM Party Co-Chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan, Co-Chairs of the Democratic Regions Party Çiğdem Kılıçgün Uçar and Keskin Bayındır; Halide Türkoğlu, spokesperson for the DEM Party Women’s Assembly; Zeynel Kete, co-chair of the Democratic Alevi Associations; Ekin Yeter, co-chair of the Association of Lawyers for Freedom; and representatives of the Federation of Legal and Solidarity Associations of Families of Detainees and Convicts.
Founded by Öcalan in 1978, the PKK has led a bloody war in Turkey’s southeast since 1984. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.
Öcalan, 76, has been serving a life sentence without parole on İmralı Island since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999.
Since his detention there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed that erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives. The last round of talks collapsed in a storm of violence in 2015.
After that, there was no contact until October 2024, when far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli offered Öcalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Observers expect that as the process of laying down of arms unfolds, Ankara will show a new openness to the Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language who make up about 20 percent of Turkey’s population of 85 million.