SULAYMANIYAH – Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey started laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony Friday in northern Iraq, the primary concrete step towards a promised disarmament as a part of a peace course of.
The Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration, or PKK, introduced in Might it could disband and surrender armed battle, ending 4 many years of hostilities. The transfer got here after PKK chief Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on an island close to Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.
Öcalan renewed his name in a video message broadcast Wednesday, saying, “I imagine within the energy of politics and social peace, not weapons.”
In Turkey, Devlet Bahceli, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally who initiated the peace course of, welcomed the event.
“Beginning at the moment, members of the separatist terrorist group have begun surrendering their weapons in teams, marking historic developments that sign the top of a darkish period,” Bahceli mentioned in a written assertion. “These are exceptionally vital days for each Turkey and our area.”
Bahceli, who has historically maintained a hardline stance towards the PKK, had stunned everybody in October when he urged in parliament that Öcalan might be granted parole if he renounced violence and disbanded the PKK.
The ceremony came about within the mountains exterior the town of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish area. The state-run Iraqi Information Company reported that “the method will happen in phases, with a gaggle of occasion members initially laying down their weapons ;symbolically.'” The disarmament course of is predicted to be accomplished by September, the company reported.
The PKK has lengthy maintained bases within the mountains of northern Iraq. Turkish forces have launched offensives and airstrikes towards the PKK in Iraq and have arrange bases within the space. Scores of villages have emptied consequently.
The Iraqi authorities in Baghdad final 12 months introduced an official ban on the separatist group, which has lengthy been prohibited in Turkey.
Journalists weren’t allowed on the website of Friday’s ceremony.
An Iraqi Kurdish political official, who spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of he was not approved to talk publicly, mentioned that about 30 fighters took half within the ceremony, which came about within the presence of a consultant of the Turkish intelligence service and representatives of the Kurdish regional authorities, Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan occasion, and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Celebration, a pro-Kurdish occasion in Turkey.
PKK officers beforehand mentioned that with a view to proceed the disarmament course of, they need to see Turkey take steps to finish “the regime of isolation” imposed on Öcalan in jail and to permit integration of former militants into the political system.
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Related Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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