PKK militants symbolically lay down arms in historic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan

ANKARA — The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought against Turkish forces for 40 years, symbolically laid down arms on Friday in a watershed moment for the peace talks between Turkey and the militant group.

Thirty PKK members, 15 women and 15 men, gathered near the Iraqi Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, burning their weapons in a symbolic ceremony attended by more than a hundred observers from Turkey, including officials from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy and Equality Party (DEM) as well as journalists.

In a historic announcement in May, the PKK said it was ending the armed struggle against Turkey after its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, ordered the group to disarm and dissolve as part of peace talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Video released after the ceremony showed camouflaged militants lining up, single file, to put their long-barreled rifles into a large cauldron and set ablaze. A group of unidentified spectators were observed watching the ceremony from white tents set up around the area.

“We are destroying our weapons of our own free will,” Bese Hozat, a senior PKK official, is heard saying in a video shared from the ceremony, ahead of the weaponry being burned.

Describing the ceremony as “a goodwill and committed step toward the practical success of the peace process,” Hozat went on to say, “We hope that this step we have taken will bring peace and freedom . . . to all our people, the peoples of Turkey and the Middle East, and all of humanity.”

30 PKK fighters destroy their weapons in a historic ceremony in Kurdistan Region's Sulaimani province, marking a significant step towards peace and ending four decades of deadly conflict. pic.twitter.com/6EkHQWc10F

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Earlier plans to allow live media coverage were canceled out of respect for the 12 Turkish soldiers who died this week in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The soldiers succumbed to methane gas poisoning while searching for the body of a fellow soldier killed by the PKK during a 2022 clash. 

Iraqi Kurdish authorities have taken strong security measures at and around the location where the ceremony was held, with masked commandos deployed along the access roads to the location, TV footage showed.

Sulaimaniyah is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the dominant political parties of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Ankara has accused the PUK of providing support to the PKK.

To clarify the details of the process, Ibrahim Kalin, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, first met with Iraqi Kurdish officials in Erbil earlier this month. He then traveled to Baghdad on Wednesday, where he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and other Iraqi officials.

Why it matters: The ceremony marks a fresh turning point in a peace process aimed at ending the PKK’s four-decade armed campaign against the Turkish government. More than 40,000 people from both sides were killed in the conflict.

Headquartered in Iraqi Kurdistan, the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara, Washington and a majority of European capitals, has fought for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey since 1984, but in May announced that it was ending its armed struggle. 

The announcement came after peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK’s imprisoned leader, Ocalan, first reported by Al-Monitor.

The talks culminated in Ocalan — serving a life sentence since 1999 in Imrali prison, on an island off the coast of Istanbul — ordering his group to disband in March. In a video message released on Wednesday, Ocalan further vowed that steps toward disarmament would be implemented swiftly. The video marked the first public footage of him in more than 20 years.

Officials from the DEM, Turkey’s third-largest political party and the broadest representative of the Kurdish political movement, have held a series of meetings with Ocalan, effectively acting as intermediaries between the imprisoned leader and the broader Kurdish base. 

Know more: Omer Celik, spokesperson for the ruling Justice and Development Party, was the first official from Erdogan's party to comment on the ceremony on Friday.

“A critical threshold has been crossed on the path to a Turkey free of terrorism,” he said. Speaking earlier this week, Celik also stressed that the disarmament process must be concluded by the end of summer and warned against potential provocations that could derail progress.

Following the ceremony, a 35-member parliamentary commission open to participation from all parties represented in the Turkish parliament is expected to be established, Turkey's private NTV television and other outlets reported. The commission will be tasked with communicating the peace process to the public and advising the government on necessary steps to facilitate the process, according to the reports.

Amberin Zaman contributed this report from Paris.

This is a developing story and has been updated since its initial publication.