Militants from the PKK will begin laying down their weapons at a disarmament ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan in early July, the Kurdish media outlet Rudaw reported on Monday.
The move comes just six weeks after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced it was ending more than four decades of guerrilla warfare in a conflict that claimed over 40,000 lives.
Turkey’s Kurdish minority 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 fighters 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 jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan was expected to issue a new message regarding the resolution process “in the next few days.”
“After that, the disarmament process will officially begin,” they said.
The PKK decision was in response to a call in February by Ocalan, who has been serving life on a prison island off Istanbul since 1999.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he would, in the coming days, meet a delegation from the pro-Kurdish 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 guerrillas 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.
