Thirty outlawed Kurdistan Employees’ Birthday celebration (PKK) militants destroyed their guns at a rite in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish militants ended their decades-long struggle in opposition to the Turkish state.
The rite marks a turning level within the transition of the PKK from armed insurgency to democratic politics, as a part of a broader effort to attract a line underneath some of the area’s longest-running conflicts.
Analysts say the PKK’s army weak spot makes disbanding a face-saving transfer, whilst permitting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to say victory over a decades-long insurgency.
Outdoor the traditional cave of Jasana, a gaggle of 30 PKK warring parties, each women and men, accumulated on a degree of their khaki fatigues, their faces exposed in entrance of an target audience of round 300 other folks, an Agence France-Presse correspondent on the scene mentioned.
One at a time, they walked down to put their guns in a pit which used to be then set on hearth. Maximum had been rifles however there used to be one machinegun and one rocket-propelled grenade.
A pit full of guns burns all through a rite in Sulaimaniyah, in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish area, on July 11, 2025. Thirty warring parties from the Kurdistan Employees’ Birthday celebration (PKK) destroyed their guns in a symbolic match two months after the gang introduced the tip of its decades-long armed battle in opposition to the Turkish state. The rite marks a turning level within the PKK’s transition from armed insurgency to democratic politics, a part of a broader effort to finish some of the area’s longest-running conflicts.(Picture by way of Shwan Mohammed / AFP)
As they appeared on, some other folks within the crowd began cheering, whilst others might be heard weeping.
“We voluntarily destroy our weapons as a step of goodwill,” mentioned a commentary learn out by way of the PKK’s best feminine commander, Bese Hozat.
“Given the emerging fascist drive … and present massacre within the Center East, our individuals are greater than ever wanting a relaxed, unfastened, equivalent and democratic existence.
“In such a context, we fully comprehend the … urgency of the step we have taken,” she mentioned.After the rite, the warring parties had been going to go back to the mountains, a PKK commander mentioned.
‘Irreversible turning point’
Ankara hailed the rite as an “irreversible turning point” at the street to peace.
“The laying down of arms by PKK militants in Sulaimaniyah — a milestone of the third stage of the ongoing disarming and decommissioning process — marks a concrete and welcome step,” a senior Turkish legit mentioned.
“We view this development as an irreversible turning point.”
The rite adopted months of oblique negotiations between jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan and Ankara that started in October with Erdoğan’s blessing and had been facilitated by way of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Birthday celebration (DEM Birthday celebration).
The PKK took up palms in 1984, starting a string of bloody assaults on Turkish soil that sparked a struggle that price greater than 40,000 lives.
However greater than 4 many years on, the PKK in Would possibly introduced its dissolution, pronouncing it will pursue a democratic battle to shield the rights of the Kurdish minority consistent with a ancient name by way of Öcalan, who has been serving a existence sentence in Turkey since 1999.
Tensions rose forward of the rite as two drones had been shot down in a single day close to Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga bases, one in Sulaimaniyah, and the opposite in Kirkuk, in line with officers who didn’t say used to be at the back of the assaults.
No casualties had been reported.
‘Power of politics’
Within the crowd had been officers representing Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan area, veteran Iraqi Kurdish chief Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), an AFP correspondent mentioned.
Additionally provide had been representatives of the Turkish intelligence company, DEM Birthday celebration lawmakers and reporters.
“I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I urge you to put this principle into practice,” Öcalan mentioned this week, pledging the method of laying down of palms can be “implemented swiftly.”
Erdoğan mentioned peace efforts with the Kurds would achieve momentum after the PKK started laying down its guns.
“The process will gain a little more speed when the terrorist organization starts to implement its decision to lay down arms,” he mentioned on the weekend.
In contemporary months, the PKK has taken a number of ancient steps, beginning with a ceasefire and culminating in its formal dissolution introduced on Would possibly 12.
The shift adopted an attraction on February 27 by way of Öcalan, who has spent the previous 26 years in solitary confinement on İmralı jail island close to İstanbul.
© Agence France-Presse
