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.
The pro-Kurdish DEM party, which has played a key role in facilitating contacts between the jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan and the Turkish government, said it was likely to happen in the second week of July.
“It seems these developments are likely to happen next week,” Sezai Temelli, vice president of DEM’s parliamentary group told lawmakers on Monday.
He said a delegation of DEM lawmakers was planning to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “on July 8 or 9 after which they would visit the political parties then go to Imrali” — the island where Ocalan has been jailed since 1999.
Last week, Erdogan also said he would meet the DEM delegation in the coming days.
“We are pleased with the progress made in a short time by the work towards a terror-free Turkey,” he said after the weekly cabinet meeting on Monday, using Ankara’s shorthand for the peace process.
“Recent events in our region have confirmed how accurate and strategic a step this process is,” he said of Turkey’s efforts to rebuild ties with its Kurdish minority as the Middle East undergoes seismic changes triggered by the Gaza war.
– ‘Trust-building step’ –
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.
The sources said 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.
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.
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© Agence France-Presse
