PKK disarmament opens ‘new page in history’ for Turkiye, Erdogan says | PKK News | USAEMALL.com

After announcing they would disarm, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began destroying their weapons in northern Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the country has begun a new era as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) started the process to disarm after a four-decade armed conflict that killed more than 40,000 people.

In an address to his party, Justice and Development (AKP), Erdogan said on Saturday that the “scourge of terrorism has entered the process of ending”.

“Decades of sorrow, tears and distress came to an end. Turkiye turned that page as of yesterday,” Erdogan said.

“Today is a new day; a new page has opened in history. Today, the doors of a great, powerful Turkiye have been flung wide open,” the president added.

In a cave in Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq on Friday, 30 PKK members burned their weapons, marking a hugely symbolic step towards ending their armed campaign against Turkiye.

During Friday’s ceremony, senior PKK figure Bese Hozat read out a statement at the Jasana cave in the town of Dukan, 60km (37 miles) northwest of Sulaimaniyah in the Kurdish region of Iraq’s north, announcing the group’s decision to disarm.

“We voluntarily destroy our weapons, in your presence, as a step of goodwill and determination,” she said.

Since 1984, the PKK has been locked in armed conflict with the Turkish state, and decided in May to disarm and disband after a public call from the group’s long-imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Ocalan said in a video earlier this week, which was recorded in June by groups affiliated with Firat News Agency, that the move to disarm was a “voluntary transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law”, calling it a “historic gain”.

But Ocalan, despite his imprisonment in solitary confinement on Imrali Island, Turkiye,  since his capture in 1999, has remained a symbolic figure for the group and its offshoots outside the country.

The PKK has been based in northern Iraq after being pushed out well beyond Turkiye’s southeastern border in recent years.

But the end of Turkiye’s conflict with the armed group could have wider consequences for the region, including with neighbouring Syria, where the United States is allied with Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara deems a PKK offshoot.

But Washington, DC and Ankara want Syrian Kurds to integrate into Syria’s new government following the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in December, which analysts say could be further pushed following the PKK’s disarmament.

Still, within the country, the Turkish pro-Kurdish DEM party, PKK and Ocalan have called on Erdogan’s government to address Kurdish demands for more rights in Kurdish-majority regions, including the southeast of the country.

Further disarmament is expected to take place at designated locations, which involves coordination between Turkiye, Iraq and the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.