Kurdish PKK militants burn their weapons at symbolic ceremony in Iraq

Thirty outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants destroyed their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish militants ended their decades-long war against the Turkish state.

The ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the PKK from armed insurgency to democratic politics, as part of a broader effort to draw a line under one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.

Analysts say the PKK’s military weakness makes disbanding a face-saving move, while allowing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to claim victory over a decades-long insurgency.

Outside the ancient cave of Jasana, a group of 30 PKK fighters, both men and women, gathered on a stage in their khaki fatigues, their faces uncovered in front of an audience of around 300 people, an Agence France-Presse correspondent at the scene said.

One by one, they walked down to lay their weapons in a pit which was then set on fire. Most were rifles but there was one machinegun and one rocket-propelled grenade.

As they looked on, some people in the crowd started cheering, while others could be heard weeping.

“We voluntarily destroy our weapons as a step of goodwill,” said a statement read out by the PKK’s top female commander, Bese Hozat.

“Given the rising fascist pressure … and current bloodbath in the Middle East, our people are more than ever in need of a peaceful, free, equal and democratic life.

“In such a context, we fully comprehend the … urgency of the step we have taken,” she said.
After the ceremony, the fighters were going to return to the mountains, a PKK commander said.

‘Irreversible turning point’

Ankara hailed the ceremony as an “irreversible turning point” on the road 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 official said.

“We view this development as an irreversible turning point.”

The ceremony followed months of indirect negotiations between jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan and Ankara that began in October with Erdoğan’s blessing and were facilitated by Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party).

The PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.

But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution, saying it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Öcalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.

Tensions rose ahead of the ceremony as two drones were shot down overnight near Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga bases, one in Sulaimaniyah, and the other in Kirkuk, according to officials who did not say was behind the attacks.

No casualties were reported.

‘Power of politics’

Throughout the morning, cars could be seen pulling up to  Jasana cave, a symbolic location that once housed a Kurdish printing press, the Fırat news agency said.

In the crowd were officials representing Nechirvan Barzani, president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, veteran Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), an AFP correspondent said.

Also present were representatives of the Turkish intelligence agency, DEM Party lawmakers and journalists.

“I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons. And I urge you to put this principle into practice,” Öcalan said this week, pledging the process of laying down of arms would be “implemented swiftly.”

Erdoğan said peace efforts with the Kurds would gain momentum after the PKK began laying down its weapons.

“The process will gain a little more speed when the terrorist organization starts to implement its decision to lay down arms,” he said at the weekend.

In recent months, the PKK has taken several historic steps, starting with a ceasefire and culminating in its formal dissolution announced on May 12.

The shift followed an appeal on February 27 by Öcalan, who has spent the past 26 years in solitary confinement on İmralı prison island near İstanbul.

© Agence France-Presse