ANKARA (Reuters) -Militant fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) will begin handing over weapons in groups in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah on Friday as part of a peace process with Turkey, Turkish broadcaster NTV reported on Tuesday.
The PKK – locked in a bloody conflict with the Turkish state for more than four decades – decided in May to disband and end its struggle, following a public call from the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan in February.
NTV said, without citing sources, that Ocalan would send a video message to the PKK’s base in northern Iraq’s mountainous Qandil region to call for a mechanism for the disarmament process. It would be the first video featuring his face and voice since his jailing in 1999.
The whole process is expected to take around two to five months, NTV said, adding that militants who hand in weapons will stay in Iraq and halt any PKK activities.
On Monday, a delegation from the pro-Kurdish DEM party – Turkey’s third-biggest party, which played a key role facilitating the disarmament decision – met with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara to discuss the process.
NTV earlier reported that Ibrahim Kalin, the head of Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, would travel to Baghdad on Tuesday for talks with Iraqi officials to discuss the weapons handover.
Since the PKK launched its insurgency against Turkey in 1984 – originally with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state – the conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, imposed a huge economic burden and fuelled social tensions.
Ankara says skirmishes between Turkish soldiers and PKK militants in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq have continued since the group’s decision to disband, adding that Turkey was still raiding PKK storage areas and bases in the region.
(Reporting by Tuvan GumrukcuEditing by Jonathan Spicer and Gareth Jones)
Comments