Overview

• About 30 fighters, including four commanders, burned rifles and bandoliers at the Jasana cave in Dukan to symbolize the end of their armed struggle.
• Turkish and Iraqi intelligence figures, representatives of the Kurdistan Regional Government and lawmakers from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party attended the ceremony.
• The ceremony follows the PKK’s May announcement to dissolve and renounce armed conflict after Abdullah Ocalan’s February call for a democratic transition.
• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the onset of disarmament will accelerate peace efforts and Turkish legislators are set to form a commission to oversee the process through September.
• The ceremony marks a turning point with implications for Kurdish rights within Turkey’s constitutional system and for security dynamics in neighboring Syria and Iraq.