Overview

• Roughly 30 PKK fighters publicly laid down and burned arms in a July 10–11 ceremony near Sulaimaniyya, marking the start of a supervised disarmament phase in Northern Iraq.
• The multistage process is overseen by Turkish, Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional Government authorities and is expected to last several months.
• PKK co-leader Bese Hozat has called for security guarantees for commanders, formal political participation in Turkey and the release of founder Abdullah Öcalan.
• In a rare July 9 video message Öcalan urged a rapid shift “from armed conflict to law and democracy,” reinforcing the PKK’s May 12 dissolution.
• Decades of Kurdish–Turkish fighting have killed over 40,000 people, and this disarmament marks a potential pivot toward a political framework and legal reforms.