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PKK Launches Formal Disarmament Process With Weapons Ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan

The ceremony marks the first phase of a verification process scheduled to finish by September under Turkish and Iraqi supervision.

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Bese Hozat, the co-chair of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)'s executive committee, speaks in Sulaymaniyah, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, on Friday.

Overview

  • About 30 PKK fighters symbolically destroyed rifles and explosives inside the Jasana cave near Dukan in northern Iraq on July 11.
  • Iraqi and Turkish authorities will oversee a multistage verification process designed to conclude by September.
  • The handover follows the PKK’s May announcement to disband and comes after Abdullah Öcalan urged his followers in February to renounce violence.
  • Negotiations since October were brokered by the pro-Kurdish DEM Party with support from President Erdoğan and nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli.
  • Fighters opted to destroy their own arms rather than surrender them to any government, signaling goodwill ahead of a broader transition to democratic politics.