Kurdish PKK fighters destroy weapons at key ceremony

AFP | Sulaimaniyah

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Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan yesterday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.

The ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (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 with the PKK weakened and the Kurdish public exhausted by decades of violence, Turkey’s peace offer handed its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan a chance to make the long-desired switch away from armed struggle.

The PKK’s disarmament also frames President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the Turkish leader who managed to draw a line under a bloody conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives and wrought havoc in Turkey and beyond.

Outside the ancient cave of Casene, a group of 30 PKK fighters, both men and women, gathered on a stage in khaki fatigues, their faces uncovered, in front of an audience of around 300 people, an AFP 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, 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 by the PKK’s top woman commander Bese Hozat.