QANDIL MOUTAINS, Iraq: The Kurdish militant PKK said Sunday it was withdrawing all its forces from Turkiye to northern Iraq, urging Ankara to take legal steps to protect the peace process as held a ceremony in northern Iraq.
“We are implementing the withdrawal of all our forces within Turkiye,” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said in a statement read out in the Qandil area of northern Iraq, according to an AFP journalist present at the ceremony.
It released a picture showing 25 fighters – among them eight women – who had already traveled there from Turkiye.
The PKK, which formally renounced its 40-year armed struggle in May, is currently making the transition from armed insurgency to democratic politics in a bid to end one of the region’s longest conflicts, which claimed some 50,000 lives.
But it urged Turkiye to take the necessary steps to push forward the process which began a year ago when Ankara offered an unexpected olive branch to its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
“The legal and political steps required by the process (...) and the laws of freedom and democratic integration necessary to participate in democratic politics must be put in place without delay,” it said.
The group has said it wants to pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan.
In July they held a symbolic ceremony in the mountains of northern Iraq at which they destroyed a first batch of weapons, which was hailed by Turkiye as “an irreversible turning point.”