PKK, Turkey and Abdullah Ocalan
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The group of 30 members burned their weapons in a cauldron in Iraq. The group has been fighting with Turkey for 40 years.
STORY: Fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, burned their weapons on Friday.The event signified the beginning of a disarmament process meant to end a bloody, four-decade insurgency against Turkey.
Kurdish militants want to return to Turkey and enter mainstream politics, one of the PKK's joint leaders told AFP on Friday after the group's fighters began destroying their arms at a ceremony in Iraq.
Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is an icon to many Kurds but a "terrorist" to many within wider Turkish society.- Jailed but still leading - With Ocalan's arrest,
It is part of a larger process in which the PKK is moving to lay down its arms.The PKK had said it would lay down its arms and disband back in May. However, it is not clear when this process will begin and how long it will take.
Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey have begun laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony Friday in northern Iraq, the first conc