ISTANBUL: Turkiye has given a parliamentary commission until the end of the year to lay the groundwork for a peace process with the Kurdish militant group PKK, the speaker of parliament said Friday.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced an end in May to a decades-long insurgency that claimed more than 50,000 lives, saying it was taking up a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority.
Two months later, its fighters began laying down their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq, after which the Turkish parliament set up the cross-party commission to manage the emerging peace process.
The move came after months of indirect contacts between the Turkish government and the PKK’s jailed founder, Abdullah Ocalan.
The commission, which is tasked with preparing the legal framework for the peace process, held its first session on August 5 under the chairmanship of parliamentary speaker Numan Kurtulmus.
