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.
