Kurdish militants disarm in end to 40-year war with Turkey

Ugur Yilmaz, Bloomberg News on Jul 11, 2025

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The Kurdish militant group PKK started laying down its weapons, marking the beginning of a disarmament process aimed at ending one of the Middle East’s longest-running insurgencies.

A group of 30 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party burned its weapons at a ceremony in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region attended by observers from Turkey, Iraq’s central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, local TV channels showed.

The handover will be the first concrete step toward disarmament since the PKK’s May announcement that it would disband, ending four decades of conflict with the Turkish state and easing security concerns in the region.

Peace could also boost Turkey’s economy, with policymakers saying that the conflict has cost the country around $1.8 trillion including lost opportunities due to military spending.

The Turkish government views this an as “an irreversible turning point,” a senior official said. Devlet Bahceli, the nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who first called for reconciliation late last year, said the developments were significant not just for Turkey but also the region.

It remains unclear whether all armed PKK factions will participate in the process. Turkey’s government has called for it take no longer than five months.

In a video message released Wednesday, the PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan described the handover as “transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law.” He has been serving a life sentence in solitary confinement on the prison island of Imrali since 1999.

The group, which first took up arms in 1984 seeking Kurdish autonomy, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, with violence at times spilling into neighboring Iraq, Syria and Iran.

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—With assistance from Beril Akman.