Kurdish PKK says withdrawing all forces from Turkiye to north Iraq

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On Sunday, the Kurdish militant group PKK began withdrawing all its forces from Turkish soil to northern Iraq, while urging Ankara to release its jailed leader to ensure the success of the peace process.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) formally abandoned its armed struggle against Turkey in May, drawing a streak of violence that has claimed nearly 50,000 lives over four decades.

“We are following the withdrawal of all our forces inside Turkey,” the PKK said in a statement read in Kurdish and Turkish in a remote village in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, according to an AFP journalist.

Standing in front of large banners of jailed PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan were 25 fighters with assault rifles – among them three commanders – who the PKK said had just left Turkey. Eight were women.

It was not immediately clear how many fighters would be involved in the withdrawal, but observers estimated it would be between 200 and 300.

Turkey hailed the move as a “concrete result of progress” in efforts to end one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.

But the PKK urged the Turkish government to waste no time in taking the necessary legal steps to advance the process, which began a year ago when Ankara offered its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan an unexpected olive branch.

The PKK said Öcalan’s release was “important” and called on members of a parliamentary commission to meet with him as soon as possible to organize a peace process.

Senior PK militant Sabri Oke told reporters at the event, “Major steps need to be taken for the process to be compatible with freedom, referring to legal arrangements, laws governing the fate of those who abandon the armed struggle.”

“We want laws that are specific to that process, not just a general amnesty.”

According to a historic call in February by PKK Öcalan, the Kurdish minority wants to fight democratically to defend its rights.

Now 76, Ocalan has led the process from his prison cell on Amlay Island near Istanbul, where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999.

“It is very difficult to carry out such an important process in isolation or in prison conditions. His freedom is very important for the process to proceed more effectively,” senior PKK leader Diorem Palu told AFP in an interview after the event.

Prison visits

Indirect talks with the PKK began late last year with the backing of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hailed the group’s move to begin destroying weapons in July as a victory for the nation.

Turkey has also established a cross-party parliamentary commission to lay the foundations for the peace process and develop a legal framework for the political integration of the PKK and its fighters.

Oke said, but it was important that the commission meet with Ocalan.

“The parliamentary commission must immediately go and listen to Leader Apo. He is the one who started this process and carried it forward, so they must listen as soon as possible,” he said, using a nickname for Ocalan.

A 48-member parliamentary commission has also been tasked with deciding Öcalan’s fate.

Over the past year, Ocalan has been visited multiple times by pro-Dem Party family members and negotiators, and last month he had access to his lawyers for the first time since 2019.

Dem, Turkey’s third-largest party that has played a key role in facilitating the emerging peace deal, said it would send a delegation to meet with Erdogan on Thursday.

Analysts say that with the PKK weakened and the Kurdish population reeling from decades of violence, Turkey’s peace offer gave Öcalan a chance to pull off a far-reaching switch from armed struggle.

In July, the PKK held a symbolic ceremony in northern Iraq in which they destroyed the first batch of weapons, which Turkey hailed as an “irreversible turning point”.