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https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-pkks-disarmament-affect-turkey-syria-and-iraq-261113>
"The historic disarmament ceremony on July 11 where members of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) laid down their arms marked a pivotal moment in a
decades-long conflict in Turkey. The ceremony was described by many who
attended as a profoundly symbolic and emotional day that may signal the
beginning of a new era.
During the disarmament ceremony in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of
Iraq, 26 PKK guerrillas alongside four senior commanders and leaders of the
movement, symbolically laid aid down their arms and burned them. The audience
included officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), plus
politicians, journalists and international observers.
For more than four decades the PKK has been embroiled in an armed conflict with
Turkey that has claimed more than 40,000 lives and shaped Kurdish identity and
politics across the region.
The PKK disarmament ceremony also could mark a new era for the Kurds, one of
the largest stateless groups in the world with over 30 million people living
across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The PKK has said it will now shift from
armed resistance to political dialogue and regional cooperation.
Strikingly, the day after the ceremony, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
acknowledged the state’s historical failures in addressing the Kurdish issue.
He listed past abuses of Kurds – state-sponsored abductions and extrajudicial
violence, the burning of villages and the forced displacement of families – as
examples of policies that had fuelled, rather than quelled, the conflict."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
