Turkish parliament launches PKK disarmament panel

Shafaq News – Ankara

On Tuesday, a parliamentary committee in Turkiye began its work to oversee the peace initiative with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), aiming to present legal and political reform proposals to support the peace process.

Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus told lawmakers that one of the committee’s key responsibilities would be to oversee the disarmament process and help establish a legal framework “to ensure lasting peace.”

Kurtulmus described the launch of the committee’s work—comprising 51 members from most major parties—as a “historic turning point.”

Last month, dozens of PKK fighters burned their weapons in a symbolic disarmament gesture inside a cave in the Jasna area, between Dukan and Al-Sulaymaniyah in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.

The disarmament followed a February appeal by the PKK’s founder and longtime leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who from his prison cell on Imrali Island near Istanbul urged his fighters to lay down their arms and dissolve the organization.