Fighters with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) line up to put their weapons into a pit during a ceremony in Sulaimaniyah, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region | AFP The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has begun laying down its arms,

Erdogan said the more than 40-year-old “scourge of terrorism” for which the Kurdistan Workers' Party was responsible is on its way to ending.

A group of 30 Kurdish fighters have ceremonially burned their weapons in northern Iraq, marking a major step toward ending a decades-long insurgency.

The disarmament of the P.K.K., a group that has battled since the 1980s for Kurdish independence, could end a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

The country’s ruling bloc initiated the ongoing new Kurdish peace process by offering Abdullah Öcalan the right to hope in exchange for the PKK’s disbandment.

The imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party has renewed his call for fighters to disarm. Abdullah Ocalan emphasized in a video message on Wednesday the importance of abandoning armed conflict and embracing peace through politics.

Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony on Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.

A ceremony in northern Iraq on Friday saw a handful of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants lay down their weapons, a small but hugely symbolic gesture that marks the beginning of an end to a conflict with the Turkish state that’s lasted nearly five decades and cost tens of thousands of lives.