PKK says recalling forces from Turkiye

THE Kurdish militant PKK said yesterday it was withdrawing all its forces from Turkiye to northern Iraq, urging Ankara to take legal steps to protect the peace process.

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The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) formally renounced its armed struggle against Turkiye in May, drawing a line under four decades of violence that has claimed some 50 000 lives.

"We are implementing the withdrawal of all our forces within Turkiye," the PKK said in a statement read out at a ceremony in the Qandil area of northern Iraq.

At the ceremony were 25 fighters - eight of them women - whom the PKK said had just left Turkiye.

Turkiye hailed the move as "concrete results 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 an unexpected olive branch to its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

"The legal and political steps required by the process ... and the laws of freedom and democratic integration necessary to participate in democratic politics must be put in place without delay," it said.