PKK terrorists will begin handing over weapons in groups in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah on Friday as part of a peace process, Turkish broadcaster NTV reported on Tuesday.
The PKK - waging a bloody armed campaign against the Turkish state for more than four decades - decided in May to disband and end its struggle, following a public call from jailed ringleader Abdullah Ocalan in February.
NTV said, without citing sources, that Ocalan would send a video message to the PKK's base in northern Iraq's mountainous Qandil region to call for a mechanism for the disarmament process. It would be the first video featuring his face and voice since his jailing in 1999.
The whole process is expected to take around two to five months, NTV said, adding that terrorists who hand in weapons will stay in Iraq and halt any PKK activities.
On Monday, a delegation from the DEM party, which played a key role in facilitating the disarmament decision, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara to discuss the process.
NTV earlier reported that Ibrahim Kalın, the head of Türkiye's MIT intelligence agency, would travel to Baghdad on Tuesday for talks with Iraqi officials to discuss the weapons handover.
Since the bloody-minded PKK terror group launched its insurgency against Türkiye in 1984, the decades-long conflict has killed more than 40,000 people, imposed a huge economic burden and fuelled social tensions.
Ankara says skirmishes between Turkish soldiers and PKK terrorists in southeastern Türkiye and northern Iraq have continued since the PKK's decision to disband, adding that the Turkish army was still raiding PKK storage areas and bases in the region.
