(11 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dukan, Sulaymaniyah, Iraq – 11 July 2025
1. Various of street and market area
2. Mid of Karzan Tariq and another man sitting in restaurant
3. SOUNDBITE (Kurdish) Karzan Tariq, local resident:
“Definitely, we view this agreement as a very important agreement, and we believe that this is the best process done by the Kurds in the past 30 years, and every Kurdish individual is happy for that. We consider this as a very important process, and we want it to continue and to be successful.”
4. Various of teashop in the area
5. SOUNDBITE (Kurdish) Abdulrahman Abbas, local resident:
“The PKK should reach an agreement with Turkey. War has no benefits. Hopes are always in negotiations. There is no solution from war, they must reach an agreement, and it is beneficial for both. Why waste people’s blood?”
6. Various of market area
7. SOUNDBITE (Kurdish) Abdullah Hussein, local resident:
“We hope that the PKK’s laying down of weapons today becomes the base for peace in the whole of Kurdistan. We hope that this will bring happiness and won’t make issues for us. We, the people of Dukan and Kurdistan, are grateful and hopefully it will bring good.”
8. Moving shot of shops in market area
STORYLINE:
Kurds in northern Iraq welcomed a decision by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, to lay down their weapons on Friday, saying they hope for a permanent peace agreement between Turkey and the separatist militant group.
“This is the best process done by the Kurds in the past 30 years, and every Kurdish individual is happy for that," said Karzan Tariq, from Sulaymaniyah.
“The PKK should reach an agreement with Turkey. War has no benefits. Hopes are always in negotiations,” said another local man, Abdulrahman Abbas.
Fighters with the PKK that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began handing over weapons in a symbolic ceremony Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.
The group announced in May it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities.
The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.
The ceremony took place in the mountains outside the city of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.
The state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that “the process will take place in stages, with a group of party members initially laying down their weapons "symbolically.”
The disarmament process is expected to be completed by September, the agency reported.
“We hope that the PKK’s laying down of weapons today becomes the base for peace in the whole of Kurdistan. We hope that this will bring happiness and won’t make issues for us," said Dukan resident Abdullah Hussein.
The PKK has long maintained bases in the mountains of northern Iraq.
Turkish forces have launched offensives and airstrikes against the PKK in Iraq and have set up bases in the area.
Scores of villages have emptied as a result.
The Iraqi government in Baghdad last year announced an official ban on the separatist group, which has long been prohibited in Turkey.
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