At the entrance to a cave northwest of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq's Kurdistan Region, PKK fighters threw their weapons into a fire in a ceremony that marked the end of their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state. The symbolic act followed the group's public announcement of disarmament and was attended by representatives of most Kurdish factions.

Since 1984, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost over 40,000 lives and transformed borderlands into militarized zones. Now, with incarcerated PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's blessing—and a surprising political overture from Turkey's far right—the PKK has unilaterally moved to disarm. Last October, Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, stunned observers by suggesting in Parliament that Öcalan could be

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