Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a hopeful shift as the PKK begins disarmament, signaling an end to decades of unrest. The decision follows urging by imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey have begun laying down their weapons.

The group of 30 members burned their weapons in a cauldron in Iraq. The group has been fighting with Turkey for 40 years.

It is part of a larger process in which the PKK is moving to lay down its arms.In May, the PKK said it would lay down its arms and disband, but it is not clear when this process will begin and how long it will take.

Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.The ceremony marked a major step in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics as part of a broader effort to end one of the region's longest-running conflicts.

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is an icon to many Kurds but a "terrorist" to many within wider Turkish society.- Jailed but still leading - With Ocalan's arrest,

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday hailed start of a disarmament process by militant Kurdish separatists as the end of a ''painful chapter'' in Turkey's troubled history.