By ABP Live News
<p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">In a ceremony held in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, the PKK fighters destroyed their weapons, marking the conclusion of their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state. According to France24, the disarmament ceremony has marked a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics as part of a broader effort to draw a line under one of the region’s longest-running conflicts.</p>
<p>Founded by Abdullah Ocalan in the year 1970, the PKK took up arms in the year 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that reportedly cost over 40,000 lives.</p>
<p>In May, PKK announced its dissolution, saying that it would pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call by Ocalan, who has been serving a life sentence in Turkey since 1999.</p>
<p>France 24 reported that the ceremony on F