SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.

The ceremony marks a turning point in the transition of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from armed insurgency to democratic politics.

Analysts say the PKK’s military weakness makes disarmament a face-saving move, while allowing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to claim victory over a decades-long insurgency.

At the brief ceremony, which took place in a cave in the mountains of northern Iraq, a first batch of 30 militants were seen burning their weapons, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent at the scene said.

“Thirty PKK fighters, four of whom were commanders, burned their weapons,” said the correspondent who was present at the cave near the city of Sulaimaniyah, in the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq’s north.

Throughout the morning, cars could be seen pulling up to the Casene cave, a symbolic location that once housed a Kurdish printing press, Firat news agency said.

Founded by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of bloody attacks on Turkish soil that sparked a conflict that cost more than 40,000 lives.

But more than four decades on, the PKK in May announced its dissolution, saying 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.

“As a gesture of goodwill, a number of PKK fighters, who took part in fighting Turkish forces in recent years, will destroy or burn their weapons in a ceremony,” a PKK commander told AFP on 1 July, speaking on condition of anonymity.