The disarmament process will start under tight security in Iraqi Kurdistan and is expected to take all summer.

Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey began laying down their weapons in a symbolic ceremony Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.

The ceremony marks a fresh turning point in a peace process aimed at ending the militant group’s four-decade-long armed campaign against Turkey.