SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq >> 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 on Friday in northern Iraq, the first concrete step toward a promised disarmament as part of a peace process.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced in May that it would disband and renounce armed conflict, ending four decades of hostilities. The move came after PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, imprisoned on an island near Istanbul since 1999, urged his group in February to convene a congress and formally disband and disarm.

Öcalan renewed his call in a video message broadcast Wednesday, saying, “I believe in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons.”

Most journalists weren’t allowed at the site of Friday’s ceremony, in the mountains of Sulaymaniyah province in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

Footage from the event showed fighters — both men and women — casting rifles and machine guns into a large cauldron, where they were then set ablaze.

The PKK issued a statement from the fighters laying down their weapons, saying that they had disarmed “as a gesture of goodwill and a commitment to the practical success” of the peace process.

“We will henceforth continue our struggle for freedom, democracy, and socialism through democratic politics and legal means,” the statement said.

The state-run Iraqi News Agency reported that 30 fighters had disarmed “symbolically” Friday, and that the continuing disarmament process “will take place in stages.” The process is expected to be completed by September, the agency reported.

An Iraqi Kurdish political official said representatives of the Turkish intelligence service and of the Kurdish regional government, Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party and the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, a pro-Kurdish party in Turkey, were present. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Turkish parliamentary Speaker Numan Kurtulmus said the initial disarmament step had proceeded “as planned,” but cautioned that the process was far from complete.

“There’s still a long way to go in collecting many more weapons,” Kurtulmus said. “What matters is ending the armed era in a way that ensures weapons are never taken up again.”

He said the Turkish parliament was close to setting up a commission to oversee the peace process.