ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than 20 abandoned villages in Duhok province’s Amedi district have been repopulated amid the ongoing peace talks between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a local official said on Monday, though hundreds of other villages across Kurdistan Region-Turkey border remain deserted.
"We are now allowing the residents of 21 villages around Mount Gara [northeast of Duhok] to return, and they have indeed gone back, as we are certain that no danger remains in those villages,” Warhsin Mayi, Amedi’s mayor, told Rudaw’s Solin Mohammed.
He added that the area has experienced “a period of stability” after decades-long intense bombardments and clashes had forced residents of 197 villages to evacuate their homes.
PKK and the Turkish government laid the first stone of the peace process in February 2025, when the Kurdish armed group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan asked his party’s fighters to lay down their arms and dissolve the PKK while transitioning from armed to political struggle within the Turkish state.
Nearly 500 villages across the Kurdistan Region had been evacuated because of their clashes since the eighties, as the PKK has used areas near the villages as hideouts while the Turkish army utilized their presence as a pretext for bombardments and establishing military outposts.
Based on Rudaw’s tracking, 276 villages from a total of 437 in Erbil and Duhok provinces are yet to be repopulated.
Ihsan Chalabi, the mayor of Sidakan in northeast Erbil, told Rudaw that since 1984, 118 villages within their areas of jurisdiction have been deserted and remain unpopulated.
"Although bombardments and artillery shelling have ceased for nearly two years, the security situation is still not 100 percent favorable. Turkish forces remain in those areas, and the PKK is also still present,” he said.
Chalabi also underscored the ongoing threat of landmines and unexploded ordnance, while noting that people can only access the highlands for livestock farming and agriculture with “official permission.”
“For a permanent return, the area must be cleared of mines, and armed forces must withdraw," he noted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had asked the parliament to postpone its summer recess in order to pass a standalone law that is geared towards reconciling the disarmed PKK fighters into civil life.
