Baku-APA. The Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) on Thursday freed two soldiers abducted in Turkey's Diyarbakir earlier on Saturday, APA reports quoting local Today's Zaman.
The kidnapping took place when several PKK supporters blocked a road to Diyarbakir, one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey, on Saturday in protest against the construction of a gendarmerie outpost.
Some armed protestors then kidnapped two sergeants who were checking on a bus.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and other countries, took up arms in 1984 in an attempt to create an ethnic homeland for the Kurds in southeastern Turkey. Since then more than 40,000 people have been killed in conflicts involving the group.
The Turkish authorities started peace negotiations with the PKK in October 2012, which led to a ceasefire in March 2013. Then PKK fighters started to return to their strongholds in northern Iraq. However, they halted the withdrawal months later for unclear reasons, which put the peace negotiations into a deadlock.
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