The announcement by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that it will pull thousands of its militants out of Turkey and into northern Iraq beginning May 8, under a deal worked out with the Turkish government, will boost Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's popularity at home, regardless of nationalist accusations that he is negotiating in Turkey's name with a terrorist organization.
This doesn't change the fact that many Turks remain wary about what the PKK will get in return for ending its separatist terrorism, which has cost up to 40,000 Turkish and Kurdish lives over the past three decades. This shows that Erdogan's real task is still ahead of him, as the process with the PKK enters the political stage.
