Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday hailed start of a disarmament process by militant Kurdish separatists as the end of a “painful chapter” in Turkey's troubled history. Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AKP party in Ankara that the more than 40-year-old “scourge of terrorism” for which the Kurdistan Workers' Party - or PKK - was responsible is on its way to ending. Erdogan's remarks came a day after male and female members of the PKK in northern Iraq cast rifles and machine guns into a large cauldron where they were set on fire.