ANKARA
Turkish lawmakers on Tuesday voted in favor of setting up a parliamentary committee to contribute to efforts to disarm PKK and solve Turkey's long-running Kurdish issue.
Lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party approved the bill to set up the 17-member committee, which will have a three-month mandate.
MPs from the two other opposition parties, the Republican People's Party and the Nationalist Movement Party, walked out of the general session before the voting in protest of the bill.
The setting up of parliamentary committee follows the formation of a 63-strong wise people commission of prominent scholars, journalists, businesspeople and performing artists who are expected to increase public support to the solution process aimed at ending decades of fighting that left tens of thousands of people dead.
PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan has recently called the group's armed elements to withdraw from Turkey.
