Kurdistan Workers’ Party

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK) was founded to establish a [Page 336]Kurdish state and self-rule in southeastern Turkey, an area that is predominantly Kurdish. Established in 1978 by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK began its terrorism campaign by focusing on Turkish security forces and civilians in the early 1980s. The sometimes intensely bloody conflict has continued into the 2010s.

PKK's history is inextricably linked with the plight of the Kurds, the world's most numerous stateless people. Largely Muslim, Kurds number between 15 million and 20 million, have their own language and culture, and live in an area known as Kurdistan, a mountainous region that lies within portions of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Armenia. Nearly 11 million Kurds live in Turkey and represent roughly 20 percent of that country's population. Turkey is home to the highest concentration of Kurds anywhere.

Demonstrators shout slogans outside the Celio military hospital in downtown Rome to protest against the arrest of Kurdistan Workers’ Party's (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, November 14, 1998. Ocalan was arrested in Rome after stepping off a plane from Moscow and was facing extradition to Turkey. The PKK has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. Nearly 37,000 people have died in the conflict.

(AP Photo/Marco Ravagli. © 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

After World War I, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire formed new nation-states, but no separate Kurdistan. Thus, the Kurds, who were until then nomadic, could no longer keep to their ancient migratory ways. Although the 1920 Treaty of Sevres promised independence, the Kurds were never granted nationhood. In 1923, Turkey refused to honor that provision of the treaty, and the Kurds remained an ethnic group within Turkey. Kurd revolts in the 1920s and 1930s were met by the Turkish government with mass executions and village burnings.

The founder and leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, was born in 1948 in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. While attending the university at Ankara, he studied political science and developed, many believe, what would become the thinking behind the PKK. He dropped out of school, wrote a manifesto on the subject of Kurdish liberation, and in 1978 he formed the PKK as a terrorist group to help establish a Kurdish state. Today, many of the Kurdish people refer to him as “Apo,” the Kurdish word for “uncle.”

Although Ocalan left Turkey for exile in 1980, he directed the PKK from Syria and other countries, and he has orchestrated most PKK plots. The PKK held its first congress in July 1981, and it later established a “Presidential Council,” comprising 10 senior commanders, to run the group's day-to-day operations. In 1984 the PKK began to use terror (usually serial kidnappings and bombings) to spread its message. Some of the first targets were police stations and other state buildings in Turkey's southeastern provinces, but the campaign eventually turned against civilians, most of them Kurds, whom the PKK accused of conspiring with the state.

The Turkish government fought back. Between 1984 and 1999 (with 1991 and 1993 seeing the peak of PKK activity), nearly 40,000 people died as a result of PKK violence and government retaliation. In 1999 Ocalan was apprehended in Kenya and returned to Turkey, where he was sentenced to death. (The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002.) The day he was sentenced, riots, demonstrations, and occupations of embassies [Page 337]occurred throughout Europe. From prison, however, Ocalan announced a cease-fire and asked all PKK forces to abandon Turkey. In February 2000, the PKK officially ceased its 15-year revolution and agreed to the political program put forward by the imprisoned leader.

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