The Kurdish PKK Organization
By James Donahue
During the Iraq conflict we heard about a third Islamic group known as the Kurds located near the border of Turkey. We didn’t hear a lot about the Kurds other than they seemed to be a somewhat passive people if left alone. When attacked they hit back like a hive of angry hornets.
After the U.S. invasion and the capture and killing of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a new Constitution was drafted in Iraq that recognizes an autonomous Kurdistan region run by the Kurdistan Regional Government in the mountains along the northern border with Turkey. The story of how this came about goes back 40 years to the formation of an active terrorist organization known as the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK (an acronym for Partiya Karkeren Kardistane). The PKK has been waging a furious armed battle for cultural and political rights since it was founded by Kurdish students in 1978.
Today there are an estimated 6 million Kurds comprising nearly 20 percent of the total population of Iraq. An estimated 40 million Kurds occupy Syria, Iran, Turkey and Iraq throughout the Middle East.
The PKK ideology established by founder Abdullah Ocalan was described as a mixture of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism. They originally followed a Communist line, seeking the foundation of their own independent state in the region what would be known as Kurdistan.
The problem was that the Kurds, who are identified as one of the largest ethnic groups in the world lacking a state of their own, have been fighting for their own territory of Kurdisan since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. They conducted a series of rebellions against the British colonial rule of their territory and later the ruling countries that evolved following withdrawal of the British from the area.
Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds in what was known as the Anfal Campaign, which is remembered as the time Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
Ocalan's PKK became the defending militant force for the Kurds. But the PKK went beyond just defending the invading forces. This organization became a fighting terrorist organization that resorted to suicide bombings and gurellia attacks under the armed wing of the PKK, known as the People's Defense Force (HPG). The objective of the PKK was to secure a Kurdish independent state.
Ocalan was captured and sentenced to prison in 1999. But he has held onto an honorary status as leader of the PKK. He has since called for the PKK to adopt a new political platform which he called “Democratic Confederalism” and ceased efforts to create an independent country. He issued a statement in which he described the PKK as a people without a state and even though he has remained in prison, has been instrumental in several failed peace talks.
The PKK began as a small student group in Ankara led by Ocalan. The official founding meeting was held in 1978 in Diyarbakir. The group adopted the name Kurdistan Workers’ Party, established a radical left Marxist ideology, and from that day on, began acts of urban warfare against other radical groups operating in Turkey.
In 1980 the group transformed into a paramilitary group, established training camps in France, and launched attacks and bombings against government installations. The attacks were against civilian and military targets in Turkey, France, Belgium and Iraq. They began suicide bombings in the 1990s. By this time, women were involved in the bombings.
Since the PKK came on the scene, an estimated 40,000 people have died in the ongoing conflicts which reached a peak in the 1990s. Thousands of villages have been completely destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have become refugees, fleeing to escape the fighting.
A ceasefire agreement was reached in 2013 and the Kurds moved into the northern regions of Iraq, which they referred to as the Kurdistan Region. Last year the armed wing of the PKK, the People’s Defense Force (HPG) took up arms again to fight against the ISIS in North Syria and their own Iraqi Kurdistan area.
Strangely, even though they are battling with U.S. forces against the ISIS, the United States has branded the PKK as a terrorist organization.
By James Donahue
During the Iraq conflict we heard about a third Islamic group known as the Kurds located near the border of Turkey. We didn’t hear a lot about the Kurds other than they seemed to be a somewhat passive people if left alone. When attacked they hit back like a hive of angry hornets.
After the U.S. invasion and the capture and killing of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a new Constitution was drafted in Iraq that recognizes an autonomous Kurdistan region run by the Kurdistan Regional Government in the mountains along the northern border with Turkey. The story of how this came about goes back 40 years to the formation of an active terrorist organization known as the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK (an acronym for Partiya Karkeren Kardistane). The PKK has been waging a furious armed battle for cultural and political rights since it was founded by Kurdish students in 1978.
Today there are an estimated 6 million Kurds comprising nearly 20 percent of the total population of Iraq. An estimated 40 million Kurds occupy Syria, Iran, Turkey and Iraq throughout the Middle East.
The PKK ideology established by founder Abdullah Ocalan was described as a mixture of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism. They originally followed a Communist line, seeking the foundation of their own independent state in the region what would be known as Kurdistan.
The problem was that the Kurds, who are identified as one of the largest ethnic groups in the world lacking a state of their own, have been fighting for their own territory of Kurdisan since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. They conducted a series of rebellions against the British colonial rule of their territory and later the ruling countries that evolved following withdrawal of the British from the area.
Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds in what was known as the Anfal Campaign, which is remembered as the time Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.
Ocalan's PKK became the defending militant force for the Kurds. But the PKK went beyond just defending the invading forces. This organization became a fighting terrorist organization that resorted to suicide bombings and gurellia attacks under the armed wing of the PKK, known as the People's Defense Force (HPG). The objective of the PKK was to secure a Kurdish independent state.
Ocalan was captured and sentenced to prison in 1999. But he has held onto an honorary status as leader of the PKK. He has since called for the PKK to adopt a new political platform which he called “Democratic Confederalism” and ceased efforts to create an independent country. He issued a statement in which he described the PKK as a people without a state and even though he has remained in prison, has been instrumental in several failed peace talks.
The PKK began as a small student group in Ankara led by Ocalan. The official founding meeting was held in 1978 in Diyarbakir. The group adopted the name Kurdistan Workers’ Party, established a radical left Marxist ideology, and from that day on, began acts of urban warfare against other radical groups operating in Turkey.
In 1980 the group transformed into a paramilitary group, established training camps in France, and launched attacks and bombings against government installations. The attacks were against civilian and military targets in Turkey, France, Belgium and Iraq. They began suicide bombings in the 1990s. By this time, women were involved in the bombings.
Since the PKK came on the scene, an estimated 40,000 people have died in the ongoing conflicts which reached a peak in the 1990s. Thousands of villages have been completely destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have become refugees, fleeing to escape the fighting.
A ceasefire agreement was reached in 2013 and the Kurds moved into the northern regions of Iraq, which they referred to as the Kurdistan Region. Last year the armed wing of the PKK, the People’s Defense Force (HPG) took up arms again to fight against the ISIS in North Syria and their own Iraqi Kurdistan area.
Strangely, even though they are battling with U.S. forces against the ISIS, the United States has branded the PKK as a terrorist organization.