Kurdistan Workers' Party - History

History

In the early 1970s, the organization's core group was made up largely of students led by Abdullah Öcalan ("Apo") in Ankara. The group soon moved its focus to the large Kurdish population in south-east Turkey. On November 27, 1978, the group adopted the name Kurdistan Workers Party. Espousing a radical left, Marxist ideology, the group took part in violent conflicts with right-wing entities as a part of the political chaos in Turkey at the time. In 1979, as a propaganda of the deed, the group attempted to assassinate Kurdish tribal leader Mehmet Celal Bucak who they claimed exploited the peasants, and collaborated with Turkey. This marked a period of intense urban warfare between other radical political elements. The 1980 Turkish coup d'état pushed the organization to another stage with the members doing jail time, being subject to capital punishment, or fleeing to Syria. On November 10, 1980, the Turkish Consulate in Strasbourg, France was bombed in a joint operation with the Armenian radical group ASALA, which they claimed as the beginning of a "fruitful collaboration."

Starting in 1984, the organization transformed itself into a paramilitary group, using training camps located in France, and launched attacks and bombings against governmental installations, the military, and various "institutions of the state" - some of which were connected to the Southeastern Anatolia Project. The organization moved to a less centralized form, taking up operations in a variety of European and Middle Eastern countries, especially Germany and France. The PKK has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries, such as Turkey, France, Belgium and Iraq.

Beginning with the mid 1990s, the organization lost the upper hand in its operations as a consequence of a change of tactics by Turkey and Syria's steady abandonment of its support for the group. In the mid 1990s, it also began a series of suicide bombing attacks. 15 such attacks were performed, 11 of which were carried out by females. In the late 1990s, Turkey increased the pressure and the undeclared war between Turkey and Syria ended open Syrian support. In 1999, Öcalan was captured, prosecuted and sentenced to death, but later commuted to life imprisonment as part of European Union membership. With downgraded security concerns, the Turkish parliament began a controlled process of dismantling the legal control, using the term "normalization" or "rapprochement" depending on the sides of the issue. The bans on broadcasting and publishing in the Kurdish language were partially relaxed - although significant barriers remained. At the same time, the organization was blacklisted in many countries. On April 2, 2004, the Council of the European Union added the organization to its list of terrorist organizations. Later that year, the US Treasury moved to freeze assets of branches of the organization. The organization went through a series of changes, and the unilateral truce that was declared when Ocalan was captured, ended in 2003.

Since Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present, Turkey alleges that Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the US-led coalition forces, have not done enough to combat with the organization and dislodge it from its base in the Iraqi mountains. In an interview during April 2010 the leader of the armed wing of the PKK, Murat Karayılan, admitted to his organization having attacked a group of approaching American soldiers in 2004 in North Iraq and killing at least one of them.