PKK

[Guest]

The rise and fall of the PKK

by Michael Radu

Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA, USA

 

Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs

Volume 45, Issue 1,

 

Pages 47-63 (Winter 2001)

 

In 1992 Turkey was in the midst of a war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party

(Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan-PKK), whose forces were credibly estimated to be

10,000 strong.1 In 1996 the journalist Franz Schurmann called the PKK "the

biggest guerrilla insurgency in the world," and wrote of its leader,

Abdullah Öcalan, that "he alone among Kurdish leaders understands that a

social revolution is going on in Kurdish society everywhere. ... Öcalan will

go down in the history books as the Saladin of the late 20th century."2 By

the summer of 1999, however, senior officers of the Turkish military and

Jandarma (militarized police) estimated the PKK's total strength inside the

country at 1,500 and declining rapidly.3 In May 2000 the Turkish Daily News

reported that "PKK armed militants have largely left Turkish territory after

the PKK executive council called on them to cease armed struggle and leave

Turkey."4

 

What brought about such a dramatic decline in just three years? Three

developments provide a short, albeit incomplete, answer: the February 1999

capture of Öcalan, the PKK's founder and uncontested leader; the increasing

disenchantment of Turkey's Kurdish citizens with the PKK's armed struggle;

and dramatic changes in the regional balance of power in the Middle East,

which weakened the PKK's traditional supporters. Of these, the capture of

Öcalan in Nairobi, Kenya, by Turkish commandos was the most obviously

devastating blow, but was in fact symptomatic of military and political

troubles that were years in the making. This is amply demonstrated by the

fact that, after fifteen years of safe haven in Syria, Öcalan was on the run

and desperately seeking asylum in Africa.

 

The PKK's evident vulnerability in the late 1990s raises the question of the

depth and strength of its support among the Kurdish population, which had

long been considered the source of the party's military and political

successes over a decade and a half. The far from simple answer is that the

degree of PKK support is a matter of definition. While some Kurdish clans

actively backed Öcalan's party, others rejected it and joined the

government's efforts to combat it. Clearly, then, the hitherto widespread

impression of the PKK as a grassroots movement with broad popular support

needs revisiting. To arrive at a greater understanding of the origins,

ideology, leadership, and goals of the PKK, this article will rely heavily

on the PKK's own statements and documents - all freely available on the

Internet.5 Obviously, such material constitutes propaganda rather than

objective analysis, but that does not limit its value. To the contrary, what

the PKK wants the world to know about it says a great deal about the way it

sees itself.

 

Ideology, leadership, and strategy

On occasion, the PKK has presented itself as the defender and chief advocate

of Kurdish nationalism. Its weak claim to such a position, however, reveals

not any true conviction, but rather astute political instincts and sheer

opportunism. Since the beginning, the PKK has been Marxist-Leninist in its

ideology, Stalinist in its leadership style, and Maoist in its strategy for

the conquest of power.

 

Marxism, not Kurdish nationalism, has always defined the PKK. Given that the

founders of the PKK included ethnic Turks as well as Kurds, their common

interest was never based on ethnicity. The history of the PKK, as portrayed

in the records of its congresses prior to Öcalan's capture in February 1999,

makes abundantly clear the party's unwavering loyalty to Marxism-Leninism.

Most important is the "Fifth Victory Congress" of January 1995, which called

attention to the importance of ideology in the life of Kurds - and the

importance of the PKK in the progress of socialism across the globe.6 In the

two major documents that emerged from that congress, the "Brief History of

the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)" and the "Party Program of the PKK," the

organization portrays itself as the "vanguard of the global socialism

movement, even though the Party hasn't yet come to power." 7 Perhaps to

shore up its claim to the leadership of socialism internationally, the

program states that the PKK from the very beginning tried to enlist support

in other countries; that "a new phase of socialism" has begun; and that the

PKK "is the embodiment of one of the most significant socialist movements

during this new phase." 8 It is important to consider the timing of that

statement - a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev initiated perestroika and

glasnost, and six years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. What had the

PKK to say about those events? It claimed that "Soviet socialism was a kind

of deviation," and went so far as to call it "rough," "wild," and even

"primitive." By contrast, "the PKK's approach to socialism is scientific and

creative."9

 

The arrogance manifest in such declarations can be attributed directly to

Öcalan's leadership style, which in its megalomania and iron-fisted grip on

power borrows heavily from Stalin. Öcalan, simply put, created a personality

cult with himself as its focal point, and has made his own name virtually

synonymous with that of the organization he heads. He has always been

identified as the sole author of any text of significant ideological impact

(including all major documents of the Fifth Congress), the initiator of

every political and military campaign, and the uncontested decision maker at

the party's helm.10 And yet Öcalan's personal background would seem to make

him an unlikely leader of Kurdish workers, a fact that makes the PKK's

purported nationalist aspirations all the more specious. Öcalan was born in

1948 into a peasant family in the mostly Kurdish village of Omerli.

Significantly, his mother was not Kurdish at all, but Turkoman, and it was

she (described by Öcalan as an "independent, headstrong, woman") who

controlled the household and dominated his "helpless" Kurdish father.

Equally notable is Öcalan's statement that his family "was poor and had lost

its tribal traditions, but it continued with strong feudal values"11 -

rather a surprising admission from a self-declared socialist leader who

claims to be fighting against the "colonial" oppression of Kurds. After

studying at a vocational school in the provincial capital of Urfa, Öcalan

moved on to Ankara University's School of Political Science in the early

1970s, a period during which Turkish universities were involved in

revolutionary activism far more than education. Öcalan spent his time

learning political organizing and Marxist doctrine, and he evidently learned

well. As he later put it, "I dedicated myself completely to ideological

work" - which included political violence, for which he was arrested and

imprisoned for a few months in 1973.

 

The PKK itself was founded in 1978, and Öcalan's continuous control over it

was only obtained by ruthlessly eliminating potential challengers to his

absolute authority. Those who threatened his leadership or simply disagreed

with him faced demotion, expulsion, or death. As he euphemistically

described the fate of those unfortunates at his own trial, despite

"comprehensive educational and organisational efforts against them, ... the

most deviated ones of them could only be neutralised by internal

struggles."12 According to Chris Kutschera, one of Europe's most active,

sympathetic, and knowledgeable analysts of the PKK, "Five or six of the

[PKK's] original central committee have been physically eliminated, three

others committed suicide, [and] eight are still alive, acting

semi-clandestinely. ... Others have been driven underground." 13 Moreover,

the purges continued for years. Kutschera goes on to quote Selahattin Celik,

the founder and first commander of the PKK's armed wing, the People's

Liberation Army of Kurdistan (Artesa Rizgariya Gele Kurdistan - ARGK):

"There were between 50 and 60 executions just after the 1986 Congress. In

the end there was no more room to bury them!" 14 Among those "arrested" at

that time was Duran Kalkan, who was later released and is now still a member

of the PKK Presidential Council. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Kalkan is now

rumored to have offered Ankara his surrender in exchange for amnesty. 15

Another reminder of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s is found in the career

of Ali Omer Can, a Central Committee member who was arrested and tortured in

the PKK's Beka'a jails in 1986 and then released and rehabilitated. After he

again broke with the party and tried to establish a rival organization, the

"PKK Refoundation," he was assassinated in November 1991. 16

 

If Öcalan's leadership style was Stalin's, his strategy for conquest

resembled Mao's. The PKK's first goal was to establish a credible military

force within Turkey that would be sufficient to challenge the political

power of the government. Once that was accomplished, the party would expand

its control to Kurdish areas beyond Turkish borders. A unified, socialist

Kurdistan could then serve as a base from which to promote socialism within

the region and around the world.17 In other words, the foundation of a

Kurdish state was never an ultimate goal in itself, but rather a means to

spread socialism.

 

Specious nationalism

If a Kurdish state was only, at best, a secondary goal for the PKK, it is

important to examine the nature of its purported nationalism. Upon closer

look, it becomes clear that the PKK's claim to be "the leading force in the

liberation of Kurdistan" is sheer obfuscation. In reality, the organization

is not representative of the Kurdish people, nor is it nationalist in any

commonly understood sense.

 

>From the PKK's beginnings, there have been several reasons to question its

claim to be the legitimate representative of the Kurdish people. First, as

noted above, ethnic Turks were a part of the party since its inception, and

in the early years the PKK counted as many Turks as Kurds among its members.

Secondly, the party's official history acknowledges that already by 1980 it

had difficulty recruiting Kurds in Turkey, which suggests that many Kurds'

interests - as they perceived them - did not coincide with the PKK's own.

Thirdly, Öcalan's own background makes him ill suited to be a

standard-bearer of Kurdish interests. Not only was his mother of Turkoman

origin, but his recent trial made clear that he never learned either of the

two major Kurdish languages (Kurmandji and Zaza) and used Turkish in all

communications with followers.

 

Surely the most damaging fact undermining the PKK's position as the

representative of Kurdish interests is the party's adversarial and often

hostile relationship with Kurds throughout the region. In its efforts to

gain recruits and legitimize itself in the eyes of certain segments of the

Kurdish population, particularly in Tunceli province, Öcalan's party has not

only exploited but exacerbated historic regional divisions and clan

rivalries. Kurds under PKK attack have then sought assistance from the

Turkish government and joined in its successful counterinsurgency campaign.

Partially as a result of this internecine conflict, more Kurdish civilians

than Turks have died during the PKK's war against Ankara, which suggests

that absolute power matters far more to Öcalan than the aspirations and

welfare of the people he claims to lead.

 

Power matters far more to Öcalan than does the Kurds' welfare.

 

His party has killed Kurds as reprisals for suspected collaboration with

Ankara; it has killed Iraqi Kurds during hostilities with the two leading

Kurdish groups there; and it has killed Kurds in Europe and Lebanon who

disagreed with Öcalan or simply did not support him fervently enough.

 

Among other tactics, suicide bombings in Kurdish areas have figured

prominently in the PKK's terror campaign and contributed to the group's

reputation for indiscriminate violence. According to the Turkish government,

quoting both internal PKK documents and statements by captured militants,

the PKK decided at its Fifth Congress to engage in bombing, and reaffirmed

the decision a year later.18 By 1997 the group had formed "Suicide Guerrilla

Teams" that relied on large numbers of potential volunteers. Perhaps not

surprisingly, the "volunteers" came from the most vulnerable segments of

society: the majority of the early bombings attributed to the PKK were

carried out by young, impoverished, and poorly educated women.

 

The PKK's disregard for human life has also carried over into its

collaborative arrangements with governments waging violent campaigns against

their own Kurdish populations, most notably in Syria and Iraq, but also to a

lesser extent in Iran. The incentive for such collusion is not immediately

apparent. One PKK analysis of the general Kurdish situation acknowledges

that large numbers of Kurds in Syria "play an active role" in the Kurdish

struggle, and Öcalan himself admitted that during the late 1980s Syrian

Kurds were an essential part of the PKK's recruitment base.19 And yet Öcalan

has not only refused to provide assistance to Kurds in Syria, he cooperated

with the government in Damascus that brutally oppressed them. Similarly, for

more than a decade he supported Saddam Hussein's offensives against Kurdish

nationalists in northern Iraq (or "South Kurdistan," in PKK parlance). The

PKK's machinations have left Kurds throughout the region, who were never

united to begin with, more divided than ever.

 

The real motivation for PKK collaboration can be summed up as strategic

necessity. The insurgents have almost always needed outside help and have

been willing to accept it from any quarter. The official history of the PKK

acknowledges that the group engaged in a "tactical retreat" into Syria in

1980, when Öcalan fled Turkey just ahead of a military coup that culminated

in a violent crackdown on Marxists.20 He and his followers were given

relatively free rein in the Syrian-controlled Beka'a Valley in Lebanon,

where they thrived. As recently as the early 1990s, the PKK took foreign

journalists on Potemkin village tours of bases and training camps there. For

Öcalan to have objected to his hosts' treatment of their own Kurdish

population would have meant the loss of the PKK's center of operations,

without which it would have never been able to threaten extensive areas of

southeastern Turkey during the 1990s. Öcalan's acceptance of safe haven from

Syria marked only the beginning of the PKK's heavy reliance upon support

>From governments that, for reasons of their own, found common cause with it.

The Persian Gulf War created a power vacuum in northern Iraq, allowing the

PKK to expand its influence there in competition with the existing Kurdish

groups, principally the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan

Democratic Party (KDP). Iran, because of its ambiguous position vis-à-vis

Kurdish separatism in Turkey and Iraq (but never at home), likewise allowed

the PKK to use Iranian territory to open new fronts along Turkey's eastern

frontier. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, newly independent Armenia

also provided enough help, or tolerance, for the PKK to threaten

northeastern Turkey. In addition to these friendly outsiders, Greece

supported, tolerated, and encouraged the PKK for more than a decade, as the

circumstances surrounding Öcalan's arrest ultimately revealed.21 It is

noteworthy, however, that although outside assistance greatly enhanced the

PKK's effectiveness, ultimately it was also a key factor in the party's

rapid descent.

 

In light of the PKK's acceptance of foreign support and open opposition to

other Kurds, two questions suggest themselves: On what basis can the PKK

claim to be nationalist, and what advantage does it gain from doing so?

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the PKK has gone to some lengths to

shore up its claim to represent Kurds - a claim that has required no small

amount of logical and linguistic contortions. According to the Fifth

Congress documents, the lineage of the Kurds can be traced back to the

ancient Medes, who as early as the seventh century B.C. were engaged in a

"long struggle which gave rise to a national consciousness," and who "played

a leading role in the formation of our national values."22 But the national

consciousness touted by the PKK is not any "bourgeois" consciousness of the

Kurds as an ethnically, culturally, or historically distinct group. Rather,

the PKK distinguishes "reactionary nationalism" from a "socialist national

consciousness" that takes into account "the fact of exploitation ... a class

characteristic." 23 Presumably, then, a Turk of an "exploited" class would

be included within this "nation," whereas a Kurdish landowner would not.

 

This patently Leninist definition of nationalism is incompatible with the

usual understanding of the concept, but has nevertheless allowed the PKK to

portray itself as a Kurdish nationalist organization since the class-based

distinction seems largely lost on outsiders sympathetic to its calls for

national self-determination. Thus, although not a single volume has been

published in English on the PKK per se, the vast literature on the Kurds

tends to assume, without further explanation, that the PKK is the legitimate

representative of Kurdish interests. John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, for

example, while aware of Öcalan's Stalinist beliefs, still described the PKK

as "the latest in a long line of insurgent groups which has tried over the

years to obtain basic human rights for the Kurds of Turkey."24 Michael M.

Gunter describes the PKK as "first a Kurdish nationalist movement." 25

 

A European life-support system

Here the PKK's motivation to be called "nationalist" becomes clearer: the

label has proved to be a highly successful part of its public-relations

campaign and its principal means of gaining a degree of legitimacy around

the world. Specifically, the survival of the PKK has depended not only on

the cooperation of the various governments mentioned above, but also on the

active support of some Westerners and the Kurdish diaspora in Western

Europe. By virtue of its being considered a nationalist organization, the

PKK seems to have inoculated itself against at least some of the damage that

might be expected to result from reports of its murders, insurgent attacks,

and collaboration with dictators. No such news, for example, dissuaded

Danielle Mitterand, the radical widow of the former French president, from

addressing Öcalan as "Dear President Öcalan" in a 1998 letter, which ended

"[R]est assured, Abdullah, that I am committed to be beside you in the bid

for peace. Sincerely yours, Danielle Mitterand."26 As Öcalan's attempts to

find political asylum in 1998 and early 1999 proved, he also enjoyed the

support of leftist parties in Italy, France, and Greece. The most insidious,

if not necessarily surprising, support came from Germany's and Italy's

Marxist terrorists, which supported and occasionally even joined in PKK

combat operations. At least two German women became PKK members. One was

killed in combat, the other was captured in 1998.27

 

Nothing better demonstrates the PKK's public-relations capabilities than

MED-TV, a satellite television channel that operated first under a British

license from London and later from Brussels. Although it ostensibly existed

to promote Kurdish culture, the channel was such a blatant propaganda outlet

for the PKK (at a cost of some $200 million per year) that it was eventually

expelled from Britain and later lost its operating license in Belgium as

well.28

 

Its public-relations campaigns and prominent supporters gave the PKK a

measure of legitimacy, but the party also needed something else: funding. It

proved so adept at generating money that European assessments generally

placed its annual income at between $200 and $500 million in the mid-1990s.

Income came from two major sources in Europe. One was the sizable pool of

West European Kurdish militants among the émigré population, especially in

Germany. In 1997 Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior estimated the

number of PKK sympathizers in the country at 11,000, and claimed that the

PKK possessed an ability to mobilize "tens of thousands" among the 500,000

resident Kurds.29 The German government further stated that the PKK

collected millions of marks at its annual fundraising events, including 20

million marks in 1996¯97. 30

 

The more important source of funds has been criminal activity, especially in

Germany, Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries.31

Operating among Europe's 800,000 Kurdish immigrants, the PKK has been

involved in theft, extortion, arms smuggling, human smuggling, and heroin

trafficking. Infamous for its violence, the PKK is widely known to rely on

murder and beatings as enforcement measures. Apparently, its methods have

had their desired effect. Some sources estimate the PKK's annual income from

criminal activities at $86 million. 32 Recently, the PKK's bankrolls have

likely suffered some setbacks due to the military decline of the PKK and

factional disputes among the European front's leaders. One PKK

representative, for example, disappeared with 2.5 million German marks in

party funds and may have made them available to PKK dissidents. 33 Despite

those losses, however, the magnitude of the PKK's income suggests that the

group remains wealthy. It is also worth noting that in addition to providing

considerable financial resources, the PKK's international criminal

activities also attest to the organization's sophisticated logistical

capabilities.

 

Foreign political support, well-padded bank accounts, and the backing of

thousands of Kurds in Western Europe enabled the PKK to apply immense

military and political pressure on Turkey throughout most of the 1990s.

Ultimately, however, these same pillars of support pointed up the inherent

weakness underlying the PKK's apparent strength. Émigrés and criminals

underwrote the PKK, and prominent leftists legitimized it, but their backing

never translated into the broad support of Kurds in Turkey, who were better

apprised of the party's totalitarian nature.

 

This constellation of facts provided the kernel of the PKK's undoing, as

became apparent in the late 1990s, when much of the external support started

to unravel. Most prominently, Turkey's de facto alliance with Israel

automatically raised the stakes for Syria's continuing support for the

organization.34 As a result, when in the summer of 1998 Ankara threatened

military action because of Syrian aid to Öcalan, President Hafez al-Assad

had to back down. In October of that year he expelled Öcalan and closed most

PKK camps in Lebanon and Syria, including those along the Turkish border.

Suddenly on the run, Öcalan had to find a new refuge farther away from his

fighters (whom, one may add, he never personally joined in combat), first in

Russia, then Italy and Greece. Pursued by the Turks and denied asylum in

Western Europe, he accepted Greek offers to go to Nairobi, only to be

captured there by Turkish commandos with Kenyan connivance and probably

American and Israeli intelligence help. The Iraqi government is in no

position to offer any significant assistance to the PKK, since it still does

not control its own northern territories. Armenia, constrained by its

vulnerability to Turkish reprisals, likewise cannot do much even if it were

so inclined. Greece, apparently, was stung by the Kenya episode and U.S.

criticism, and has made a concerted effort both to mute its traditional

hostility toward Turkey and to limit aid to the PKK.

 

Ankara's response

Deprived of external support and chronically short of it within Turkey, the

PKK was left vulnerable to Ankara's crushing blows. As major insurgencies

go, Turkey's campaign against the PKK is one of the few recent examples of

clear victory by the state - only Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's

success against the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement

was similarly decisive.35 It took Ankara sixteen years and cost some 30,000

lives, but success ultimately resulted from a combination of military

astuteness, political realism, and diplomacy.

 

For the first six years of PKK operations, Turkish forces failed to realize

the magnitude of the PKK military threat and respond adequately. Among the

most effective measures taken was the militarization of virtually the entire

southeast. The army and militarized police seized de facto control of daily

life and managed to ingratiate themselves with the population at least in

part through initiatives such as education programs for girls. But the

military also won support because a large portion of the Kurdish population

found the protection of the Turkish government far more attractive than the

terror of the PKK and its hostility to Kurds of rival clans or differing

political views. The most dramatic result of the cooperation between

government and people was the "village guards," which were local Kurdish

self-defense forces specifically organized to counter PKK operations. At the

height of their strength, the village guards numbered some 60,000 armed

civilians.

 

Aside from the changed relationship between the Turkish government and the

population, the military also took other tactical and strategic steps to

harm the Kurdish rebels. Notable in this regard was the effective use of

special forces to pressure PKK groups in their mountain strongholds. In

addition, heavy use of air power, mostly helicopters, hindered PKK movements

in border areas where limited natural cover left the insurgents vulnerable.

The army also launched massive operations in northern Iraq - often in

conjunction with local KDP elements - that succeeded in denying the PKK

access to its rear bases there. Finally, improvements in intelligence led to

the capture of at least three major PKK leaders abroad in 1998 and 1999, the

most notable, of course, being Öcalan himself.

 

To be sure, the Turkish military also benefited from developments that lay

at least partially beyond its control. Among the most important of these was

the depopulation of the countryside and concentration of Kurdish civilians

in defensible centers. This dramatic shift occurred for several reasons,

including PKK atrocities against civilians (mostly Kurds from clans Öcalan

could not control or intimidate), the government's own military operations

(damage from air attacks, in particular, forced people to relocate), and the

general poverty of the southeast, which the war exacerbated. Local residents

fled many of the more isolated areas and migrated to Western Europe, other

parts of Turkey, or regional centers such as Diyarbakir, Van, and Sirnak. In

doing so, they deprived the PKK of the recruitment, logistical, and

communications assistance on which it had depended. As Öcalan himself

admitted, "The PKK has not succeeded to become a regular armed force," the

implication being that the PKK's inability to attract willing recruits

forced it to resort to violence and

 

Öcalan abruptly delegitimized the PKK's entire ideology, strategy, and

tactics.

 

intimidation, which in turn led to indiscipline and indiscriminate attacks

against civilians.36

 

Ankara also pursued other policies that greatly enhanced its position

vis-à-vis Öcalan's rebels. As noted above, its increasingly assertive

regional diplomacy, backed by credible threats of force, led Syria to expel

Öcalan and close down PKK camps on its territory and in Lebanon.

Domestically, Turkish leaders, from the late president Turgut Özal to the

present prime minister, Bülent Ecevit, have gradually come to acknowledge

the Kurdish issue as such and - without ever accepting any PKK connection to

it - have made concessions on matters related to language and cultural

grievances. In addition, the government has also initiated huge investments

in the southeast, exemplified by the $32 billion Southeastern Anatolia

Project, to improve the long-languishing region's economic prospects.37

Indeed, between 1983 and 1992 the southeast received twice as much

investment per capita as any other region in Turkey, with total spending

during that time on the Southeastern Anatolia Project reaching $20 billion.

38

 

Lastly, it should be noted that strong diplomatic support from the United

States helped to convince a number of West European governments,

particularly the Netherlands, Greece, and Italy (and to a lesser degree

Russia and Armenia), to deny Öcalan political asylum. His failure to find

refuge ultimately led him to Kenya and captivity.

 

The prisoner recants?

If the dramatic progress of the campaign against the PKK within Turkey

exposed the weaknesses in its support there and the inadequacy of its

outside assistance, then Öcalan's incarceration revealed the flaw in the

party's Stalinist leadership structure. Once the supreme commander was

arrested, rifts emerged throughout the entire organization that threatened

its continued existence. Even more important than his imprisonment itself,

however, was the effect on the PKK of Öcalan's apparent renunciation of his

entire insurgent campaign.

 

Ever since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999, Abdullah Öcalan has made

repeated statements contradicting the ideological, military, and political

positions he has advocated since the founding of the PKK. To begin with, in

his wide-ranging final statement at his trial in June 1999, he acknowledged

that Kurdish society in Turkey did not fit his long-standing analysis and

strategy. Indeed, he admitted that the PKK "should have taken into account

the development the country had undergone both when it was founded and in

the 1990s." More astonishing still was his giving up pursuit of "a separate

part of a state, something which ... would have been very difficult to

realize - and, if realized, could not be maintained and was not necessary

either."39 In one grand stroke Öcalan delegitimized all PKK positions on

matters of ideology, strategy, and tactics. In other words, a socialist

Kurdistan - for which the PKK had ostensibly fought for years - was, as

Chris Kutschera phrased it, a "mad dream."40 Not only did Öcalan ask the PKK

to stop fighting and withdraw from Turkish territory, but in September 1999

he also ordered the symbolic surrender of a few units to Turkish

authorities.

 

The obvious question is whether Öcalan's statements are representative of

true changes of personal opinion or merely an expression of survival

instincts, particularly given the prospect of capital punishment. His

behavior at his trial hints at the latter, in light of his attempts to lay

the responsibility for the PKK's record of violence at the feet of his field

commanders by claiming that he was unable to "implement my own ideas and the

official tactical line of the organization. ... Individual or local

initiatives were dominant." He even seemed to suggest that his followers'

upbringing was at the root of their violence: "t was hard to control the

PKK ... especially when one considers how the individuals [fighting in the

PKK] had grown up."41 He also claimed that he had never ordered or approved

of suicide bombings - a dubious denial from the man who once said: "We shall

come down to the cities. ... No matter the price, it is not difficult to get

on a bus, to get on an airplane. We have thousands of people who shall go

with a bomb around them." 42

 

It is probably impossible to determine the degree to which Öcalan's

about-face was due to the threat to his own life, or to a realization that

the insurgency was a lost cause, or to the collapse of vital Syrian support.

What is clear, however, is that, in a manner befitting a Stalinist leader,

he made these extraordinary changes without consulting anyone and simply

expected the party to accept them. Amazingly enough, the PKK did largely

follow Öcalan's lead. Nothing better symbolized the abandonment of the goal

of a separate Kurdish state than the decision by the PKK's Presidential

Council in February 2000 to drop the word "Kurdistan" from the name of both

its dwindling armed wing, the ARGK, and the still-strong international

political wing, the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (Eniya Rizgariya

Natewa Kurdistan - ERNK). Thus, the ARGK became the People's Defense Force,

and the ERNK became the Democratic People's Union.43 The personality cult

constructed around Öcalan, which had for so long given the PKK its unity,

coherence, and purpose, ultimately allowed it to be undermined rapidly.

 

High-ranking Turkish military officials professed surprise at Öcalan's

apparent change of heart.44 In actuality, however, it matches rather closely

the behavior of the Shining Path's founder and supreme leader, Abimael

Guzmán, who renounced armed struggle after his own arrest. In both cases the

result was similar: the party faithful, having lost their ideological

anchor, became confused and descended into factionalism and intraparty

violence. The Shining Path suffered defeat; the ultimate fate of the PKK is

not yet known.

 

Many PKK hardliners found Öcalan's newly conciliatory stance intolerable.

Subsequent to his orders issued from captivity, and particularly his lengthy

concluding statement at trial, dissent within the ranks of the party

appeared almost immediately from among Kurds in Europe as well as fighters

in and around Turkey. An anonymous group that called itself the "PKK

revolutionary line fighters" issued a starkly worded rejection of Öcalan's

call for some PKK combatants to surrender to Turkish forces: "At this

junction, we will either be simple executor of this plan, and therefore we

would kill ourselves, or we will say `No' with all our force against this

liquidation plan."45 Some of the most prominent PKK hardliners, including

former Central Committee members and other leaders, accused Öcalan of no

less than "treason." In proof of their opposition to his decisions since

capture, they established the "Kurdish Initiative in Europe," which was

intended as a possible alternative to the ERNK. They also threw their

support to Hamili Yildirim, a Central Committee member and field commander

>From Tunceli province who refused to obey Öcalan's call for a general

retreat.46 Yildirim joined forces with Turkish Communist Party elements and

continued fighting Turkish security forces. 47 Significantly, the dissident

group chose January 12, 2000, for one such attack - the very date the

Turkish government coalition was to decide whether to execute or give a

reprieve to Abdullah Öcalan. In view of Turkish public sentiment in favor of

execution, those attacks could be seen as nothing but an attempt to have

Öcalan killed. However, Yildirim's rebellion did not last. By May 2000

security forces had killed one of his fellow commanders and wounded Yildirim

himself, whereupon he returned to the PKK fold and reintegrated his troops

into the PKK's "Public Self-defense Force," although they did not disarm.

That outcome, in fact, demonstrates the disingenuous nature of Öcalan's

current position: he has ostensibly renounced armed struggle, but continues

to encourage "self-defense" and overlooks the PKK forces still active in

northern Iraq.

 

For a group notoriously intolerant of internal dissent, it is not surprising

that the PKK leadership has taken exceptional measures to ensure that its

orders are followed. The party dispatched Presidential Council member Murat

Karayilan to the Netherlands in 1999, ostensibly to seek political asylum,

but in reality to enforce Öcalan's will among Kurds in Western Europe.48 In

early 2000 the PKK Presidential Council simply decided to abolish the Free

Women's Movement of Kurdistan (Yekityia Azadiya Jinen Kurdistan - YAJK),

which had long supplied the movement with suicide bombers and assassins,

because of the YAJK's leaders' objections to Öcalan's "capitulationist"

stance. Intimidation and credible threats of violence are also commonly used

to enforce the party line. In 1998 Semdin Sakik, a Central Committee member

and ARGK field commander, was expelled from the party and forced to flee to

pro-Turkish areas in northern Iraq after facing death threats for

disagreeing with Öcalan.49 When it cannot silence dissidents, the PKK has

also tried to discredit them. Sakik, for example, is now accused by the PKK

of having sabotaged Öcalan's 1993 cease-fire declaration by attacking and

killing some thirty unarmed Turkish recruits. This particular claim,

however, is belied by the fact that he was reelected to the Central

Committee in 1995 - two years after his alleged transgression. In another

case, Öcalan tried to destroy his estranged wife, Yesire Yildirim, and her

brother Huseyn (who are not related to Hamili Yildirim), who had been

expelled from the party in 1986, by accusing the pair of murdering Swedish

prime minister Olof Palme - an unproven and probably unprovable charge.

 

Yet for all its efforts, the PKK has still not entirely succeeded in

silencing its disgruntled members. Some of the most telling statements have

come from a co-founder of the ARGK, Selahattin Celik, who was beaten up by

PKK supporters in Cologne after criticizing Öcalan's behavior in captivity.

In an interview given in Germany following that attack, he said,

 

Most Kurds simply cannot understand this [Öcalan's statements since his

capture]. And yet no one is allowed to raise their voice in opposition to

this new line. While the PKK makes one concession after another to the

Turkish state, they damn people who demand democracy in their own ranks and

in Kurdish society.50

 

In a view paradoxically shared by Ankara, Celik went on to state that the

"Kurdish issue could increasingly become separated from the PKK ... [and]

contradictions could surface within the PKK, which would make internal

clashes unavoidable."51 In other words, the PKK could lose its relevance and

descend into yet another round of purges.

 

What future for the PKK?

Currently, however, as Öcalan faces the (admittedly unlikely) prospect of

execution and his beleaguered party confronts political and military

pressure on almost all fronts, the PKK leadership seems to understand that

it cannot afford costly strife within its own ranks. In an August 2000

interview, Cemil Bayik, the only remaining PKK founder at large and the most

prominent member of the Presidential Council, announced a new strategy that

emphasized "deepening party unity and national unity, adding new circles of

friends to those that already exist, strengthening solidarity with the

regional people, and securing internal peace among the Kurds."52 It would

appear, then, that the PKK may seek common ground with erstwhile rivals and

dissidents. But his statement was by no means completely conciliatory.

Bayik, Öcalan's closest collaborator, lashed out at rivals among Kurds in

Iraq and had harsh criticism for those within and outside the party who

sought to "tear us from our beloved President" and "liquidate the party and

the revolution and sell out the people." He went on to declare that the

conflict with Turkey was far from over and that the PKK was "carrying on a

sacred war with the genuine lords of the manservants" - the "lords" being an

apparent reference to Turkey, the "manservants" being collaborators.53 As

those strident words suggest, the "strategic" changes that ostensibly

announced the end of the PKK's bid for a separate Kurdish state may have

actually been a tactical ploy to buy time for the PKK to regroup. In fact,

according to plausible estimates from Jalal Talabani, leader of the rival

PUK in northern Iraq, the PKK now has approximately 7,000 fighters in Iraq

and Iran, and is currently recruiting and rearming. He added, however, that

the fighters' morale was low: "I think that if there is an amnesty ... all

of them will come back to Turkey." 54

 

The PKK's tenacious survival despite its declining fortunes has, of course,

not escaped the notice of the Turkish government. To its credit, Ankara does

not trust Öcalan's peaceful intentions or those of his lieutenants still at

large and, despite Öcalan's September 1999 announcement that the party laid

down its weapons, has given the PKK no quarter. In fact, recent air attacks

on targets inside Iraq demonstrate the military's greater willingness to

pursue the PKK wherever necessary in order to ensure its final

destruction.55 At the same time, however, Selahattin Celik's prediction has

come to pass, and the Turkish government has indeed separated the Kurdish

issue from the PKK. The significant political and economic changes mentioned

above - most initiated since Öcalan's capture - prove that the PKK has been

not an advocate for Kurds, but rather the major obstacle to political and

economic development in southeastern Turkey and to Kurdish interests in

general. The critical question now is whether the PKK's sympathizers and

supporters in Western Europe will make a similar distinction. For only when

Öcalan and his followers are deprived of funds and legitimacy will their

bloody campaign truly be "neutralized," and only then will peace and genuine

reconciliation have a chance for success.

 

 

Michael Radu is a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and

a contributing editor of Orbis

 

 

1 Franz Schurmann, "Kurdish Leader Is Key Player," San Francisco Examiner,

Sept. 5, 1996, posted by Kurdistan Web Resources

(http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~rdemirb1/PUBLIC/Leader.html). Except where

otherwise noted, all web sites cited in this article were accessible as of

October 2000.

 

2 Ibid.

 

3 Author's interviews in Sirnak and Van provinces, June 1999.

 

4 "PKK Looks for Route Out of Turkey," Turkish Daily News, May 18, 2000,

posted by the Kurdistan Observer

(http://homepages.go.com/~heyvaheft1999/18-5-00-TDN-pkk-route-out.html).

Many stories from the Kurdistan Observer (http://www.kurdistanobserver.com)

are archived elsewhere. See especially

(http://homepages.go.com/~heyvaheft1999/Archive-News.html) and

(http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/).

 

5 Most of the information here is taken from the PKK's own "Brief History of

the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)"

(http://www.guerilla.hypermart.net/archives/pkkhist.htm). Site no longer

accessible in October 2000, but see note 7 below.

 

6 See "PKK Fifth Victory Congress"

(http://www.kurdstruggle.org/pkk/information/congress.html).

 

7 "A Brief History of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)" and "Party Program

of the Kurdistan Workers Party," posted at a PKK web site available through

the BURN! Project from the University of California at San Diego

(http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/PKK/pkk-hist.html and /PKK/pkk5-1.html). The

BURN! Project's site, a major publicity outlet for violent Marxist groups

around the world, was closed down in 2000 by the administration of UCSD, but

was accessible in October 2000. The "Party Program" is also posted by

Kurdish Struggle (http://www.kurdstruggle.org/pkk/information/index.html).

 

8 "Party Program."

 

9 Ibid.

 

10 Among other works, Öcalan is identified as the author of the PKK's

manifesto, The Road to the Kurdistan Revolution (1982), Problems of the

Personality and Characteristics of the Fighter (1982), 32 volumes of

political reports (1981, 1990), The People's War in Kurdistan (1991), and

Selected Writings (5 volumes, 1986-92). See "Biographical Notes on Abdullah

Ocalan" (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/APO/apo-bio.html) and "Abdullah Ocalan

Biographical Notes"

(http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~rdemirb1/PUBLIC/serok.html).

 

11 Ibid.; see also Öcalan's own account of his life as given during his 1999

trial, "My Personal Status"

(http://www.xs4all.nl/~kicadam/declaration/status.html).

 

12 "The Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan," June 17, 1999,

posted by Kurdish Struggle (http://www.kurdstruggle.org/defence/final.html).

 

13 Chris Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK," Middle East, May 2000

(http://www.africasia.com/me/may00/mebf0502.htm).

 

14 Ibid.

 

15 "Kurdistan: La situación del PKK," Rebelión, Aug. 5, 2000

(http://www.rebelion/internacional/Kurdistan_pkk020800.htm).

 

16 Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

 

17 "PKK Fifth Party Congress Resolution on the Function of Internationalism"

(http://www.kurdstruggle.org/pkk/information/internationalism.html).

 

18 Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor, State Security Court (DGM),

Indictment Regarding Accused Abdullah Öcalan (Ankara: Republic of Turkey,

Apr. 24, 1999), prep. #1997/514, principle #1999/98, indictment #1999/78,

pp. 56-60.

 

19 "Party Program of the PKK. Chapter One: The World Situation"

(http://kurdstruggle.org/information/chap1.html). Öcalan neglected to

mention, however, that many of those recruits were in fact infiltrators

working for the Syrian government. See Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and the

Future of Turkey (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), pp. 26-27.

 

20 "Brief History of the PKK."

 

21 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Turkey, Greece and PKK Terrorism

(Washington, D.C.: Turkish Embassy, Feb. 1999) provides an admittedly biased

but largely correct analysis of Greece's support for the PKK and other

terrorist groups in Turkey.

 

22 "Party Program of the PKK. Chapter Two: Kurdish Society"

(http://kurdstruggle.org/information/chap2.html).

 

23 "Nationalism and the Kurdish National Liberation Movement"

(http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/PKK/nationalism.html).

 

24 No Friends But the Mountains: The Tragic History of the Kurds (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 168.

 

25 The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis (New York: St.

Martin's Press, 1999), p. 32.

 

26 Danielle Mitterand, "An open letter to President Öcalan," Sept. 1, 1998,

posted by the American Kurdish Information Network

(http://www.kurdistan.org/Articles/dmforpeace.html).

 

27 See "Juhnke to be Transferred to Amasya," Kurdish Observer, Dec. 28, 1999

(http://www.kurdishobserver.com/1999/12/28/hab06.html); and "ERNK Statement

on the Death of Andrea Wolf," KURD-L archives, Nov. 29, 1998

(http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/kurd-l/1998.11/msg00033.html). For more

details on German anarchist and "anti-fascist" groups' ties with the PKK,

see (German) Federal Ministry of the Interior, Annual Report 1997

(http://www.bmi.bund.de/publikationen/vsb1997/englisch/v97). The latter web

page was no longer accessible in October 2000.

 

28 MED-TV ceased operations in 1999, but its web site was still accessible

as of October 2000 (http://www.med-tv.be/med/med-tv/medhome.htm).

 

29 Federal Ministry of the Interior, Annual Report 1997.

 

30 Ibid.

 

31 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Drug Trafficking and Terrorist Organizations

(Ankara: Republic of Turkey, Aug. 1998).

 

32 "Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK)," International Policy Institute for

Counter-Terrorism, Jan. 27, 2000

(http://www.ict.org.il/inter_ter/orgdet.cfm?orgid=20). This source quotes

the British National Service of Criminal Intelligence to the effect that in

1993 the PKK obtained 2.6 million pounds sterling from extortion and 56

million German marks from drug smuggling.

 

33 "Cracks Appear in the PKK," Turkish Daily News, Jan. 21, 2000; and

Susanne Gusten, "Kurdish Rebel Leader Ocalan at the Mercy of the PKK,"

Agence France-Presse, Jan. 13, 2000, both posted by the Kurdistan Observer

at the following addresses

(http://homepages.go.com/~heyvaheft1999/21-1-00-TDN-pkk-cracks.html and

/~heyvaheft1999/13-1-00-AFP-apo-mercy-pkk.html).

 

34 See Raphael Israeli's article, "The Turkish-Israeli Odd Couple," in this

issue of Orbis.

 

35 The definitive analysis of the Shining Path is to be found in Coronel PNP

Benedicto Jimenéz Bacca, Inicio, Desarollo y Ocaso del Terrorismo en el Peru

(The beginning, development and decline of terrorism in Peru), restricted

ed. (Lima: Servicios Graficos SANKI, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 759¯65. See also

Carlos Ivan Degregori, ed., Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero

Luminoso (Peasant self-defense goups and the defeat of the Shining Path)

(Lima: IEP Ediciones, 1996). For a recent analysis in English, see Michael

Radu, "The Perilous Appeasement of Guerrillas," Orbis, Summer 2000, pp.

363¯82.

 

36 "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

 

37 Douglas Frantz, "As Price of Progress, Turkish Villages Are Flooded," New

York Times, Aug. 21, 2000.

 

38 Kemal Kirisci and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An

Example of Trans-state Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997), p. 124.

For details on the $20 billion project, see Bülent Topkaya, "Water Resources

in the Middle East: Forthcoming Problems and Solutions for Sustainable

Development of the Region"

(http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Jungle/1805/gap.html).

 

39 "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

 

40 Chris Kutschera, "Mad Dreams of Independence: The Kurds of Turkey and the

PKK," Middle East Report, July-Aug. 1994, posted by the Kurdish Information

Network (http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/kurdish/htdocs/lib/dream.html).

 

41 "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

 

42 Indictment Regarding Accused Abdullah Öcalan, p. 58. The PKK occasionally

mentioned having as many as 3,000 would-be suicide bombers.

 

43 "PKK dropping the word `Kurdistan' from the names of new wings,"

Associated Press, Feb. 9, 2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer

(http://homepages.go.com/~heyvaheft1999/10-2-00-AP-pkk-dropping-kurdistan.ht

ml).

 

44 Author's interviews with army and Jandarma officials in Diyarbakir,

Sirnak, Van, and Eruh, June 1999.

 

45 "Statement from `PKK revolutionary line fighters,'" KURD-L archives, Nov.

12, 1999 (http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/kurd-l/1999.11/msg00000.html).

 

46 Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

 

47 "Cracks Appear in the PKK."

 

48 Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

 

49 In April 1998 Turkish special forces captured Semdin Sakik in a

KDP-controlled part of northern Iraq and brought him to Turkey, where he was

tried and sentenced to death. He now, like his former leader, awaits a

decision of the European Court of Justice regarding his fate.

 

50 Jorg Hilbert, "Interview with Selahattin Celik on the PKK," Junge Welt,

Sept. 25, 1999, KURD-L archives, Oct. 11, 1999

(http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/kurd-l/1999.10/msg00002.html).

 

51 Ibid.

 

52 Cemal Ucar, "Cemil Bayik: We Will Be Victorious," Özgür Politika, Aug.

16, 2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer

(http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/15-8-00-OP-interview.html).

 

53 Ibid.

 

54 "Talabani: There Is No Assault against the PKK," Özgür Politika, Aug. 5,

2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer

(http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/7-8-00-OP-talabani-ankara-pkk.html).

 

55 "Turkey Acknowledges Iraqi Air Raid, Probes Casualty Claims," Agence

France-Presse, Aug. 18, 2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer

(http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/18-8-00-AFP-tky-acknowledges-raid.html).

 

Copyright © 2001 Foreign Policy Research Institute

[MJ]

Pkk... Marx... Religion... Lenin

 

SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS

AND INFORMATION

 

 

BYEGM 2/19/01 12:14:14 PM

 

 

CUMHURIYET- Columnist Mustafa Balbay writes on the developments

occurring in the 1990s. A summary of his column is as follows:

Even though the second anniversary of terrorist Abdrullmah Ocalan's

capture and return to Turkey on 15 February 1999 was not emphasized,

it gave important clues as to the situation reached at present. In

the 90s, Turkey was requested to sit at the same table with the

leader of the terrorist organisation, instead she brought Ocalan to

trial. However, if we analyze the issue only by the views of the

1990s, it will be incomplete. Today we are in the 2000's, and new

policies are being formed according to new circumstances. Let's

discuss the issue regarding persons, organizations, and geographies.

During the trial process of Ocalan, his supporters remembered Mandela

and thought they would improve their own leaders` image step by step.

However, his image in Imrali is shrinking day by day. This outlook is

reflected in the press organs of the PKK terror organisation. Can the

PKK introduce a new leader taking this fact into consideration? There

are searches in this vein. The PKK seems to have changed the content

of its European studies as a whole. There is no 'war of

independence', 'armed conflict', 'resistance to attack by the Turkish

Republic forces'. Instead they are trying to work to persuade

everyone that there is a completely different nation in Anatolia, and

preparing to build its infrastructure. Some of the headlines in the

news by European sources show that the infrastructure for the request

of cultural rights are being prepared. 'Federations of Kurdish

Associations in Germany 'YEKKOM' has began studies to have Kurds

accepted as a separate minority. If these studies take root, they

will ask for Kurdish education in schools, Kurdish radio and

television and the like. Again in Germany, there is the preparation

for another formation under the name of Kurdish Parents Union. As the

PKK sees the importance of education, it wants to branch out in this

direction. The PKK has requested Kurdish language education within

the framework of 'the Living Ethnic Languages Law' enacted at The

Hague. In Sweden courses for Teaching Kurdish in Turkey are being

given every four months. Last month the PKK met in Lausanne and

accepted a decision on improving Kurdish language and culture. When

we take a look at the transformation the terrorist organisation went

through from the 1980s to 2000s, interesting milestones attract our

attention. At the beginning, the PKK emphasized that it was a

Marxist-Leninist organisation. In time it was involved in trade. and

the marks referred to has changed. It gained money in terms of Marks.

The situation is different concerning Lenin. The PKK saw that the

religion factor was important in the Southeast and the regimes

stemming from Leninism were falling down one by one. Therefore, it

began to use religion instead of Lenin. When it was understood that

this method was also not enough to reach a victory soon, those who

had aims on Turkey had to think of different schemes. What else was

there to put forward instead of the Kurdish issue but the Armenian

allegations? During the 1990s, those who did not have any respect for

Turkey's territorial integrity used to color Southeastern Anatolia

differently and wrote Kurdistan on it in maps. Today the same regions

are referred to as Armenia. Even this change is enough to show what

kind of games are played on the peoples of the land stretching from

Caucasia to Mesopotamia. It was an interesting coincidence that

France was hosting Armenian President Kocharyan on the anniversary of

Ocalan's return to Turkey. In Northern Iraq, the terrorist

organisation wants to draw Barzani and Talabani under its influence

and form a region where only it can control. It wants to continue

armed education over there while asking for full democracy in

Southeastern Anatolia. We would like full democracy to be enforced

not only in Southeastern Anatolia but in the whole of the country.

However, if democracy becomes a tool instead of a goal it won't help

anyone. Those who support the PKK and take it as their guide are not

able to answer this question clearly: 'Shall we lean on the foreign

powers abroad or Anatolia?'