THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PKK

By Michael Radu

Source: Orbis, Winter2001, Vol. 45 Issue 1, p47, 17p.

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.(n1) In 1996 the journalist Franz Schurmann called the PKK "the biggest guerrilla insurgency in the world," and wrote of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, that "he alone among Kurdish leaders understands that a social revolution is going on in Kurdish society everywhere. . . . Ocalan will go down in the history books as the Saladin of the late 20th century."(n2) 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.(n3) 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."(n4)

What brought about such a dramatic decline in just three years? Three developments provide a short, albeit incomplete, answer: the February 1999 capture of Ocalan, 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 Ocalan 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, Ocalan 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 Ocalan'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.(n5) 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 Ocalan'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.(n6) 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."(n7) 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."(n8) 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."(n9)

The arrogance manifest in such declarations can be attributed directly to Ocalan's leadership style, which in its megalomania and iron-fisted grip on power borrows heavily from Stalin. Ocalan, 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.(n10) And yet Ocalan'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. Ocalan 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 Ocalan as an "independent, headstrong, woman") who controlled the household and dominated his "helpless" Kurdish father. Equally notable is Ocalan's statement that his family "was poor and had lost its tribal traditions, but it continued with strong feudal values"(n11)--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, Ocalan 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. Ocalan 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 Ocalan'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."(n12) 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."(n13) 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!"(n14) 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.(n15) 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.(n16)

If Ocalan'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.(n17) 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, Ocalan'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, Ocalan'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 Ocalan than the aspirations and welfare of the people he claims to lead. 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 Ocalan 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.(n18) 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 Ocalan himself admitted that during the late 1980s Syrian Kurds were an essential part of the PKK's recruitment base.(n19) And yet Ocalan 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 Ocalan fled Turkey just ahead of a military coup that culminated in a violent crackdown on Marxists.(n20) 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 Ocalan 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. Ocalan'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-a-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 Ocalan's arrest ultimately revealed.(n21) 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."(n22) 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."(n23) 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 Ocalan'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."(n24) Michael M. Gunter describes the PKK as "first a Kurdish nationalist movement."(n25)

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 Ocalan as "Dear President Ocalan" 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."(n26) As Ocalan'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.(n27)

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.(n28)

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 emigre 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.(n29) The German government further stated that the PKK collected millions of marks at its annual fundraising events, including 20 million marks in 1996-97.(n30)

The more important source of funds has been criminal activity, especially in Germany, Switzerland, France, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries.(n31) 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.(n32) 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.(n33) 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. Emigres 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.(n34) As a result, when in the summer of 1998 Ankara threatened military action because of Syrian aid to Ocalan, President Hafez al-Assad had to back down. In October of that year he expelled Ocalan and closed most PKK camps in Lebanon and Syria, including those along the Turkish border. Suddenly on the run, Ocalan 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.(n35) 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 Ocalan 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 Ocalan 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 Ocalan 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 intimidation, which in turn led to indiscipline and indiscriminate attacks against civilians.(n36)

Ankara also pursued other policies that greatly enhanced its position vis-a-vis Ocalan's rebels. As noted above, its increasingly assertive regional diplomacy, backed by credible threats of force, led Syria to expel Ocalan and close down PKK camps on its territory and in Lebanon. Domestically, Turkish leaders, from the late president Turgut Ozal to the present prime minister, Bulent 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.(n37) 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.(n38)

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 Ocalan 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 Ocalan'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 Ocalan's apparent renunciation of his entire insurgent campaign.

Ever since his arrest in Nairobi in February 1999, Abdullah Ocalan 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."(n39) In one grand stroke Ocalan 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."(n40) Not only did Ocalan 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 Ocalan'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: "[I]t was hard to control the PKK . . . especially when one considers how the individuals [fighting in the PKK] had grown up."(n41) 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."(n42)

It is probably impossible to determine the degree to which Ocalan'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 Ocalan'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.(n43) The personality cult constructed around Ocalan, 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 Ocalan's apparent change of heart.(n44) In actuality, however, it matches rather closely the behavior of the Shining Path's founder and supreme leader, Abimael Guzman, 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 Ocalan'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 Ocalan'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."(n45) Some of the most prominent PKK hardliners, including former Central Committee members and other leaders, accused Ocalan 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 Ocalan's call for a general retreat.(n46) Yildirim joined forces with Turkish Communist Party elements and continued fighting Turkish security forces.(n47) 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 Ocalan. In view of Turkish public sentiment in favor of execution, those attacks could be seen as nothing but an attempt to have Ocalan 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 Ocalan'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 Ocalan's will among Kurds in Western Europe.(n48) 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 Ocalan'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 Ocalan.(n49) 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 Ocalan'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, Ocalan 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 Ocalan's behavior in captivity. In an interview given in Germany following that attack, he said,

Most Kurds simply cannot understand this [Ocalan'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.(n50)

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."(n51) 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 Ocalan 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."(n52) 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, Ocalan'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.(n53) 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."(n54)

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 Ocalan's peaceful intentions or those of his lieutenants still at large and, despite Ocalan'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.(n55) 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 Ocalan'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 Ocalan 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.

(n1) 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.

(n2) Ibid.

(n3) Author's interviews in Sirnak and Van provinces, June 1999.

(n4) "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/).

(n5) 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.

(n6) See "PKK Fifth Victory Congress" (http://www.kurdstruggle.org/pkk/information/congress.html).

(n7) "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).

(n8) "Party Program."

(n9) Ibid.

(n10) Among other works, Ocalan 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).

(n11) Ibid.; see also Ocalan's own account of his life as given during his 1999 trial, "My Personal Status" (http://www.xs4all.nl/~kicadam/declaration/status.html).

(n12) "The Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan," June 17, 1999, posted by Kurdish Struggle (http:// www.kurdstruggle.org/defence/final.html).

(n13) Chris Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK," Middle East, May 2000 (http://www.africasia.com/me/may00/ mebf0502.htm).

(n14) Ibid.

(n15) "Kurdistan: La situacion del PKK," Rebelion, Aug. 5, 2000 (http://www.rebelion/internacional/ Kurdistan_pkk020800.htm).

(n16) Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

(n17) "PKK Fifth Party Congress Resolution on the Function of Internationalism" (http://www.kurdstruggle.org/ pkk/information/intemationalism.html).

(n18) Office of the Chief Public Prosecutor, State Security Court (DGM), Indictment Regarding Accused Abdullah Ocalan (Ankara: Republic of Turkey, Apr. 24, 1999), prep. #1997/514, principle #1999/98, indictment #1999/78, pp. 56-60.

(n19) "Party Program of the PKK. Chapter One: The World Situation" (http://kurdstruggle.org/information/ chap1.html). Ocalan 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.

(n20) "Brief History of the PKK."

(n21) 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.

(n22) "Party Program of the PKK. Chapter Two: Kurdish Society" (http://kurdstruggle.org/information/ chap2.html).

(n23) "Nationalism and the Kurdish National Liberation Movement" (http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/PKK/ nationalism.html).

(n24) No Friends But the Mountains: The Tragic History of the Kurds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 168.

(n25) The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), p. 32.

(n26) Danielle Mitterand, "An open letter to President Ocalan," Sept. 1, 1998, posted by the American Kurdish Information Network (http://www.kurdistan.org/Articles/dmforpeace.html).

(n27) 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.

(n28) 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).

(n29) Federal Ministry of the Interior, Annual Report 1997

(n30) Ibid.

(n31) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Drug Trafficking and Terrorist Organizations (Ankara: Republic of Turkey, Aug. 1998).

(n32) "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.

(n33) "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).

(n34) See Raphael Israeli's article, "The Turkish-Israeli Odd Couple," in this issue of Orbis.

(n35) The definitive analysis of the Shining Path is to be found in Coronel PNP Benedicto Jimenez 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 sell-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.

(n36) "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

(n37) Douglas Frantz, "As Price of Progress, Turkish Villages Are Flooded," New York Times, Aug. 21, 2000.

(n38) 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 Bulent 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).

(n39) "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

(n40) 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).

(n41) "Final Statements of Defendant Abdullah Ocalan."

(n42) Indictment Regarding Accused Abdullah Ocalan, p. 58. The PKK occasionally mentioned having as many as 3,000 would-be suicide bombers.

(n43) "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-kurdista n. html).

(n44) Author's interviews with army and Jandarma officials in Diyarbakir, Sirnak, Van, and Eruh, June 1999.

(n45) "Statement from `PKK revolutionary line fighters,'" KURD-L archives, Nov. 12, 1999 (http://burn.ucsd.edu/ archives/kurd-l/1999.11/msg00000.html).

(n46) Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

(n47) "Cracks Appear in the PKK."

(n48) Kutschera, "Disarray inside the PKK."

(n49) 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.

(n50) 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).

(n51) Ibid.

(n52) Cemal Ucar, "Cemil Bayik: We Will Be Victorious," Ozgur Politika, Aug. 16, 2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer (http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/15-8-00-OP-interview.html).

(n53) Ibid.

(n54) "Talabani: There Is No Assault against the PKK," Ozgur Politika, Aug. 5, 2000, posted by the Kurdistan Observer (http://www.mnsi.net/~mergan95/7-8-00-OP-talabani-ankara-pkk.html).

(n55) "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).