From mountaintops to underground: PKK responds to Turkey’s drones

Turkey signed a landmark security cooperation deal with Iraq on Aug. 16 — principally, as Ankara sees things, against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A day earlier, the PKK marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of its armed campaign against the Turkish state.

Much has changed since the left-leaning group founded by Abdullah Ocalan, a university dropout from the southeastern province of Urfa known to his followers as “Apo,” carried out its first operation against a Turkish gendarmerie post in the southeastern province of Siirt.

The PKK originally set out to carve an independent Kurdish state from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Today it advocates for greater political autonomy and cultural rights for the Kurds within Turkey’s borders. At the same time, the PKK and its sister branches in Syria advocate “democratic confederalism,” a form of radical decentralization that is meant to devolve power to grassroots-level micro administrative bodies, but the idea has yet to be seen in practice.

The capture of Ocalan in February 1999 by Turkish special forces in Nairobi in a sting operation aided by the CIA and Mossad dealt a big blow. Defections ensued as Ocalan, who is still being held in isolation on an island prison off the coast of Istanbul, called on his forces to end their fight and to withdraw from Turkey. Today the majority of PKK fighters are based in Iraqi Kurdistan, with an unknown number operating alongside the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria. Its military impact in Turkey is minimal.