History of the Kurdistan Workers' Party

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Settlement areas of the Kurds according to CIA 2002

The PKK was founded at a time of political radicalization. The PKK emerged as a movement in the environment of the Turkish group Dev Genc . In the mid-1970s, the Kurdish left focused on the fact that the regions populated by Kurds were underdeveloped and soon found it necessary to organize itself independently of the Turkish left. From 1973 to 1978 this current / movement appeared as Kürdistan Devrimcileri (Kurdistan Revolutionaries). The role of the later PKK General Secretary Abdullah Öcalan was already of great importance in the founding phase . Important officials from the early days of the PKK are and were: Abdullah Ocalan, Cemil Bayık , Duran Kalkan , Mazlum Doğan , Ali Haydar Kaytan , Mehmet Şener , Sakine Cansız , Çetin Güngör , Kesire Yıldırım , Mustafa Karasu , Süphi Karakuş , Resul Altınok , Haki Karer , Kemal Pir , Şemdin Sakık .

Establishing an organization

On November 27, 1978, 25 people under the leadership of Öcalan founded the PKK in the village of Ziyaret near Lice in the Diyarbakır province . Abdullah Öcalan was elected as Secretary General and Cemil Bayık as Vice Secretary. Mehmet Karasungur became the person in charge of military affairs, Mehmet Hayri Durmuş, Baki Karer and Şahin Durmuş were in charge of organizational matters. At their founding congress on 26./27. In November 1978, the PKK passed a fundamental text The Path of the Revolution in Kurdistan and a program that was valid until 1995.

The original goal of the Marxist-Leninist PKK was the establishment of an independent state " Kurdistan ". A twofold oppression was seen as the central problem of Kurdistan: national oppression by the Turkish state and the imperialist powers that support it, and the suppression of democracy by the feudal inner-Kurdish structures. The fight against national oppression was given priority. Workers, poor peasants and the Kurdish youth should be the bearers of the Kurdish revolution. The social struggle of the working class and also of the peasantry must initially take a back seat to the national struggle. In the founding program of the PKK it says: “Since the national contradiction is the main contradiction, it is the determining factor for the solution of all other social contradictions. As long as the national contradiction remains unresolved, no further social contradiction can be resolved ”.

The first years

From the beginning, the PKK focused on militant actions and tried to build a resistance movement against the Kurdish landowners (the big landowners known as Agha ) and the ruling Kurdish leaders. In 1979 there were clashes between different Kurdish tribes in the Siverek - Hilvan region in the province of Şanlıurfa . The PKK intervened in favor of dispossessed Aghas, since it already regarded their opponents as enemies. Several hundred people were killed in the fighting that followed. Even if the events in Urfa looked like a struggle between tribes , they also served to deepen the PKK's experience with weapons. The organization was also embroiled in a war with other Kurdish groups such as the National Liberators of Kurdistan (KUK) and the Union of National Democratic Forces (UDG).

Even before the military coup in 1980 , there were mass arrests of members of the PKK. In 1979 almost all of the PKK's Elazığ cadres were arrested. Şahin Dönmez, a member of the Central Committee, made extensive statements about the PKK. Öcalan stated that the organization had to go abroad. In July 1979 he traveled to Beirut , Lebanon , where Adel Murad of the PUK helped him reorganize the PKK abroad. He let him live with him for 3 months and got him a passport and contacts at the DFLP . The DFLP supplied the PKK with its first weapons and agreed to train PKK fighters, whereupon dozens of PKK fighters traveled from Turkey to Lebanon. He later traveled to Syria with Ethem Akçam, who had relatives in Syria. After the military coup in 1980, many cadres followed him. Around 2000 members of the organization ended up in prison. The military believed at the time that they had given the PKK the fatal blow. But Öcalan reorganized the group in exile. When the many newly arriving PKK fighters exceeded the training capacities of the DFLP, Öcalan managed to get the fighters accepted and trained in training camps by Palestinian groups such as Fatah by Yasser Arafat , the PFLP and the PSF .

In 1982 PKK units on the Palestinian side fought against the Israeli army invasion of Lebanon . Eleven cadres died in the process. This mission created the prerequisites for the takeover of "Camp Helve" in 1986 in the Bekaa plain in Lebanon. Öcalan renamed it with toleration from Syria in "Mahsum Korkmaz Academy". There, members of the PKK were given political and military training. At that time, the PKK had 300 cadres who had received practical training.

The first congresses

Flag of the PKK from 1978 to 1995

At the first party congress of the PKK, which took place from 15. – 26. July 1981 took place on the Syrian-Lebanese border, a general summary of the last few years was drawn. The whole party submitted to self-criticism. This self-criticism opened the way for cooperation with seven other left organizations in the FKBDC (United Front of the Antifascist Resistance). The FKBDC belonged to the PKK, Devrimci Yol (Revolutionary Way). TKEP ( Türkiye Komünist Emek Partisi , Communist Workers Party of Turkey), THKP / C Acilciler , TKP ( İşçinin Sesi , Voice of the Worker), SVT ( Sosyalist Vatan Partisi , Socialist Fatherland Party), TEP ( Türkiye Emekçi Partisi , Turkish Workers' Party) and DS ( Devrimci Savaş , Revolutionary War). Between August 20 and 25, 1982, the PKK held a second congress in Syria near the border with Jordan. There was again self-criticism regarding their previous policy, which led to cooperation with the FKBDC. Second, it was decided to return the members from abroad to East Turkey.

In 1983 the PKK and PDK signed a cooperation agreement in view of Turkey's military operations in northern Iraq. On August 15, 1984 she founded the HRK ( Hezen Rızgariya Kürdistan - Kurdistan Liberation Unit ) and on the same day began her armed struggle against the Turkish state, which has continued until today (November 2018). The cities of Eruh (Dihê) and Şemdinli (Semzînan) were occupied at short notice. The military and political elite in Ankara initially believed that the Eruh incident was the work of a small band of bandits whom one would never hear from again, but that turned out to be a mistake.

At the beginning there was little fighting. In 1984 28 militants and in 1985 100 militants are said to have been killed. İsmet G. İmset describes this period as "years in which the PKK was preoccupied with internal problems and the organization forced members to confess and executed them." It is estimated in the Turkish press that 1,500 people were killed within the organization . The brother of Abdullah Öcalan, Osman Öcalan , who split from the PKK in 2004, said that 68 leading cadres were hanged in one event in 1987 alone. In addition to the murders on the "upper level", executions as "traitors" are said to have occurred again and again in the ranks of the militant (armed) members, often for banal reasons such as alleged relationships between male and female guerrilla fighters. The political wing ERNK ( Eniya Rızgariya Netewa Kürdistan - National Liberation Front of Kurdistan ) was founded on March 21, 1985 to provide support . It existed until 2000 when it was replaced by a different organizational structure. The ERNK was the politically active front organization of the PKK. It included a large number of social organizations, workers', youth and women's organizations, but also various religious interest groups of Islamists, Alevis , Yazidis , Assyrians and later professional organizations.

The 3rd Congress was held in Lebanon between October 26th and 30th, 1986. It was decided to expand the armed struggle and replaced the HRK by the ARGK ( Arteşe Rızgariye Gele Kürdistan - People's Liberation Army of Kurdistan ). At the third party congress, general conscription , tax liability and a separate criminal law were also passed. The PKK's claim to leadership over all of Kurdistan was also expressed. The removal of the village guard system was fired at as a priority . As a result, the following season the PKK attacked Kurdish villages in which village guards lived. The most famous cases are the Pınarcık , Açıkyol and Kılıçkaya massacres , which killed numerous men, women and children.

In 1987 the Union of Patriotic Women of Kurdistan ( Yekitiya Jinên Welatparezên Kurdistan ) was founded.

Martin van Bruinessen explained the massive violence within the PKK with power struggles and also blamed the tendency towards blind obedience for violence against its own members and alleged apostates. He wrote in the Middle East Report of July / August 1988 that the PKK was notorious for its brutal violence and political murders. Criticism of the party line is seen as treason. The PKK sensed traitors everywhere. Öcalan's best-known opponent was arrested and tortured in order to extort a confession and then he was murdered.

The 4th and 5th Congress

The 4th Congress of the PKK took place from 26.-31. December 1990 in Northern Iraq. In the meantime there had been criticism of the implementation of the decisions at the 3rd Congress, which is expressed in the language of the organization as follows:

“More damage was caused by the misunderstanding of individuals about the party discipline, which in practice led to an arbitrary approach to the population and to their own comrades. The result was a loss of good cadres, a breach of trust on the part of the population and thus development opportunities for the so-called 'village protection system' ... By 1989, however, the party ideology was re-established, the guerrillas consolidated, the trust of the population was regained and this created the possibility to be active again on all political levels ”.

Preparatory steps for a national parliament were taken at the Party's IV Congress. Some unjustly convicted members were rehabilitated at the party congress as part of a comprehensive self-criticism of the party against the people. Elections to a Kurdish national parliament took place in Europe between November 20 and 22, 1992. A total of 153 delegates were elected from 87,719 Kurds, including 27 women. At the delegates' conference one month later, 15 members were elected to work in the Kurdish national parliament. The attempt to hold such a national parliament in Turkey could only be carried out to a limited extent. Overall, a year later, the idea of ​​a national parliament was no longer pursued. The PKK renegade Selim Çürükkaya , who was one of the 15 delegates, gives the reason for the dissolution of the parliament that he, together with another representative from Germany, did not accept that the delegates received instructions from Abdullah Öcalan. Because of this, he was arrested in March 1993 and the other representative was sent back. In 1993 the women's army was founded.

At the 5th Congress, which took place between January 8 and 27, 1995, a new party program, which replaced the old one from 1978, was passed. In this phase the PKK wanted to start building the institutions of a new state. This was under the slogan “Formation of People's Power”. It was also discussed about popular uprisings, so-called Serhildans , with which the seizure of power by the people and thus the creation of red zones, liberated areas, should be sought.

After the capture of Abdullah Ocalan

The Party's 6th Congress coincided with the capture of Abdullah Ocalan and was held between January 19 and February 16, 1999 in the Kandil Mountains of northern Iraq. To protest against the "plot" (the " kidnapping " of the chairman of the PKK), suicide bombings and mass demonstrations were to be carried out. The decisions to expand the war were not implemented as a result of the change in strategy that began in the summer of 1999.

Between January 2 and 23, 2000, the party's 7th congress took place in the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq with the participation of 380–400 members of the organization. From now on, the campaign for the rights of the Kurds should be mainly political and no longer military. The goal of finding a solution to the Kurdish questions within Turkey's existing borders was formulated openly. Recognition of the Kurdish identity, the abolition of the death penalty and the release of Abdullah Öcalan were given as goals . The actions should take place like the Intifada (kr: Serhildan ) in the form of civil disobedience . Therefore, the ARGK has fulfilled its task and should be replaced by the HPG ( Hêzên Parastina Gel - People's Defense Units). The YDK (Democratic People's Units ) should take the place of the ERNK . To support the PKK, the PÇDK ( Partiya Çaresera Demokrati Kürdistan - Party for a Political Solution in Kurdistan ) was founded in Iraq in March 2002 and the PYD ( Partiya Yekitîya Demokrati Kurdistan) was founded in Iraq at the beginning of 2003 . PJAK ( Partiya Jiyane Azade Kürdistan - Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan ) was founded among the Kurds in Iran in early 2003 .

Logo of the KADEK
Kongra gel logo
Logo of the KKK

Since the PKK was included on the international list of terrorist organizations, it was decided at the 8th Congress between April 4 and 10, 2002 to rename it to KADEK ( Kongreya-Azadiya Demokratika Kürdistan - Freedom and Democracy Congress Kurdistan). Abdullah Öcalan became its honorary chairman. The KADEK was dissolved at its 2nd Congress on November 6th and KONGRA-GEL (Kurdistan People's Congress) was founded.

285 delegates attended the eighth congress of the party. It was about theses that the chairman Abdullah Öcalan had submitted. His complaint to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has been declared a manifesto of a democratic civilization. With regard to the restructuring process that began in 1993 and is said to have finally prevailed with the ceasefire of September 1, 1998, it was concluded that this process was ideologically and organizationally completed. It was established that, with its achievements and mistakes, the PKK has accomplished its historic mission. A new organization model was decided based on the new line of democracy and peace. KADEK sought a solution to the Kurdish question on the basis of democratic and liberal principles without questioning valid borders.

Reconstruction and democratic confederalism

In 2004 there were divisions within the PKK. Osman Öcalan , the brother of Abdullah Öcalan, left the PKK camp in the northern Iraqi Kandil Mountains in May 2004 and fled with other leadership members to the care of the northern Iraqi Kurds in Mosul , where they began to build the Patriotic Democratic Party (PWD) . Former PKK European spokesman Kani Yılmaz (real name Faysal Dunlayıcı) joined the PWD. He was murdered on February 11, 2006 in Suleymaniye . There were other deviants like Nizamettin Taş.

Throughout history there have been some dissidents in the ranks of the PKK. The “Vejin” (revival) movement, which Mehmet Şener is said to have represented, is legendary . She is said to have criticized Abdullah Öcalan's authoritarian leadership style and particularly brutal forms of armed struggle. In the indictment against Abdullah Öcalan, the chapter on the 4th PKK Congress said: “At the end of the Congress, Mehmet Cahit Şener from the PKK Central Committee was classified as a traitor, but he was able to flee with the help of other leading members. He was murdered in Qamishli ”. The former wife of Abdullah Öcalan, Kesire Yıldırım, and her brother, the lawyer Hüseyin Yıldırım, who was imprisoned as an alleged member of the PKK in the early 1980s and became a European spokesman for the ERNK after his escape, are also said to have listened to “Vejin”.

The dissident Selim Çürükkaya , who wrote a book about the prison conditions of PKK prisoners in Diyarbakır in the early 1980s, and his brother Sait Çürükkaya, who separated from the PKK in the early and late 1990s, were also unable to do so To shake Abdullah Öcalan's claim to leadership. After Abdullah Öcalan's arrest in 1999, there were repeated fierce leadership battles, but never a single figure emerged victorious. Instead, there have been repeated splits, but this has not meant that the PKK has really broken up into rival wings.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) reorganized in April 2005 after declaring itself dissolved in 2002. From August 21 to 30, 2008, their 10th Party Congress took place. Up to the 10th Congress between May 16 and 26, 2004, two congresses were held in the Kandil Mountains and in Europe. In an interview, Duran Kalkan gave reasons for why the organization was called the PKK again: “At our 8th Congress in 2002, we decided on a system of a congress called KADEK instead of a party. In November 2003, Kongra-Gel was founded in place of KADEK. The chairman wanted the PKK to be organized as an independent committee within the Kongra-Gel. When the movement couldn't do this either, in the spring of 2004, two years after the name change, the re-establishment of the PKK came back on the agenda ”.

The Democratic confederalism is an idea of Abdullah Ocalan, which was adopted by the party at a meeting between 4 and 21 May of 2005. This ideology, as it u. a. Also depicted under Koma Civakên Kurdistan contains the following thoughts:

  • Democratic confederalism organizes self-government as an expression of organized society.
  • It is about an alternative to state structures or about overcoming the hierarchically ordered centralization of power.
  • The KCK is the association of the municipalities of Kurdistan and is based on the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan.
  • A confederate organizational structure is planned for the Kurds, in which they should develop close relationships with one another across national borders.

The original goal of the PKK was the establishment of a socialist, independent state of Kurdistan. However, the PKK has moved away from this more and more, officially its use is now a Kurdish autonomy. The current number of PKK fighters is estimated at 8,000 at most. You cannot seriously endanger Turkey, which has about 100,000 men in the southeast. In 2015, the PKK announced that it would give up the armed uprising against the Turkish government and replace it with a democratic policy.

Like other Kurdish organizations, the PKK has been actively involved in the fight against the terrorist organization Islamic State since 2014 .

See also

Web links

Wikisource: KCK Agreement (Basic Law)  - Sources and full texts (Turkish)
Wikisource: Well-founded judgment in the proceedings against Abdullah Öcalan  - sources and full texts (Turkish)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c A term paper from 1997, published by the Kurdistan Information Center under the title On the History and Politics of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) , accessed on September 20, 2012
  2. ↑ a b c The information is taken from the work Turkey-Turquie of the Swiss Refugee Aid (SFH), Bern, April 1997. They can be found in a wiki as a page on the PKK , accessed on September 20, 2012
  3. ↑ Report in ZEIT online , source DIE ZEIT, November 26, 1998 No. 49
  4. ↑ Quoted from the report on the protection of the constitution in Baden-Württemberg ( memento of July 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 20, 2012
  5. ↑ Selahettin Çelik: Moving Mount Ararat. The political, military, economic and social dimensions of the current Kurdish uprising. Zambon Verlag, Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-88975-100-8 , p. 40 ff.
  6. ↑ Quoted from an analysis by Ute Reissner and Justus Leicht The Politics of the PKK - a balance sheet , accessed on September 20, 2012
  7. ↑ verassungsschutz-mv.de: The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) ( Memento from March 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on September 26, 2006
  8. ^ Lothar Heinrich: The Kurdish national movement in Turkey . German Orient Institute Hamburg 1989, p. 47.
  9. ↑ Cf. İsmet G. İmset: PKK: 20 years of separatist violence (PKK: Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 Yılı ) (1973-1992), Ankara, June 1993, ISBN 975-95711-0-2 , pp. 59/60.
  10. ↑ İsmet G. İmset: PKK: 20 years of separatist violence (PKK: Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 Yılı ) (1973–1992), Ankara, June 1993, p. 67.
  11. ↑ a b Hannes Černy: Iraqi Kurdistan, the PKK and International Relations: Theory and Ethnic Conflict . Routledge, ISBN 978-1-138-67617-6 , pp. 154-155 .
  12. ↑ Birgit Cerha: violence against violence. The PKK and its leader, Abdullah Öcalan. In: NZZ Folio . 11/93, topic: Kurds .
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g h The information is taken from a report by the Kurdistan Information Center (ISKU) Chronology of Kurdish History . Ercan Ayboga from the Association of Students from Kurdistan is responsible ; Accessed September 21, 2012
  14. ↑ a b c Cf. Selahattin Çelik: Moving Mount Ararat. Quoted in: Serdar Yilmaz: Kurdish nation-building process. P. 64 (Diploma thesis; PDF; 3.5 MB), accessed on October 27, 2018.
  15. ↑ Quoted from the indictment against Abdullah Öcalan , part 9 to be found in Belgenet; Accessed September 21, 2012
  16. ↑ a b c Askim Bozkurt: The Kurdish problem in Turkey . Peter Lang, 1994, ISBN 978-3-631-46915-6 , pp. 148 .
  17. ↑ From an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on August 15, 2009 with the title The Imrali factor ; Accessed September 21, 2012
  18. ↑ İsmet G. İmset, PKK, Ayrılıkçı Şiddetin 20 yılı (20 years of separatist violence), Ankara, June 1993, p. 114.
  19. ↑ See a report by Namık Durukan in Milliyet of February 14, 2006: PKK'dan 1500 infaz .
  20. ↑ This was reported by the Istanbul Haber Internet portal on February 8, 2012 under the title: Öcalan PKK'nın örgüt içi infazlarını anlattı ; Accessed September 21, 2012
  21. ^ Georg Spielberg: 1978-1998. July 28, 2015, accessed October 22, 2018 .
  22. ^ Lothar A. Heinrich: The Kurdish national movement in Turkey. German Orient Institute Hamburg 1989, page 56
  23. ↑ a b Jineolojî Committee Europe: Jineolojî . Ed .: Mezopotamien Verlag und Vertriebs GmbH. 1st edition. 2018, ISBN 978-3-945326-73-2 , pp. 31 .
  24. ^ Martin van Bruinessen: Between Guerrilla War and Political Murder: The Workers' Party of Kurdistan in: Middle East Report, July / August 1988
  25. ↑ PKK: The dictatorship of Abdullah Öcalan. Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3596135877 , pp. 155-161.
  26. ↑ A German translation of the party program as it was passed at the 5th Congress can be found at nadir.org . Accessed September 22, 2012
  27. ↑ a b c d The final declaration of the 8th Congress in German translation; Accessed September 22, 2012
  28. ↑ Article by Susanne Güsten in Der Tagesspiegel from September 11, 2004 Die Rache des Partisans ; Accessed on September 30, 2012 (print version - if canceled, the text appears).
  29. ↑ On the developments in 2004, the Turkish Democratic Forum has written a special report under the title Conflicts in the PKK ; Accessed October 1, 2012
  30. ↑ This part of the indictment can be looked up at Belgenet in Turkish under Resolutions at the 4th Congress ; Accessed October 1, 2012
  31. ↑ The Kurdish Encyclopedia Kurdica has a résumé of Kesire Yıldırım ; Accessed October 1, 2012
  32. ↑ See a message in the Spiegel from June 17, 1987 piece by piece ; Accessed October 1, 2012
  33. ↑ See the Turkish page Kim Kimdir? with a kind of résumé of Abdullah Öcalan; Accessed October 1, 2012
  34. ↑ According to the Hamburger Illustrierte, IMK Human Rights Information Service wrote Date: September 6, 2004 - October 25, 2004 Number: 232-233 (PDF; 383 kB) Selim Çürükkaya had already brought criticism of Öcalan's management style to the public in the mid-1990s. His book Apo'nun Ayetleri (Apos Suren) was translated into German and was published in 1997 as PKK - The dictatorship of Abdullah Öcalan by Fischer Verlag. Günter Wallraff campaigned personally at Öcalan's time to ensure that the author was not murdered.
  35. ↑ See kidnappings intended to intimidate PKK rivals , article in Spiegel from July 11, 2008 by Jürgen Gottschlich, Istanbul; Accessed October 1, 2012
  36. ↑ a b An undated page at nadir.org on the 10th PKK Congress: The completion of the new structure ; Accessed September 30, 2012
  37. ↑ Wolfgang Günter Lerch in the FAZ of October 29, 2007, re-flaming battle ; Accessed September 22, 2012
  38. ↑ http://www.n-tv.de/politik/PKK-Fuehrer-ruft-zur-Abruestung-auf-article14607251.html
  39. ↑ Muriel Reichl: "Islamic State": The hour of the PKK. In: Zeit Online. September 22, 2014, accessed February 28, 2015 .