Turkey - Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)

The biggest, best and baddest of the lot. The PKK is the best-organized and most active Kurdish group in Turkey. Founded in 1978, the PKK is a Marxist group led by the now captured Abdullah Ocalan, a former law student from Ankara University. Things got seriously military in 1984. Ocalan lived in Damascus and was supported by President Assad of Syria for 18 years. Syria was, and is, none too pleased about Turkey's ongoing efforts to build more dams, possibly stemming the flow of water into Syria. But when, in 1998, the Turks threatened to turn Damascus into the middle eastern version of the Waco compound the Syrians changed their tune, deciding that Ocalan might want to find alternative accommodation after all (see Kurdistan chapter). Unlike the Iraqi Kurds, the PKK is active in all parts of Kurdistan, being the best-known and most violent advocate of Kurdish independence. Towards that end, the PKK has not only declared war on Turkey, but they have aimed their sights on the tourist industry, claiming that income from tourism (US$7 billion a year) funds the Turkish government's war against the Kurds.

The 20 or so tourists that have been kidnapped in the southeast have all been released unharmed. Why? Because frightened tourists make for better interviews on CNN than dead ones. The PKK is most active in southeast Turkey, setting up roadblocks, placing land mines (the Turks apparently have lost the maps for all the minefields they have planted along the Syrian border) and blasting away at villages protected by "loyalists." The army has assigned about 60,000 locals to fight the PKK who are paid $200 a month-or get their homes burned down if they don't play ball. The army provides them with a gun and then hopes that not too many of them will be made an example of by the PKK. About one village guard is killed for every two soldiers. The military claims that their kill ratio is about 10:1 in favor of the loyalists and soldiers against the PKK. Yeah, I'm sure. The PKK has a lot of support amongst ex-pat Kurds. In Germany alone, there are more than 450,000 Kurds, about a quarter of the total Turkish population in Germany. The PKK, along with 35 other organizations, was banned by the German government in November 1993. The PKK has been accused of using this offshore group to extort money from Turkish businesses and professionals in Europe. There are estimated to be as many as 7,000 armed PKK guerrillas, with about 800 of them in mountainous Tunceli province, 3,000 elsewhere in southeastern Turkey and about 3,000 inside northern Iraq. Something like that, anyway. For those of you who were hoping to collect on the US$94,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of "Fingerless Zeki," whose real name is Semdin Sakik, tough! You've missed the boat. He was caught in northern Iraq in 1998. Zeki was the rebel commander in charge of the PKK troops in Tunceli province. (Literally "tunc eli" means "bronze fist" in Turkish. The region is called Dersim by the Kurds who live there and is the province where the PKK has almost 100 percent support from the local people.)

Back to Sakik, who, in the meantime, fell out with Apo in 1998 during a visit to Lebanon, fled to northern Iraq, surrendered to the KDP and was snatched by the Turks. He has since been sentenced to death. Before he got the hoof, DP met with Ocalan in the Beka'a valley in his efforts to stir up more spin on his anti-Turkish goals. The basic gist is that he wanted to spin the Turkish army's spring visits to his camps as minor setbacks and he often liked threatening everyone. The PKK has a number of unofficial offices in Europe, the United States and London. The people at the Kurdistan Information Center are helpful and informative-most of the time-if you give them a call.

American Kurdish Information Network

2623 Connecticut Avenue, NW #1

Washington, DC 20008 1522

Tel.: (202) 483-6444

Fax: (202) 483-6476

E-mail: akin@kurdish.org

http://www.kurdistan.org

MED-TV

The Linen Hall, 162-168 Regent Street, London W1R 5AT

Tel.: (44) (0) 171-4942523

Fax: (44) (0)171-494-2528

E-mail: med@med-tv.be

http://www.med-tv.be

Kurdistan Information Center

10 Glasshouse Yard

London EC1A4JN

United Kingdom

Tel.: 011-44-171-250-1315

Attn: Mizgin Sen

Kurdistan Workers Association

Tel.: 011-44-181-809-0743

PKK (Kurdish Workers Party)

Mekte-Bi Amele-1 Kurdistan

Barelias-Chotura

West Bekaa, Lebanon

Kurdistan Solidarity Committee

Tel.: 011-44-171-586-5892

Attn: Estella Schmidt

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

Tel.: 011-44-181-642-4518

Attn: Latif Rashid

Kurdistan Solidarity Committee

Tel.: 011-44-171-586-5892

Also check out www.ozgurluk.org. It's the unofficial PKK web site.