Today 12 May 2025, after more than 40 years of armed struggle, the Management Committee of PKK (Party of Kurdistan workers) announced that The group will be dissolved. The historical decision came following a letter dated February 27 of the historical leader of the group and founder Abdullah Öcalanwho has been serving life imprisonment since 1999 on the island of Imrali and had asked for the end of the armed struggle. The announcement puts an end to a bloody low intensity conflict between the Turkish state and part of the Kurdish minority of the country. But what the PKK represents for the history of Türkiye and gods Kurd?
What is the Kurdish PKK: the ideological setting
The PKK was born with a strong Marxist-Leninist ideological settingemerging from the galaxy of left radical movements which between the 1970s and eighties were opposed to the Turkish government. In its training years, the PKK therefore positioned itself as part of the wider global communist revolution, focusing on the promotion of the rights and autonomy of the Kurdish people. It was in those years that the figure of Abdullah Öcalan he imposed himself how Movement leader. The real reinforcement conflict with the Turkish state began the August 15, 1984when the PKK launched his First attacks against Turkish security forces in Eruh and Semdinli. The reinforced party was soon included in the list of terrorist organizations in Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
The beginning of the armed struggle in Türkiye
After the first actions, the PKK reorganized its internal structure and In 1985 he formed the Kurdish national liberation front (Ernk), who provided a more cohesive picture for his military operations. Subsequently, thePopular Liberation Army of Kurdistan (Stank) hired military operations from the Ernk. Within the third party congress in October 1986, the article had consolidated its role as the main military wing of the PKK. PKK’s skills were further improved in 1988, when the government ofIran favored the creation of PKK training fields close to the Turkish border. The support of external actors, including the organization for the liberation of Palestine (Olp), also played an important role in the military capacity and influence of the PKK. Despite the intensification of the clashes between PKK militants and Turkish security forces in the course of ninetiesit was precisely in that decade that the first negotiations between the two parts.
Abdullah’s capture Öcalanthe leader of the PKK
Also in this phase of dialogue he imposed himself Abdullah Öcalanbut his captured on February 15, 1999 by the Turkish secret services – During his transfer from the headquarters of the Greek diplomatic representation to Kenya to the Airport of Nairobi Embakasi – he crisis the negotiations. As pointed out by several analysts, the Turkish government could not recognize the Kurdish question for historical and political reasons and a possible greater autonomy of its minority, while for most of the PKK management these negotiations were only expedients to temporarily and regain the forces in view of the subsequent phase of military clash with the government of Ankara.
The new course with “democratic modernity”
After the capture of Öcalan and the beginning of his detention (which still continues today), Murat Karayılanch assumed the leadership of the PKK until 2013. This decade was characterized by internal power struggles, in particular between reformist and traditionalist factions. Between 2003 and 2004, a fracture emerged between a reformist wing that advocated the disarmament and a traditionalist wing that favored a return to the armed insurrection. The traditionalist faction, led by figures such as Murat Karayılanch and Cemil Bayik and convinced that the political struggle of the PKK was ineffective without the armed one, had the better. During his ninth congress of 2005 The party redefined its objectives, focusing on the concepts of “Democratic modernity” theorized by Öcalan. The new setting of the PKK opened to objectives such as thegender equity, ecological democracy and the establishment of local administrative systems In the Kurdish majority areas, suspending the goal of creating a Kurdish state entity autonomous from Türkiye in favor of a federalist vision.
The intervention in Syria and the causes of the dissolution of the Kurdish party
After the end of Murat Karayılanch’s leadership in 2013 and a period of internal struggle for power, the PKK played an important role in the experience of the self -government of Rojava during the Syrian civil war, a reason that has pushed Turkey to intensify the military operations in the last decade against the Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria, including YPGs, the popular protection units that have rejected in 2015 The assault of the Islamic State against the city of Kobane. In addition to the involvement in other countries of the area, the PKK has continued one Campaign of attacks and attacks against military and political objectives throughout Turkeyincluding some very recent ones. Still on October 24, 2024, in fact, two PKK militants have Attached the headquarters of the Turkish aerospace company in Kahramankazan (about forty kilometers from the capital Ankara), killing 5 people.
The dissolution announced on May 12 could therefore represent the will of the members of the PKK of abandon the armed struggle and focus on the political onetaking advantage of the unprecedented weakness of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2028, in fact, the Turkish president points to another reconfirmation of his mandate and 20 million Kurds of Türkiye they could have a huge weight for its political future.
