Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency

Overview

The Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency was a prolonged armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state. Founded by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978, the PKK began as a Marxist Kurdish nationalist organization seeking an independent state in southeastern Turkey. Its proposed state also encompassed northern Iraq and parts of Iran and Syria. The PKK launched its armed campaign against Turkey in 1984. Fighting subsequently spread across the border into the mountains of northern Iraq, while the PKK's links to armed groups in Syria became a central issue in Turkish policy. The United States designated the PKK a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. That designation concerns the PKK: it does not make the separate Kurdistan Regional Government or Kurdish aspirations for self-government part of the organization.^[1][2][3]

The conflict lasted through major shifts in the politics of Kurdistan. Turkey confronted attacks on its soldiers and civilians, conducted operations within its borders, and repeatedly struck PKK positions in Iraq. The PKK used armed attacks, bombings and kidnappings; its fighters also massacred civilians in villages that opposed its doctrine. Civilians suffered from fighting, displacement and damage to local economies. Estimates compiled at different stages of the war varied, but the conflict had killed about 40,000 people by early 2013, including approximately 700 in 2012, and had claimed more than 40,000 lives by 2020. Peace negotiations beginning in the early 2010s briefly raised hopes of ending the war. Their collapse in 2015 brought renewed intense fighting. A second process produced the PKK's 2025 announcements that it would dissolve, disarm and withdraw its fighters from Turkey.^[1][3][4][5]

Background

Öcalan and his associates founded the PKK in 1978 amid disputes over Kurdish identity, political rights and the Turkish state's authority in its southeast. The organization's original program joined Marxist politics to a separatist demand for an independent Kurdish state. Its territorial vision reached across Turkey's borders into Iraq, Syria and Iran, but the PKK's first sustained war was against Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s it pursued that aim through guerrilla warfare. The campaign was distinct from the work of Kurdish parties seeking representation through elections or governing institutions. Kurdish political organizations differed in leadership, territory and methods, and some fought the PKK directly.^[1][2][3]

Syria backed the PKK during its campaign against Turkey, allowing the group to benefit from bases and support across the frontier. That relationship became a severe dispute between Ankara and Damascus. Under Turkish pressure in 1998, Syria expelled Öcalan and agreed to act against PKK facilities and personnel. Turkish forces captured him in 1999 and imprisoned him in Turkey. His capture disrupted the movement's leadership and was followed by a PKK retreat toward bases in northern Iraq. It did not end his influence: he continued to shape the organization's decisions from prison, including later calls for negotiations and disarmament.^[2][6][7]

Northern Iraq became increasingly important after Baghdad lost effective control of its Kurdish areas in 1991. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) governed parts of the area, while PKK fighters established mountain bases and used them to reach Turkey. Turkish forces conducted repeated cross-border operations during the 1990s. Iraqi Kurdish parties had their own interests and rivalries; their dealings with the PKK changed over time. In 2000, PUK forces and the PKK fought in the Qandil Mountains. These clashes underline why the PKK cannot stand for all Kurdish institutions or for every political demand made in Kurdistan.^[2][8][9]

Course of the war

The 1984 opening of the PKK's armed campaign began a long cycle of attacks and Turkish military responses. Syria initially provided a base for PKK operations. As the movement expanded, northern Iraq offered difficult mountain terrain for its fighters, first along the frontier and later farther inside the country. Turkey's cross-border operations ranged from air attacks to large ground incursions. The contest reached areas near Duhok and deeper PKK positions in Qandil. The KDP and PUK at times cooperated with Turkey against the PKK, while their policies toward the organization also reflected their separate competition for power in Iraq.^{[2][8][9][10]}

Öcalan's 1999 capture appeared to weaken the PKK and prompted a withdrawal of fighters from Turkey. The organization nevertheless retained armed personnel and bases beyond the border. Changes following the 2003 invasion of Iraq gave it room to regroup in northern Iraq. Renewed attacks drew further Turkish operations. By the late 2000s, Turkish airstrikes had become an important part of the campaign against PKK camps. The war thus remained a Turkish conflict with substantial consequences for Iraqi territory and its Kurdish population. For residents near the border, PKK positions and Turkish operations brought recurring threats to movement, farming and local economic life.^[2][8][10]

Öcalan became central to a renewed search for peace. By early 2013, negotiations addressed a war that had killed about 40,000 people. A ceasefire and discussions between Turkey and the PKK offered a route toward replacing armed conflict with political settlement. Öcalan still commanded considerable loyalty despite his imprisonment, although other PKK leaders controlled fighters in the mountains and held their own views on a settlement. The process required decisions about withdrawal, arms and the place of Kurdish political participation within Turkey. It also unfolded while PKK-linked forces gained territory in Syria, making developments beyond Turkey's borders increasingly difficult to separate from the negotiations.^[4][11][12]

The ceasefire broke down in 2015. Renewed PKK attacks, political disagreements within Turkey and the rise of the PKK-linked People's Defense Units (YPG) in Syria all contributed to its collapse. Fighting intensified; by 2016, Turkey's peace process with Kurdish leaders had given way to all-out war. The renewed campaign reinforced Ankara's concern that armed groups linked to the PKK could operate on both sides of its southern border. At the same time, Kurdish participation in Turkish electoral politics remained a separate matter. In the election that gave Erdoğan 52 percent of the presidential vote, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) passed Turkey's 10 percent national threshold for parliamentary representation. Many Turks regarded the HDP as the PKK's political wing, but that perception did not erase the distinction between a party contesting elections and an armed organization.^[5][11][13]

The Syrian civil war added another arena. Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD) was affiliated with the PKK, and the YPG, associated with the PYD, had a relationship with the PKK that shaped Turkish policy. These ties alarmed Ankara as PYD-associated fighters established themselves in northern Syria. On July 11, the PYD and the Kurdish National Council, which brought together 15 Syrian Kurdish groups, signed the Erbil Agreement. It was intended to prevent fighting between Syrian Kurdish factions and created a Supreme Kurdish Council for joint administration of Kurdish areas. Afterward, PYD-associated fighters took control of Kurdish districts in Hasakah Governorate and areas of Aleppo Governorate. The agreement strengthened the PYD's position, but it also showed that Syrian Kurdish politics involved factions beyond the PKK-linked party. Masoud Barzani, then president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, supported and mediated between the factions.^[14]

The campaign against the Islamic State brought the YPG into cooperation with the United States, complicating relations between Washington and Ankara. Turkey opposed American arms for the YPG because of its ties to the PKK. Ankara also opposed YPG expansion into Arab areas along its border with Syria. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, in which the YPG played a major role, fought the Islamic State with American support. Turkey and the United States subsequently negotiated military cooperation around Manbij and the withdrawal of PKK-linked PYD or YPG elements from the city. The roadmap announced in 2018 did not settle every dispute over its implementation. Erdoğan also sought a continued American troop presence in northeastern Syria partly to constrain the PYD. These policies reflected overlapping fights against the Islamic State and the PKK, rather than a single war with identical participants.^[15][16][17]

The PKK's regional network extended beyond Syria and Iraq. The Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), active against Iran's ruling regime, was a PKK affiliate. The Obama administration designated PJAK a terrorist organization in 2009. Across these theaters, affiliations mattered for security decisions, but they did not make the Kurdistan Regional Government, the KDP, the PUK or the Kurdish National Council branches of the PKK. Iraqi Kurdish authorities also had to deal with the consequences of Turkish operations and PKK bases on territory they governed.^[2][9][18]

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The PKK used violence against civilians as well as attacks on state forces. Its campaign included bombings and kidnappings, and PKK fighters massacred residents of villages that resisted the group's doctrine. Suicide bombings were among its tactics in the 1990s. Attacks on civilians were part of the history behind its terrorist designation and cannot be treated as ordinary expressions of Kurdish political identity. The United States listed the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, while continuing to deal separately with Kurdish political institutions and, later, with the YPG-led forces fighting the Islamic State in Syria.^[1][3][19]

The designation also figured in American litigation over material support. The Humanitarian Law Project sought to provide advice and nonmilitary assistance to designated organizations including the PKK, while pursuing changes in their tactics. A federal case in 2003 and a subsequent challenge addressed restrictions on such assistance and support. The dispute concerned the legal boundary around aid to a designated group; it did not transform the PKK into a civilian political institution. An estimate cited in discussion of the case put deaths associated with the insurgency at about 22,000. Later assessments counted approximately 40,000 by early 2013 and more than 40,000 by 2020, reflecting different points in a conflict that continued for decades.^[1][3][4]

Political labels became another point of contention. Many Turks saw the HDP as connected to the PKK, while the PYD's relationship with the PKK led Ankara to resist PYD and YPG military gains in Syria. Those concerns require precise identification of organizations and actions. The Kurdistan Regional Government is an Iraqi governing institution, and the KDP and PUK have at various times opposed or fought the PKK. Barzani's mediation between Syrian Kurdish factions likewise belonged to a different political role from the PKK's armed campaign. Supporting Kurdish self-government therefore does not require supporting the PKK or excusing its attacks on civilians.^{[2][9][13][14]}

Outcome

A new effort to end the insurgency emerged in late 2024. On February 27, 2025, Öcalan called on the PKK to lay down its weapons and dissolve. Its armed forces declared a ceasefire in March. Following a party congress, the PKK announced on May 12 that it had decided to dissolve its organizational structure and end armed struggle. The decision marked a sharp break with the separatist program under which the organization had begun fighting in 1984. It was an announcement of intent and a step in a peace process; ending an insurgency also required fighters, weapons and command structures to be dealt with in practice.^[5][20][21]

In July 2025, PKK members held a symbolic disarmament ceremony in northern Iraq. On October 26, the organization announced that it was withdrawing its fighters from Turkey to northern Iraq to avoid renewed clashes. Withdrawal from Turkish territory reduced the prospect of fighting there, but also moved attention to the PKK's remaining presence in Iraq and to the status of related armed forces in Syria. The Kurdistan Regional Government, Turkey and Iraq each had interests in how disarmament would proceed on Iraqi soil. The announcements offered a route to ending a war of more than four decades; their practical effect depended on sustained disarmament and the absence of renewed attacks.^[5][21][22]

Aftermath and legacy

The insurgency reshaped relations among Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Kurdish political institutions. Northern Iraqi communities experienced decades of PKK activity and Turkish operations, while the Kurdistan Regional Government had to govern amid an armed conflict crossing its borders. In Syria, the PYD and YPG's connections to the PKK complicated both Turkey's security policy and American cooperation against the Islamic State. A settlement inside Turkey could ease those pressures, but withdrawal into Iraq alone could not resolve every question about armed personnel and political authority across the region. The history of the 2013–2015 peace process also showed that ceasefires and negotiated commitments can collapse before implementation is secure.^{[5][8][11][17][22]}

The conflict's human cost remained central to its legacy. More than 40,000 people had died by 2020; civilians had been killed in PKK attacks, while communities near the fighting endured displacement and economic disruption. The PKK's 2025 dissolution and withdrawal announcements created an opportunity to end the insurgency, subject to their implementation. Kurdish political life, meanwhile, extended well beyond the organization: elected parties in Turkey, rival Syrian Kurdish councils and the Kurdistan Regional Government each followed distinct political paths. Keeping those institutions separate from the PKK is essential to understanding both the armed conflict and the prospects for peace.^{[1][2][4][13][14][22]}