ABSTRACT
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been, and is, one of the most important secular political movement in the Middle East. The party’s radical political outlook (with its view of Kurdistan as an international colony and its objective of unification, both of Kurdistan and the revolutionary forces in Turkey) and strategy (the determination that liberation can be accomplished only by a means of a people’s war, and its lack of hesitation in adopting violence as a tactic, not only against the state but also against powerful Kurdish tribal leaders and those considered to be collaborators) have been at the heart of controversy (Van Bruinessen 1988; Kutschera 1994; McDowall 2007). Yet since the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, the focus of discussion has shifted towards an alleged radical break in the PKK’s political outlook and its capacities to act.1 Did the organization in the Imralı period throw off its PKK heritage, and give up the ideal of a united Kurdistan (Özcan 2006)? Or was the PKK undergoing a similar fate as Shining Path in Peru, an organization losing its way after the capture of its leader (Hoffman and Cragin 2002)?2 In this contribution, we argue that the PKK experienced severe difficulties in the period following the arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, but has managed to reinvent itself through a series of transformations. We discuss some of the changes that the PKK has experienced in the 2000s, considering its ideology, politics and organization. And we argue that the PKK has neither abandoned the idea of a united Kurdistan nor its efforts to accomplish radical political change in Turkey, but is trying to accomplish these in new ways. Furthermore, the PKK has not been pushed into marginality, but rather has remained both a strong pan-Kurdish political actor and an important actor in Turkish politics.
