The movement is a powder keg ready to explode. With the majority of Kurds living within its boundaries, no country faces this threat more than Turkey. Because of Turkey’s concept of unified, cohesive nationhood-in which the existence of minorities are not acknowledged- these tensions in Turkey are more difficult to hand

Turkey has been a key player against the PKK. Geography, politics and history have conspired to render 30 million Kurds the largest stateless people in the Middle East. The Government of Turkey has long denied the Kurdish population, located largely in the southeast, basic political, cultural, and linguistic rights. The government of Turkey has in turn waged an intense campaign to suppress PKK terrorism, targeting active PKK units as well as persons they believe support or sympathize with the PKK. As part of its fight against the PKK, the Government forcibly displaced noncombatants, failed to resolve extra judicial killings, tortured civilians, and abridged freedom of expression. The Turkish government has also managed to burn over 4,000 villages forcing Kurds to flee from their homeland. Finally, the Turkish government estimates that the conflict with the PKK has exacted a high financial drain on the national treasury. The government estimates that battling the PKK costs about $10 billion per year.

http://www.turkey.org/apo-pkk/apo1.htm

The PKK was created in 1974 as a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group primarily composed of Turkish Kurds searching for an independence movement. Its first and only leader, Abdullah Ocalan, or Apo as he came to be called, was at that time a student of political science at Ankara University.

There are several political parties that represent the needs of the Kurdish people. They are the Kurdistan’s Workers Party (PKK) who represent the needs of Turkish Kurds and are the most violent terrorist like group, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) who is active politically but not militarily, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) composed of Iraqi Kurds, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who is also representing the Iraqi Kurds.

The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990’s ; Robert Olsen, editor; The University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

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