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The PKK is disbanding
May. 9th, 2025 04:25 pmThe PKK has held its Congress and has announced that it is disbanding.
Leyla Zana welcomes PKK Congress outcomes, urges responsibility for a democratic future
I'm in shock. Clearly the entire Kurdish freedom movement won't just disappear, and has always skilled at adopting multiple identities depending on the circumstances. "The PKK" itself morphed from the whole to being a one component of the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), which itself was the inheritor of the mantle of the Kurdish armed struggle movement. (i.e. the KCK is the "real" PKK, while "the PKK" is the Turkish faction hiding in Iraq, itself divided between the political wing, and its subsidiary the HPG, which itself is the "armed" group.
Here's a simple chart of the armed movement:
Here's a more complex map/chart of the movement, with links to other political parties who officially claim to have no link to the PKK (lol) but do have a fair degree of independence. Their members/politicans do routinely get arrested and/or deposed under false accusations of terrorism by Turkey (and in Iran, where they often get straight up executed, though it is a much smaller movement there)
Link to Wikipedia if it doesn't allow hotlinking to images
There's also a complex number of supporting political organizations in Europe, mostly in Germany and somewhat in Belgium, France and possibly Sweden. Amberin Zaman mentions business interests as well, and the PKK has been accused of being into drug smuggling before. So I'm pretty sure most of this isn't going away, even if Erdogan's demand was that "all related organizations" disband. And the PYD/YPG/YPJ/SDF aren't going away any time soon in Syria, which Turkey does consider to be an even more serious threat on its border. But the PKK had effectively lost the armed struggle against the Turkish state, which kept using it as a scarecrow, so maybe this shift will allow for political movement in the right direction? It's definitely been going in the WRONG direction in Turkey since 2015, in terms of Kurdish political and civil rights.
Anyway I have a meta-post about the PKK, Hamas and armed resistance brewing in my head, which I should start drafting soon....
(Parenthesis: Apparently Öcalan was allowed to zoom in at the Congress, and that clearly would have been a presence very difficult to contradict in the movement, in light of the absolute personality cult around him in the movement.)
Leyla Zana welcomes PKK Congress outcomes, urges responsibility for a democratic future
I'm in shock. Clearly the entire Kurdish freedom movement won't just disappear, and has always skilled at adopting multiple identities depending on the circumstances. "The PKK" itself morphed from the whole to being a one component of the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), which itself was the inheritor of the mantle of the Kurdish armed struggle movement. (i.e. the KCK is the "real" PKK, while "the PKK" is the Turkish faction hiding in Iraq, itself divided between the political wing, and its subsidiary the HPG, which itself is the "armed" group.
Here's a simple chart of the armed movement:
Here's a more complex map/chart of the movement, with links to other political parties who officially claim to have no link to the PKK (lol) but do have a fair degree of independence. Their members/politicans do routinely get arrested and/or deposed under false accusations of terrorism by Turkey (and in Iran, where they often get straight up executed, though it is a much smaller movement there)
Link to Wikipedia if it doesn't allow hotlinking to imagesThere's also a complex number of supporting political organizations in Europe, mostly in Germany and somewhat in Belgium, France and possibly Sweden. Amberin Zaman mentions business interests as well, and the PKK has been accused of being into drug smuggling before. So I'm pretty sure most of this isn't going away, even if Erdogan's demand was that "all related organizations" disband. And the PYD/YPG/YPJ/SDF aren't going away any time soon in Syria, which Turkey does consider to be an even more serious threat on its border. But the PKK had effectively lost the armed struggle against the Turkish state, which kept using it as a scarecrow, so maybe this shift will allow for political movement in the right direction? It's definitely been going in the WRONG direction in Turkey since 2015, in terms of Kurdish political and civil rights.
Anyway I have a meta-post about the PKK, Hamas and armed resistance brewing in my head, which I should start drafting soon....
(Parenthesis: Apparently Öcalan was allowed to zoom in at the Congress, and that clearly would have been a presence very difficult to contradict in the movement, in light of the absolute personality cult around him in the movement.)
