Why the PKK failed

Images seen around the world: in a symbolic ceremony in July, PKK fighters in the Kurdish part of Iraq burned their weapons.

In May, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, called for an end to armed struggle and for his organisation to disarm, a historic appeal which has fuelled hopes of an end to a decades-long armed conflict. The hoped-for dissolution of the PKK also marks a turning point for the network of Kurdish militias throughout the Middle East.

The latest developments do not yet signal the end of the PKK, but they do show that Öcalan has arrived at a more realistic assessment of the political situation. His apparent aim is to secure the movement|s survival through peaceful means by renouncing rigid ideological demands.

The PKK was founded in 1978 under Öcalan's leadership in response to decades of political and cultural oppression of Turkey's Kurdish population. Combining Marxist convictions with Kurdish nationalism, its stated goal was the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.

At that time, destabilising Turkey was in the Soviet Union's interest, as Turkey was a member of NATO and its control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Strait represented a strategic obstacle for the Soviet Navy.

The PKK's armed struggle began in 1984, a few years after its founding, during the government of Turgut Özal. Özal, whose mother was of Kurdish origin, was the first Turkish head of government to openly criticise the extreme pan-Turkism of the elites in Ankara.

Özal was in favour of a pluralistic society. He spoke out against ethnic and religious discrimination and initiated economic reforms. In practice, he demonstrated a willingness to break down authoritarian structures in favour of freedom of expression, a market economy and a strong private sector.

Yet it was at precisely this point that Öcalan launched a civil war, an escalation that not only prevented the implementation of planned reforms, but also forced Özal—under pressure from the military and Kemalist forces—to backtrack. Describing the first armed PKK attacks as the work of "a gang of bandits", Özal gave the military free rein to crack down on the PKK.

That was the start of a decades-long war which has claimed the lives of around 40,000 people, most of them Kurdish civilians, and wounded over 100,000 people, leaving many with permanent disabilities. More than 200 villages have been burned to the ground and their inhabitants displaced.

Early leaders of the PKK believed that a successful uprising in Turkey would also mobilise Kurdish populations in Syria, Iran and Iraq and enable the establishment of a united, independent Kurdistan. But this has remained an illusion.

An ideology in decline

In the early 1970s, Öcalan was a young activist in the kind of left-wing circles that attached more importance to ideological convictions than to ethnic affiliation. At that time, he still saw himself as part of the Turkish nation and even named his son Osman, a traditional Turkish name. But over time, a mixture of misinterpreted Marxism-Leninism and identity-based fantasies shepherded him down a different path.

It was under this synthesis of ideologies that Öcalan imagined a fictional Kurdish working class as the vanguard of a proletarian revolution in Turkey. He ignored the fact that the Kurdish regions are predominantly agricultural and that the proletariat, in the Marxist sense, accounted for barely one per cent of the population. Notably, none of the 45 founding members of the PKK were actually workers.

In addition, Öcalan never clearly defined where his desired "Kurdistan" was to be located. At times, he spoke of a Greater Kurdistan that would include all Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Armenia and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, as well as the more than two million Kurdish workers in Western Europe. At others, he limited his vision to a few provinces in southeast Anatolia, even though a significant proportion of Turkey's Kurdish population had long since left the region.

To sidestep these contradictions, Öcalan began, from 1978 onwards, to emphasise the class-based nature of the PKK. The Kurdish working class was to take over the leadership of the entire Turkish proletariat and—following the example of the Russian October Revolution—establish a socialist system in Anatolia.

This was a logic full of contradictions. If the focus was to be on social class, why the ethnic labelling? If a proletarian revolution was the goal, then why wouldn't the Turkish workers who made up over 95 per cent of the proletariat take the lead?

In addition, the Kurdish-dominated southeastern region was strongly influenced by religious groups such as the Naqshbandiyya and the Alevis, groups that had little time for the PKK's atheistic Marxist worldview. From the outset, it was also clear that the Turkish state would not accept such a secessionist project.

Öcalan later proposed a federal solution in which an autonomous Kurdish republic would exist alongside Turkey, a plan that also met with little enthusiasm.

Around the turn of the millennium, Öcalan settled on a new direction, characterised by the concept of Democratic Confederalism. This model, which he expanded on from 1999 onwards, moved away from the classic Marxist-Leninist understanding of the state and instead pursued a grassroots democratic, multi-ethnic and feminist social order that focused on autonomy and self-government.

But even this new direction could not disguise the fact that the PKK continued to face significant challenges, both within Kurdish society and in its relations with both the Turkish state and the international community. Ultimately, its failure can be attributed to the following:

1. The ideological collapse of left-wing movements

A central misunderstanding of many left-wing groups is a distorted interpretation of the concept of "justice", particularly concerning the use of violence against civilians. Many groups transformed from grassroots movements into organisations that pursued their goals with Machiavellian logic. The moral claim to justice gave way to a ruthless logic of violence.

A turning point in this context was the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Until then, the USSR had been the most important ideological and material backer of left-wing militant groups worldwide. With its demise, many of these groups, including the PKK, lost their most important ideological backing.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also revealed the fundamental weaknesses of the communist model of society. Rather than justice and equality, dictatorship, oppression and economic inefficiency prevailed.

In the case of the PKK, many Kurds criticised violence and bombings in civilian areas as unacceptable. It is important to note that social support for the PKK within the Kurdish population varied significantly across regions and over time.

While some population groups recognised the PKK as a legitimate representative of Kurdish interests, other pro-Kurdish groups distanced themselves from the PKK over time, including the former Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and various civil society organisations.

2. Kurds as geopolitical pawns

A study of the history of the Middle East shows that Kurdish militias have been repeatedly taken advantage of and then abandoned. Despite a long history of integration into multi-ethnic societies, Kurds have been tactically deployed at pivotal moments, both regionally and internationally, without establishing genuine alliances or sustained support.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Iranian Shah supported Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq to put pressure on the Ba'athist government in Baghdad, which was closely allied with the Soviet Union. This ultimately forced Iraq to recognise Iranian territorial claims on the Shatt al-Arab river in the Algiers Agreement (1975). Shortly thereafter, Iran withdrew its support for the Kurds.

Iraq, for its part, used Kurdish militias to destabilise Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988), only to use brutal force against the same Kurdish population during the Anfal operations between 1986 and 1989.

Israel, in cooperation with Iran, also supported the Iraqi Kurds as a way to counter Saddam Hussein's pan-Arab ambitions. This support was also discontinued after the Algiers Agreement.

In the 1980s and 1990s, close strategic cooperation developed between Israel and Turkey, with Israel supporting the Turkish government in its fight against the PKK. It was even reported that it was Mossad that tracked down Öcalan in 1999 and handed him over to Turkey.

With the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, alliances changed again. To weaken the Assad regime, Israel and the US supported Kurdish militias in Syria, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were considered allies of the PKK.

The SDF, whose core includes the Kurdish militia group YPG, became a partner of Western states, particularly during the fight against the so-called "Islamic State" (IS). In this context, the Kurdish movement experienced broad international recognition and solidarity for the first time, both for its military role and for the suffering of Kurdish population groups, in particular the Yazidi community.

3. New realities in the Middle East

Öcalan's announcement that he would disarm the PKK must also be understood in the context of fundamental geopolitical change. The world order in which the PKK was founded no longer exists. The Middle East has also declined in importance within US foreign policy.

After the Syrian Assad regime lost control over large parts of the country during the Syrian war, and especially after the US withdrawal from Syria in 2019, the US and Israel significantly reduced their support for the SDF.

Turkey, which had initially largely tolerated the SDF, increasingly launched military offensives against it due to its close ties to the PKK. The SDF now avoids maintaining active connections with the PKK in order to prevent further attacks.

In northern Iraq, the US had already made clear the limits of its support for Kurdish forces when it strongly rejected the independence referendum in the Kurdistan Region in 2017. The subsequent blockade of the autonomous region by central governments in Baghdad, Iran and Turkey made it clear that no Kurdish movement can achieve territorial gains without the consent of the regional powers.

Meanwhile, even the regional government in northern Iraq is trying to distance itself from armed Kurdish groups in order to secure its survival as a semi-autonomous entity. To avoid jeopardising relations with Tehran, it has also restricted the activities of the PJAK, the Iranian branch of the PKK. This branch operates primarily from northern Iraq, as it is militarily suppressed by Iran.

Turkey's regular air strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq have led more and more Kurdish stakeholders to realise that safe havens for armed groups pose a threat to the entire region. As a result, the balance of power in the Middle East has shifted significantly to the detriment of Kurdish militias.

The PKK as a political movement?

Abdullah Öcalan has likely realised by now that neither regional nor international players have a lasting interest in supporting Kurdish militias, and that their support usually serves only short-term goals.

Above all, the abandonment of the Syrian Kurds by the US in 2019 has made it clear to him that there are no reliable alliances when strategic interests, such as relations with NATO member Turkey, are at stake.

Moreover, as the ideological foundations of the PKK—communism and Kurdish nationalism—have lost much of their relevance, and Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq are increasingly seeking political integration rather than confrontation, Öcalan now seems ready to transform the PKK into a political movement.

His statement in May 2025 indicates a corresponding shift in thinking, away from armed struggle and toward dialogue and integration. If this is actually implemented, it would mark the end of one of the longest-running armed conflicts in the Middle East.