Who are Kurdish PKK? Group ended Turkey insurgency after over 40 years

Istanbul: The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has formally dissolved itself according to a report by a news agency close to the group on Monday, has battled the Turkish state for more than four decades. In February, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's founder who is jailed in Turkey, appealed for it to disarm and dissolve.

The decision opens the door to ending a conflict that has ravaged southeastern Turkey, and will also have significant implications for Syria and Iraq.

Here are details about the PKK:

What is the PKK?

The PKK is a militant group founded by Ocalan in southeast Turkey in 1978 with an ideology based on Marxist-Leninist ideas.

What does the group want?

The PKK launched its insurgency against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an independent Kurdish state. It later moderated its goals to seeking greater Kurdish rights and limited autonomy in southeast Turkey.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, most of them militants. Much of the fighting was focused in rural areas of mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, but the group also conducted attacks in urban areas including Ankara and Istanbul.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the United States, the European Union and some other countries.

What is the group's history?

The PKK operated in Syria until 1998 when Ocalan had to flee amid growing Turkish pressure. He was captured by Turkish special forces several months later in Kenya and sentenced to death by a Turkish court in 1999. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in October 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty and he is still imprisoned on an island near Istanbul.

Fighting dwindled after Ocalan's capture, which led to the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Turkey.

After a flare-up in violence, Turkey and the PKK became involved in peace talks from late 2012. That process collapsed in July 2015, unleashing the bloodiest period of the conflict and resulting in extensive destruction in some urban areas of southeast Turkey. In October of 2024, Devlet Bahceli, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader and President Tayyip Erdogan's political ally, shocked Ankara when he suggested Ocalan could be released if he announced an end to his group's insurgency.

Erdogan's ruling AKP backed the proposal and leaders of the opposition pro-Kurdish DEM party, which seeks greater Kurdish rights and autonomy, has held talks with Ocalan at his prison. The PKK, declared an immediate ceasefire following the call and said it was ready to convene a congress, as Ocalan urged, but the necessary security conditions should be established for him to "personally direct and run" it.

Where has the conflict been focused more recently?

In recent years the conflict shifted to neighbouring northern Iraq where the PKK has mountain bases and Turkey has dozens of outposts. Ankara has launched operations against the militants there, including air strikes with warplanes and combat drones, which Baghdad has said violates its sovereignty.

Yet Iraq and Turkey had agreed to boost anti-PKK cooperation, and Baghdad labelled it a banned organisation for the first time.

Turkey also targets the YPG militia in Syria, regarding it as a PKK affiliate, and has conducted cross-border operations alongside allied Syrian forces to push it back from its border. However the YPG spearheads the SDF, the primary ally of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.

Washington's support for the SDF has been a source of U.S.-Turkey tension for years.

The ouster in December of former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad - whom Ankara long opposed, backing Syrian rebels - bolstered Turkey's position and influence there. It called for the YPG to be disbanded and its leaders expelled from Syria, and threatened a Turkish military operation to "crush" the group if its demands were not met. Turkish, U.S., Syrian and Kurdish officials have sought an agreement on the future of the Syrian Kurdish fighters.