XXIV. IS THE PKK A POLITICAL PARTY?

Political parties are the organizations with popular support and clarity and based on collective common sense. Including the parties defending change and structural transformations, they carry out this through social reconciliation and methods of reformism. As the inevitable elements of democracy parties should be the assurances of democracy, freedom, stability and consequently a humane order.123

It is public support which political parties get power from. And public will appear best in equal and democratic competition circumstances. Organizations that do not accept peaceful democratic competition conditions are not political parties. If their principal political means are violence, they are terrorist organizations or revolutionary groups to the extent of their purpose and support.124

The characteristics of the PKK are best described by the words of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan: "The tactics of the party is guerrilla. Now it directs political developments. We can say that nucleus of the guerrilla is a more condensed form of our party’s nature. It is not worth mentioning that the nucleus of the guerrilla consists of the party’s vanguard nuclei for a long time. This state is mostly the same. The most reliable members of the political party build up the guerrilla. In this case, it is the organization of guerrilla nucleus, style of management and methods of working and fighting that we must put more emphasis on... As it is known, top management directs a war. In our organization top managers of the war are parties."125

Öcalan clearly stated his methods and targets in the following excerpts from a program broadcast on Channel 4 of Swedish TV on November 4, 1990: "We attack Turkish targets no matter they are for either economic or social or touristic purposes. We will carry out all kinds of attacks by explosives and guns especially in Turkey. Those who go to Turkey are considered to be helping this country in its fight against us and for this reason we will take actions on them."126 The violent methods of the PKK may not always be conventional. In March 1992 the PKK poisoned water tanks at a Turkish Air Force compound in Istanbul with lethal concentrations of potassium cyanide but that was discovered before any casualties had been incurred. A January 1994 report by a Turkish television (but denied by the Turkish foreign minister) stated that the PKK had mounted a gas attack on a village in Eastern Turkey, killing 21 people.127

"...If we get better organized, do they think that capital will be comfortable in the metropolises, or tourism be left in peace? This is only a technical matter; we have not resorted to it this year but next year we will involve many other organizations and we will bring tourism to a halt. A bomb to each factory will be more than enough, a couple of rockets to bigger installations will be more than enough. We have enough potential to set up thousands of organizations."128 Accordingly, thousands of people including soldiers, civilians, the old, children and women have lost their lives since 1984 as the result of the PKK terror.129

In the West there are statements and stands confirming terrorist nature of the PKK. For instance, the USA has expressed that it sees the PKK as a terrorist organization and it fully supports Turkey’s fight against the PKK.130 The White House statement released on July 26, 1996 said: "the U.S. supports Turkey’s efforts to deal with the threat posed by the PKK terror." German federal government officially banned PKK on November 26, 1993.131 Following the operations of the French police in November 1993, "Kurdistan Committee" and "Federation of Cultural Associations of Patriotic Workers of Kurdistan in France" which were found to be front organizations of the PKK were dissolved.132

With its totalitarian Marxist-Leninist ideology and violence-centered policy, the PKK has distanced itself from the democratic process and before the 1994 local elections it threatened the parties to cease their political activities and not to participate in the elections in Southeastern Turkey.133

In addition to this terrorist nature of the PKK, its activities such as illicit drug trafficking, extortion, and robbery, all of which are normally considered criminal everywhere in the world, require the PKK to be called as not only terrorist but also a criminal organization.

123 Erciyes University, PKK Reality, p. 15.

124 Erciyes University, PKK Reality, p. 3.

125 Erciyes University, PKK Reality, p. 17.

126 Erciyes University, PKK Reality, p. 20. A similar announcement was made in a press conference by a member of Central Committee of the PKK in Beirut/Lebanon on June 1, 1997. See "The PKK Warned in Severe Terms Israel and the USA Which Gave Support to the Invasion of Southern Kurdistan [by Turkey]: You Would Also Be Hit!", Özgür Politika, 4 June 1997.

127 Ron Purver, "Chemical and Biological Terrorism", Conflict Studies, Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, No. 295 (December 1996/January 1997), p. 14.

128 Beatrice Fournier-Mickiewicz, Jean-Claude Salomon, Xavier Raufer, and Jean-Luc Vannier, Deux "guérillas dégénérées" exemplaires: Tigres de la Liberation de l’Eelam Tamil et le Parti des Travailleurs du Kurdistan (Paris: Numero Special Des Notes&Etudes de l’Institut de Criminologie, October 1995), p. 60.

129 The statement by Öcalan, MED TV, 15 October 1995.

130 For the figures and samples of the brutalities by PKK, see Ankara Journalist Association, PKK Reality..., pp. 38-40; Turkish Democracy Foundation, Human Rights..., pp. 9-12. Politicians who are critical of Turkey might witness the PKK terror at first hand: "The village men carried out the dead bodies wrapped in blankets. They unrolled them gently for us to see. One child had an arm crooked, as though trying to protect her face. There was blood everywhere. The oldest must have been about 17, the youngest about seven. The whole family had been asleep in the village of Gürümlü when terrorists smashed a window and lobbed in a hand grenade. The three girls were killed instantly, the baby’s cradle was destroyed. Outside all was apparently normal: a cockerel perched on a dung heap and hens pecked away in the sun. But the whole village, high in the ragged mountains on the Turkish side of the border, was in a state of shock. It was, the inhabitants said, the second attack by the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) on the village in a few days...", Ann Clwyd (British MP), The Times, 4 April 1995.

131 Dr. David L. Arnett (Press and Cultural Affairs official of the US Embassy), "The Statement by the US Embassy to Ankara", Akşam, 22 November 1995. "Human Rights Watch Group which has its center in the USA states that the PKK uses every method to obtain arms including drug trafficking and extortion", Akşam, 22 November 1995. According to the US State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996, the PKK is a Turkish separatist group that has conducted numerous terrorist attacks in Turkey and throughout Europe.

132 According to Eduard Vermander, Head of the Berlin State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the banned Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK) is the most dangerous group [among foreigners] and this communist cadre organization is responsible for criminal acts of the most serious kind. See Berliner Morgenpost, 2/3 October 1995.

133 Criss, "The Nature of...", p. 27; Michael Gunter, "The Changing Kurdish Problem in Turkey", Conflict Studies, Research Institute For the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, No. 270 (May 1994), p. 21.