Kurdistan Workers’ Party summary

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Last Updated: May 12, 2025

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Militant Kurdish nationalist organization. Founded in 1978, the group sought to establish an independent Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey. It attacked Turkish interests and fellow Kurds suspected of collaboration with the Turkish government, often from bases in Iraq and Syria. By the 1990s the PKK had shifted its focus from independence to greater Kurdish autonomy within Turkey. The group’s leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was arrested by Turkey in 1999 and was thereafter tried and convicted of treason. The PKK declared a ceasefire in March 2025; two months later, it announced it would disband.

Kurd Summary

Kurd, any member of an ethnic and linguistic group concentrated in the Taurus Mountains of southeastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and western Armenia, and other, adjacent areas. Most Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq,

terrorism Summary

Terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by

nationalism Summary

Nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. This article discusses the origins and history of nationalism to the 1980s. For later developments in the history of nationalism, see 20th-century