Who are the PKK?
A2: The PKK is a Maoist terrorist organization of likely 3,500 to 5,000 ethnically Kurdish guerilla fighters (of almost equal numbers men and women). Turkey has waged a bloody counterinsurgency and counterterrorist war against the PKK since 1984, leaving more than 37,000 dead, including dozens of Turkish security forces in a flare-up of PKK violence over the past several months. Although the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured by Turkey with U.S. assistance in 1999 and has since been convicted and imprisoned, the organization continues to operate under a number of top lieutenants still at large. PKK members are overwhelmingly from Turkey’s less-developed southeast and operate from safe havens in the remote, mountainous, tri-border region of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. The PKK claims to seek political autonomy for the region’s Kurdish population, including the 15 to 20 million Kurds in Turkey and roughly 10 to 12 million in Iran, Iraq, and Syria. A number of Kurdish politicians
