What is the background of PKK terrorism in Turkey?
In the late 1990s because of the successful military operations of the Turkish government and the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK was paralyzed. The capture of Ocalan and military operations against the group decreased the PKK’s abilities to attack Turkey so the PKK declared a cease-fire, pulled its members out of Turkey and changed its tactics including changing its name. Since early 2000 until 2007, PKK violence decreased and the PKK stopped being a household name in Turkey. Since 2006 we have seen a spike in PKK violence. There were expectations in the summer of 2006 that increasing PKK violence would pull Turkey into northern Iraq. However, we saw a unilateral cease-fire probably orchestrated by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. Why do you think that PKK has resorted again to violence? First of all, the PKK has never renounced violence. It declared unilateral cease-fires when it felt it necessary for its own purposes of finding room to grow or regrouping. It
