PKK 5th Congress Update

By Ismet Imset

     Unlike other armed guerilla movements which have left traces
in contemporary world history mainly owing to their humanitarian
and just cause at final analysis, the PKK is known for gaining
more popularity owing to its somewhat precarious dedication to
rough internal discipline and its obsession of setting new goals
every four years, keeping up with a changing world and vital
changes in regional conditions.
     Along with its tight and professional organizational
structure which is made out of a political nucleas, the party,
its full-time fighting force the ARGK and a wide-spread popular
front, the ERNK, The PKK owes much of its existence to this
adaptability and more important of all, Turkey's own policy
mistakes.
     The mistakes and ignorance of Ankara placed aside, it can be
seen that the PKK, one of the most expansive guerilla
organizations in the Middle East, survives mainly through its
adaptability. An adaptability which, according to many
organizational sources, is closely linked to the scores of
meetings held in its 20 years of history.
     Prior to Turkey's prolonged incursion into northern Iraq
last month, the PKK held such a major meeting in the region
during which it not only reviewed 20 years of warfare but boasted
to have taken major decisions to boost the organization into the
ranks of a contemporary, more credible, guerilla movement.
     Looking at it in practice though, both western and Turkish
experts are highly sceptical. The PKK, despite its mass support,
is regarded as a "terrorist organization" by a majority of
countries and although there is criticism of Ankara's handling of
its Kurdish crisis, foreign capitals intend to differentiate the
PKK from this.
     Although the exact meeting place for 317 delegates is not
yet known, Ankara-based Turkish intelligence experts believed the
so-called "5th Victory Congress" was held in Haftanin, a camp
area which was the focus of recent Turkish raids.
     Between January 8 to 27, 1995, hundreds of Kurdish guerilla
leaders and representatives flooded into a massive underground
meeting hall, fully equiped with infrastructural facilities, to
discuss the past and future of this movement. As they met in what
PKK publications described as "a victorious atmosphere," the
death toll of Turkey's bloody Kurdish crisis steadily rose to
over 15,000 with at least 9,000 of them being alleged militants
according to Ankara's recently announced figures. The rest of the
casualties were either civilians or Turkish security personel.
     The importance of the January Congress of the PKK was that
it coincided with major diplomatic moves on part of Turkish
Kurds. Efforts to set up a Kurdish Parliament in Exile were
finalized after the meeting. Immediately before, the PKK issued a
"Declaration of Intention" to abide by humanitarian laws and
rules specified by the Geneva Convention. In the Congress itself,
only 231 delegates had the right to vote while 86 had the right
for representation without voting. Elections were reportedly held
to choose a new 29-member Central Executive Board as well as to
name the new members of the chairmanship, military, political and
training councils. Also, new members were elected for the central
disciplinary board and a special council for front activities.
     Among the most important decisions taken during the Congress
was the PKK's termination of the use of "General Secretary" to
describe its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Instead, a new Chairmanship
Council structure was established in which Ocalan, as chairman,
will precide over six more members. Those elected to the council
other than him were Cemil Bayik, Duran Kalkan, Murat Karayilan,
Halil Atac, Haydar Kaytan and the PKK's former European flank
representative Mustafa Karasu.
     Another highlight of the meeting was a resolution adopted to
abandon the traditional Cold War symbols of the hammer and sickle
and drop them completely from the PKK's party flag and amblem
which were promptly renewed. The PKK later boasted for being the
first post-Cold War group to take such a "pioneering step" to
drop "the burdens of real socialism." Indeed the movement, which
started off twenty years ago as a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish group
in Turkey, also rejected during the Congress the concept of
Soviet socialism and "other dogmatic policies," emphasizing once
again that real socialism and organizational structure had to
keep up with changes in world history. It denounced Soviet
socialism as "the most primitive and violent era of socialism." 
     The Congress decisions included a major reference to the
importance in this new era of political and diplomatic activities
to be carried out along with guerilla warfare. Diplomacy in this
period was thus accepted as important as military struggle and
its significance was stressed in related decisions to boost the
PKK's diplomatic and political activities throughout the world. 
     Decisions taken during the Congress included the restoration
of credibility for PKK members killed in the past by mistake or
through misjudgment and changing certain commanding positions in
Kurdish regions of Turkey. Also a decision was taken to announce
a partial amnesty for state-armed Village Guards, noting that
they had until May 1995 to drop their weapons.
     An outstanding debate during the meeting, according to PKK
sources, was the essential element of preserving human rights
during guerilla operations and to refrain from causing any harm
to innocent civilians, be they of Kurdish or Turkish origin.
Military targets for future guerilla warfare were thus carefully
selected and outlined with the main aim coming out as the
creation of a full fledged Kurdish army. "The army is to contain,
along with its current regular guerilla units, major task forces
and special storm units trained and capable to carry out more
centralized and active operations against enemy forces," a PKK
source said.
     Despite this Congress though, the Turkish incursion into
northern Iraq appeared to have struck a wrong chord in PKK ranks
as grassroots mainly in Germany went amock with attacks against
Turkish business places and even mosques. The incident followed a
major PKK attack on the Kurdish civilian settlement of Hamzali
where nearly two dozen people, mainly women and children, were
gunned down. Over last month, mass demonstrations spread
throughout Europe while Ankara claimed that at least four
civilians had recently been killed by the PKK again.
     In early April, the organization further marred its
diplomatic drive by kidnapping two Turkish reporters working for
the foreign press. It also threatened tourism interests. Ankara
officials said they had actually seized new PKK plans to attack
tourism sites in Turkey.
     Turkish officials argue now that the PKK is aware of western
concern related to human rights in Turkey and is aiming to
exploit the conditions through bogus promises of respecting human
rights. Since 1991, with the government's abandoning of Kurdish
policy issues to the military, Turkey's human rights has been
placed under the magnifying glass by the West.
     The PKK, on the other hand, accepts this is in its benefit
and says its record is clearly observable and cleaner than that
of Ankara - blamed for torching and evacuating more than 1,500
villages in Turkey alone. Turkey's human rights record was
further darkened with reports of civilian abductions and
killings, along with village bombings, coming out from northern
Iraq. The new leadership structure of the PKK, determined in the
last Congress, implies that military cadres have more dominance
on the organization's policies but that activities will be more
centralized in the future. Ocalan has vowed to create special
"storm units" to carry out armed attacks and is seeking to
justify his struggle in the eyes of the West, using Turkey's
denial of basic cultural and social rights for the Kurds.
Already, he appears to have succeeded in establishing the most
expansive guerilla organization in the Middle East region.
     Despite previous Turkish claims that the PKK was no more
than "a handful of terrorist bandits," the Chief of Staff office
issued astonishing casualty figures this month. According to the
military, a total of 9,691 PKK militants had been killed by
troops since 1984 and along with those arrested, 16,970 PKK
militants had been put away. 
     Officials said in April, several weeks into the north Iraqi
incursion, that over 300 PKK militants were killed in this region
as well. But the figure was in sharp contrast to Ankara's
original figure to justify the invasion, that 2,000 militants
were in northern Iraq. Both Kurdish sources and Turkish soldiers
accepted that the PKK had abandoned its Iraqi positions two weeks
before the incursion and left behind only a token resistence
force to harrass Turkish units.
     With its new organizational structure and policy that have
gone through a face-lift, the PKK appears to become an even more
difficult problem to solve for Ankara. Turkey has fallen at odds
with its western allies for pushing some 35,000 troops into
northern Iraq and although Prime Minister Tansu Ciller seems to
have gained some popularity back at home, more western attention
is now concentrated on the essence of the problem.
     Western demands on the Kurdish issue seem hardly limited to
the Iraqi incursion. Turkey, throughout its republic order, is
accused of denying basic social and cultural rights for the
Kurds, attempting to forcefully assimilate this population of 12
million into its dominant Sunni-Turkish culture. Many of its
allies regard the PKK as an end result of the persecution of the
Turkish-Kurdish community and economic hardships in the
Southeast. The PKK is still condemned as a terrorist
organization, for its acts of violence, but the solution is
sought in the marginilization of terror through cultural autonomy
and improved rights for the Kurds. Ankara, much under the
influence of its own military propaganda, maintains that any
additional rights would only lead to a division of the country.
Now with the PKK accompanying its military activities with a
diplomatic drive supported by pro-Kurdish newspapers, magazines
and television broadcasts along with a western audience
sympathetic to plain Kurdish demands, Turkey is bound to face new
problems on the international platform.
     The operation in northern Iraq, continuous reports of human
rights violations and its insistence not to address the Kurdish
problem separately from PKK terrorism appears to be endangering
the country's relations with its essential allies and increasing
the risk of a fatal isolation.
     Ciller, as always, seems to have abadoned the Kurdish policy
issue to the hands of the military who, evidently, have no such
concern...

(This article was posted to soc.culture.kurdish)