Abdullah Öcalan: The Founder of the PKK and the Kurdish Question in Turkey (1948–)
- Rezan Babakir
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
No figure in the Kurdish political world since Mustafa Barzani has generated as much controversy, as much devotion, or as much international attention as Abdullah Öcalan. He is the founder and long-serving leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party — the PKK — which has fought a decades-long armed conflict against the Turkish state that has claimed more than forty thousand lives. He is also, to millions of Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and the diaspora, Apo — Uncle — a figure of near-messianic significance whose imprisonment since 1999 on the Turkish prison island of İmralı has not diminished his authority in the Kurdish political imagination. Understanding the Kurdish question in Turkey in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is impossible without understanding Abdullah Öcalan.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Ömerli — The Village That Produced a Revolutionary
Abdullah Öcalan was born on 4 April 1948 in Ömerli, a village near Halfeti in Urfa Province — a predominantly Kurdish region in southeastern Turkey that had been subjected to the full force of the Turkish Republic's Kurdification programme, including the suppression of the Kurdish language, the removal of Kurdish place names, and the erasure of Kurdish cultural identity from public life. He grew up in poverty in a large peasant family, speaking Kurdish at home while being educated in Turkish at school — experiencing in miniature the cultural schizophrenia that the Turkish state imposed on its Kurdish citizens. This formative experience of cultural denial and economic marginalisation would shape his political radicalism.
Part 2: Ankara and the Formation of a Political Mind
Öcalan entered Ankara University's Faculty of Political Science in the late 1960s — one of the most politically charged periods in Turkish history, when student leftist movements were proliferating across the campuses and Marxist-Leninist organisations were competing for the loyalty of radicalised youth. He absorbed the idiom of revolutionary Marxism that was the dominant language of the Turkish left, but applied it to a specifically Kurdish analysis: he argued that the Kurds of Turkey constituted an internally colonised nationality, that the Turkish state was an instrument of their national oppression, and that armed struggle was the necessary response. He was arrested and imprisoned briefly in the early 1970s, which intensified rather than diminished his political commitment.
Part 3: Founding the PKK — A New Kind of Kurdish Politics
The Kurdistan Workers' Party — Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK — was founded on 27 November 1978 at a meeting in the village of Fis in Diyarbakır Province. Öcalan was twenty-nine years old. The PKK was from its founding a distinctive organisation: its Marxist-Leninist ideology distinguished it from the tribal and Islamic-inflected Kurdish movements of previous generations, its focus on the Turkish Kurds gave it a separate base from the Iraqi Kurdish parties, and its emphasis on disciplined, cell-based clandestine organisation gave it a resilience that tribal movements had typically lacked. Öcalan's personal authority within the organisation was, from the beginning, absolute.
Part 4: The Armed Struggle Begins — 1984 and Its Consequences
On 15 August 1984, PKK fighters attacked Turkish military and police targets in the towns of Eruh and Şırnak in southeastern Turkey, beginning the armed campaign that would reshape Turkish politics for decades. The 1984 attack was the opening of a conflict that would eventually kill more than forty thousand people, displace millions of Kurds from their villages, and define the Kurdish question in Turkey for a generation. The Turkish military responded with massive counter-insurgency operations — village evacuations, the arming of Kurdish village guards, extra-judicial killings, and sustained operations in the mountainous border regions where the PKK had established its bases.
Part 5: The PKK's Ideology — From Marxism-Leninism to Democratic Confederalism
One of the most significant aspects of Öcalan's career has been his capacity for ideological evolution. The PKK began as a Marxist-Leninist organisation committed to the establishment of an independent Kurdish state through armed struggle. By the mid-1990s, Öcalan was already moving toward a more flexible position, publicly abandoning the goal of a separate Kurdish state in favour of democratic autonomy within Turkey. After his capture in 1999, he developed from his prison cell an entirely new ideological framework — 'democratic confederalism' — drawing on the anarchist political theory of the American thinker Murray Bookchin. This framework combined Kurdish autonomy with ecological politics, women's liberation (particularly the concept of 'jineoloği', or the science of women), and grassroots democratic governance without a state. It became the ideological basis for the Rojava administration in northern Syria.
Part 6: Exile and the International Dimension
After the Turkish military coup of 1980, Öcalan fled to Syria, where he established the PKK's external headquarters in Damascus under the protection of the Assad government, which found the PKK useful as an instrument of pressure against Turkey. The PKK also established bases in the Beka'a Valley in Lebanon, and maintained networks across the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. The organisation's European dimension was particularly significant: the large Kurdish migrant communities in Germany, Sweden, France, and the United Kingdom provided financial support, political lobbying, and a communications infrastructure that sustained the PKK's international visibility.
Part 7: Capture, İmralı, and Continued Influence
On 15 February 1999, Abdullah Öcalan was captured by Turkish intelligence operatives in Nairobi, Kenya, after a months-long international chase that saw him expelled from Syria, refused asylum by several European states, and finally located at the Greek embassy in Kenya. He was brought to Turkey and sentenced to death — later commuted to life imprisonment — and imprisoned on the island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara. He has been held there since. His capture triggered massive protests across the Kurdish world and among diaspora communities, including the storming of diplomatic missions in several European cities. From his island prison, Öcalan has continued to issue writings and position statements that carry enormous weight in the movements that follow his leadership.
Part 8: Rojava — The PKK Idea Takes Root in Syria
The Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, created an unexpected space for the PKK's ideological project. As Assad's government withdrew from Kurdish areas in northern Syria, the People's Protection Units (YPG) — the Syrian Kurdish militia closely aligned with the PKK — took control, and by 2013 had established the self-administration of Rojava (Western Kurdistan): a region governed according to Öcalan's principles of democratic confederalism, with a constitutionally mandated role for women (including the co-presidency system and the all-female YPJ fighting units), and a multi-ethnic, multi-religious governance structure. Rojava gained international prominence through the Battle of Kobani (2014–2015), in which YPG and YPJ fighters held off an Islamic State siege with American air support, and the subsequent campaign to defeat ISIS across northeastern Syria.
Part 9: Legacy — The Most Controversial Kurdish Leader of the Century
Öcalan's legacy is, like the man himself, deeply divided. To his supporters, he is the figure who gave political voice and armed capacity to the most suppressed Kurdish population — the Kurds of Turkey, denied even the existence of their identity for decades. To his critics, including many in the human rights community, the PKK under his leadership committed serious abuses: the killing of civilians, the assassination of critics, the forced recruitment of fighters, and an internal culture of violence directed at perceived class enemies and traitors. The Turkish state designates the PKK a terrorist organisation, as do the United States and the European Union. The democratic confederalist project in Rojava has attracted admiration from sections of the international left. The truth of Öcalan's legacy is that it cannot be separated from the unresolved Kurdish question itself: his significance is inseparable from the political failure of the Turkish state to address Kurdish rights by any means short of violence.
Chronology of Abdullah Öcalan
4 April 1948 — Born in Ömerli, Halfeti, Urfa Province, Turkey.
Late 1960s — Studies at Ankara University Faculty of Political Science; becomes involved in leftist Kurdish politics.
27 November 1978 — Founds the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) at Fis village, Diyarbakır Province.
1980 — Turkish military coup; Öcalan flees to Syria, establishes PKK headquarters in Damascus.
15 August 1984 — PKK launches armed campaign with attacks in Eruh and Şırnak.
1998 — Expelled from Syria; moves between European states seeking asylum.
15 February 1999 — Captured in Nairobi; brought to Turkey; imprisoned on İmralı island.
Post-1999 — Develops democratic confederalism ideology from prison; remains central to PKK-affiliated movements.
2012–2019 — Rojava self-administration established in northern Syria; YPG/YPJ defeat ISIS at Kobani.
References
3. Marcus, Aliza. Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence. NYU Press, 2007.
7. Olson, Robert. The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s. University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Abdullah Öcalan?
Abdullah Öcalan (born 1948) is the founder and long-serving leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought an armed conflict against the Turkish state since 1984. Captured in 1999 and imprisoned on İmralı island, he remains the central ideological and political figure for PKK-affiliated movements in Turkey, Syria, and the Kurdish diaspora. From prison he developed the political theory of democratic confederalism, which became the ideological basis of the Rojava administration in northern Syria.
What is democratic confederalism?
Democratic confederalism is the political philosophy Öcalan developed in prison, drawing on the work of American anarchist thinker Murray Bookchin. It proposes a system of stateless self-governance through networked local councils, combining Kurdish autonomy with ecology, women's liberation (codified through the concept of jineoloği), and multi-ethnic democratic participation. It is the governing ideology of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava).
Why is Öcalan still significant despite being in prison?
His imprisonment has not diminished his political authority among his followers. From İmralı, he has issued manifestos and position statements that continue to shape PKK-aligned movements. The HDP/DEM Party in Turkey, the YPG/YPJ in Syria, and various diaspora political organisations all draw on his ideological framework. His continued imprisonment is itself a political cause that mobilises his supporters and defines the Kurdish question in Turkey as a human rights issue.
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