Who are the PKK, the militant group blamed by Turkey for Istanbul bombing that killed 6

The AP report quoted Soylu as saying Turkey would “pay back heavily” the perpetrators of the attack. He also criticised the US, a condolence message from which, he said, was like a “killer being the first to show up at a crime scene”. Turkey is angry at the US support for Syrian Kurdish groups.

The Kurdish people, their land and language

The Kurds are a major ethnic group who live in the mountainous geo-cultural region known as Kurdistan, which extends from southeastern Turkey in the west to northwestern Iran in the east, and from northern Iraq and northern Syria in the south to Armenia in the north.

Sizable populations of Kurds live in the highlands of southern and eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran, and in parts of south Armenia. But the Kurdish people are a minority in the populations of each of these countries taken as a whole. Small communities of Kurds live in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, and eastern Iran as well.

While the Kurds are an ancient people — Kurdish nationalists claim a history that goes back 2,500 years — they became identifiable as a distinct community in the 7th century, when most tribes in the area adopted Islam. The majority today are Sunni Muslim, with a minority following Sufism and other mystical practices.

The Kurds speak a language that is related to Persian and Pashto, although local dialects differ. Kurmanji, which most Kurds in Turkey speak, uses the Latin script; the other widely spoken Kurdish dialect, Sorani, is written in the Arabic script.

Kurds have long had a reputation for being fearless fighters, and they have served as mercenaries in many armies over the centuries. The mediaeval warrior Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty that replaced the Fatimids in Egypt and ruled over large parts of the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, was of Kurdish ethnicity.

The Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, speaks to media in front of a memorial at the scene of Sunday’s explosion on Istanbul’s popular pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022. (AP)

The Kurds’ long struggle for a homeland

The Kurds are often described as the world’s largest stateless ethnic group. The total Kurdish population across the countries in the region is estimated at between 25 million and 35 million — which is broadly comparable to the populations of Indian states like Assam, Jharkhand, Kerala, and Telangana, and of countries like Canada and Australia.

But their numbers, and their distinct cultural and ethnic identity notwithstanding, the Kurdish people have never had their independent national homeland.

At the Versailles peace conference after World War I, the Kurdish Ottoman diplomat Mehmet Sherif Pasha proposed borders of a new Kurdistan that covered parts of modern Turkey, Iraq, and Iran; however, the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which partitioned the old Ottoman dominions, marked out a much smaller territory, entirely in what is now Turkey.

But Turkey negotiated with the Allied powers and, in 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne overtook Sèvres and ended the idea of a self-governing Kurdistan.

Over the decades that followed, the Kurds made repeated attempts at establishing a de facto Kurdistan with defined national borders — and in the process attracted massive Turkish repression, including bans on the Kurdish language, names, songs, and dress.

In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the infamous military commander Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, known as Chemical Ali, attacked them with chemical weapons.

In Iran, Kurdish uprisings in the 1980s and 1990s were ruthlessly crushed.

The PKK and its armed movement

In 1978, the Marxist revolutionary Abdullah Öcalan formed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê or PKK in Kurdish) with the aim of setting up an independent Kurdistan.

PKK guerrillas fought the Turkish army from 1984 until Öcalan’s capture in 1999, during which some 40,000 Kurdish civilians were killed. Sporadic terrorist attacks continued until 2013, when the PKK declared a ceasefire.

The ceasefire collapsed after Turkey joined the war against the Islamic State in 2015 and started to bomb PKK targets in Iraq. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has led sweeping crackdowns on both PKK militants and Kurdish civilians, including lawmakers and activists. Erdogan has long used the state’s campaign against terrorism to rally his base, and he has been turning up the rhetoric ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled in 2023.

A note on the website of Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the PKK as a terrorist organisation, which is listed as such by “numerous countries, including the members of the European Union and others such as United States, Canada and Australia”. The PKK, it says, is responsible for more than 40,000 deaths since 1984; its “ideology is founded on revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and separatist ethno-nationalism”, and it “wants to suppress the diversity of Türkiye, prevent participation and integration of Türkiye’s citizens of Kurdish origin and intimidate the people in the region”.

According to the website, the “PKK’s primary targets include police, military, economic, and social assets in Türkiye. PKK also attacks civilians and diplomatic and consular facilities. PKK is also involved in extortion, arms smuggling, and drug trafficking.”

The Democratic Union Party in Syria

According to the Turkish government, the PKK’s offshoots and affiliated organisations include the PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê, or Kurdistan Free Life Party) in Iran, the Tawgari Azadi in Iraq, and the PYD or YPG in Syria, all of which are part of the umbrella KCK (Koma Civakên Kurdistanê, or Kurdistan Communities Union) organisation.

“PYD/YPG’s affiliation with PKK is clear. PYD/YPG was set up under the control of PKK terrorist organization in 2003. They share the same leadership cadres, organizational structure, strategies and tactics, military structure, propaganda tools, financial resources and training camps,” the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

The US, while agreeing with its NATO ally Turkey on the PKK, disagrees on the PYD. Syrian Kurdish groups fought against the Islamic State in Syria.