Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)

A Kurdish organization established in Turkey in 1978. It initially sought to create the independent country of Kurdistan. Ideologically, the PKK combined the anti-colonial ideas with Marxism-Leninism. Since 1984, it has led the armed combat fight against Turkey which is responsible for the numerous reprisals of the PKK members. So far, the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people. In the mid-90s, the PKK members mostly abandoned Marxism-Leninism in favor of the idea of independence. Their main demands are now revolving around democracy, feminism and ecology, as well as the creation of the Federation of the Middle East States which would be based on these principles. The leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan has been serving life imprisonment sentence in a Turkish prison since 1999. He was convicted of killing all the people who died in the course of the ongoing Kurdish-Turkish conflict.