The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla group primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria. It was founded in Ziyaret, Lice, on 27 November 1978 and was involved in asymmetric warfare in the Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency (with several ceasefires between 1993 and 2013–2015). Although the PKK initially sought an independent Kurdish state, in the 1990s, its official platform changed to seeking autonomy and increased political and cultural rights for Kurds within Turkey.
The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan. Some analysts and organizations disagree with this designation, believing that the PKK no longer engages in organized terrorist activities or systemically targets civilians. Turkey has often characterized the demand for education in Kurdish as supporting terrorist activities by the PKK. Finland and Sweden's alleged support for the PKK is one of the points which caused Turkey to oppose Finland and Sweden's NATO accession bids.
The PKK's ideology was originally a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Marxism–Leninism with Kurdish nationalism, seeking the foundation of an independent Kurdistan. The PKK was formed as part of a growing discontent over the suppression of Turkey's Kurds, in an effort to establish linguistic, cultural, and political rights for the Kurdish minority. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. The Turkish government denied the existence of Kurds and the PKK was portrayed trying to convince Turks of being Kurds.
The PKK has been involved in armed clashes with Turkish security forces since 1979, but the full-scale insurgency did not begin until 15 August 1984, when the PKK announced a Kurdish uprising. Since the conflict began, more than 40,000 people have died, most of whom being Turkish Kurdish civilians. In 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured and imprisoned. In May 2007, serving and former members of the PKK set up the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), an umbrella organisation of Kurdish organisations in Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian, and Syrian Kurdistan. In 2013, the PKK declared a ceasefire and began slowly withdrawing its fighters to Iraqi Kurdistan as part of a peace process with the Turkish state. The ceasefire broke down in July 2015. Both the PKK and the Turkish state have been accused of engaging in terror tactics and targeting civilians. The PKK has bombed city centres and recruited child soldiers, and conducted several attacks that massacred civilians. Turkey has depopulated and burned down thousands of Kurdish villages and massacred Kurdish civilians in an attempt to root out PKK militants.
On 1 March 2025, the PKK declared a ceasefire with Turkey, and on 12 May, announced plans for a total dissolution of the organisation. In August 2026 a law was passed by the Turkish parliament which would give conditional pardon for thousands of fighters in the party. It would take full effect when the National Security Council agrees that the PKK has fully disbanded and surrendered its weapons. Members convicted of intentional homicide or sentenced to life terms before 2005 would not be included.
As a result of the Turkish military coup of 1971, many militants of the revolutionary left were deprived of a public appearance. Movements like the People's Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) or the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist (TKP-ML) were cracked down upon and forbidden. Subsequently, several of the remaining political actors of the Turkish left organized away from the public in university dorms or in meetings in shared apartments. In 1972–1973, the organization's core ideological group was made up largely of students led by Abdullah Öcalan ("Apo") in Ankara who made themselves known as the "Kurdistan Revolutionaries". The new group focused on the oppressed Kurdish population of Turkish Kurdistan in a capitalist world. In 1973, several students, who later became founders of the PKK, established the student organization Ankara Democratic Association of Higher Education (ADYÖD), which would be banned the next year. Then a group around Öcalan split from the Turkish left and held extensive discussions focusing on the colonization of Kurdistan by Turkey. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. At this time, expressions of Kurdish culture, including the use of the Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names, were banned in Turkey. In an attempt to deny their separate existence from Turkish people, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991. The PKK was then formed as part of a growing discontent over the suppression of Kurds in Turkey, in an effort to establish linguistic, cultural, and political rights for Turkey's Kurdish minority.
Following several years of preparation, the Kurdistan Workers Party was established during a foundation congress on 26 and 27 November 1978 in the rural village of Fîs, Lice, Diyarbakır. On 27 November 1978, a central committee consisting of seven people was elected, with Abdullah Öcalan as its head. Other members were: Şahin Dönmez, Mazlum Doğan, Haki Karer (an ethnic Turk), Mehmet Hayri Durmuş, Mehmet Karasungur, Cemîl Bayîk. The party program Kürdistan Devrimci Yolu drew on Marxism and saw Kurdistan as a colonized entity. Initially the PKK concealed its existence and only announced their existence in a propaganda stunt when they attempted to assassinate a politician of the Justice Party, Mehmet Celal Bucak, in July 1979. Bucak was a Kurdish tribal leader accused by the PKK of exploiting peasants and collaborating with the Turkish state to oppress Kurds.
The organization originated in the early 1970s from the radical left and drew its membership from other existing leftist groups, mainly Dev-Genç. During the 1980s, the movement included and cooperated with other ethnic groups, including ethnic Turks, who were following the radical left. The PKK had attracted certain ethnic Turks since its foundation, and in the early years of the PKK, the group counted as many Turkish members as Kurdish members. The high-ranking Turks within the PKK included Duran Kalkan, Kemal Pir, and Haki Karer.
The PKK initially presented itself as part of the worldwide communist revolution. Its aims and objectives have evolved over time towards the goals of national autonomy a federation similar the one of Switzerland, Germany or the United States and democratic confederalism.
Around 1995, the PKK ostensibly changed its aim from independence to a demand for equal rights and Kurdish autonomy within the Turkish state, though all the while hardly suspending their military attacks on the Turkish state except for ceasefires in 1999–2004 and 2013–2015. In 1995, Öcalan said: "We are not insisting on a separate state under any condition. What we are calling for very openly is a state model where a people's basic economic, cultural, social, and political rights are guaranteed".
Whilst this shift in the mid-nineties has been interpreted as one from a call for independence to an autonomous republic, some scholars have concluded that the PKK still maintains independence as the ultimate goal, but through society-building rather than state-building.
The PKK has in March 2016 also vowed to overthrow the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, through the 'Peoples' United Revolutionary Movement'.
The organization has adapted the new democratic confederalist views of its arrested leader, which aim to replace the United Nations, capitalism and nation state with the democratic confederalism which is described as a system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils. Followers of Öcalan and members of the PKK are known, after his honorary name, as Apocu (Apo-ites) under his movement, Apoculuk (Apoism). The slogan Bijî Serok Apo, which translates into Long Live leader Apo, is often chanted by his sympathizers.