Over the past months it has been concentrating its attacks on the police force. If asked, the PKK would justify its war against the police as follows: The police are the last standing force that makes the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s activities possible on the ground. The PKK wants to remove the AKP government from the Kurdish region so that the PKK can sit down and negotiate with the state under better conditions because the state would then have realized that the PKK is the only force in the region that represents the Kurds. In addition, it is the police that are conducting operations against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), which Abdullah Öcalan considers the key Kurdish nationalist network that will keep the Kurdish nationalist program stay alive after the PKK ceases to exist. Therefore, the PKK has the “right” strategy in targeting the police.
The question at this stage is whether the PKK’s leaders will really get what they want and, if so, how many police officers do they have to kill to “frustrate” the government and the police that much for them to say “enough, we are ready to compromise with the PKK and accept the PKK’s conditions”?
To answer such a question realistically is almost impossible because the logic and reality of the PKK are much more different than the logic and reality of the average civilian and politician in Ankara. It is certainly a fact that there are people in the Kurdish region and also especially among the Kurdish diaspora who think the PKK’s goal is realistic enough to achieve and that the PKK is simply relying on them to pursue its strategy. Therefore, the organization has no problems in finding people to support the PKK’s unthinkable goals and strategy.
On the other side of the coin, however, there are people who will never give up, no matter how many people die. Both sides have “immortalized” their lost, which makes it difficult to ask the sensible question: Is it worth dying for this nonsensical war?
The PKK with its 30 years of experience at war should know that achieving its aims is an uphill battle. If so, the aim of the PKK to carry the war to the next stage is very complicated. The next stage, of course, would be a true civil war between the Kurds and Turks in the large cities.
In what possible scenario would the PKK really engage in a civil war that has never erupted in the last 30 years of bloody war between the PKK and the state? What has changed since the last 30 years that makes the PKK now take into consideration a possible civil war but not in the past?
Two things have changed. The perception of “Kurds” among Turks has changed. In the 1990s Turks differentiated the Kurds from the PKK. Therefore, they did not associate their Kurdish neighbor with the PKK. Now, however, there is an increasing tendency for Turks not to separate ordinary Kurds from the Kurdish nationalist PKK and its sympathizers. Second of all, the recruitment pool of the PKK has shifted from the southeastern Kurdish-dominated cities to the major metropolitan centers such as İzmir, İstanbul, Mersin and other Aegean coastal cities. Therefore, the new generation of PKK militants now knows how to operate within the urban centers and is able to hit and hide.
Throughout the ‘90s, the PKK strategy was a “hit and run” one, but the PKK has been successfully implementing a “hit and hide” strategy and urban guerilla warfare. With these two drastic changes, the PKK thinks it can incite a major civil war between the Kurds and Turks. Its new war strategy is to trigger a civil war between the ordinary Kurds and Turks.
