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The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and popular support:

Counterterrorism towards an insurgency nature

Article  in  Small Wars and Insurgencies · July 2012

DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2012.661610

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 Small Wars & Insurgencies
Vol. 23, No. 3, July 2012, 432–455

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and popular support:

counterterrorism towards an insurgency nature
Mustafa Cosar Unal*

Department of Intelligence, Turkish National Police

Downloaded by [MUSTAFA COSAR UNAL] at 13:41 11 June 2012

The PKK has been a prolonged problem in Turkey, and various measures
have been adopted to diminish and end the violence. In addition to the
impacts on violence, these policies have also had an impact on public opinion
and ethnic awareness of Kurds in Turkey. This article analyzes these policies
and their effects on electoral support for the PKK by examining the vote
shares of the pro-PKK political parties in national and local elections.
It concludes that Turkey has conceptualized the issue solely as a problem of
terrorism, but the goal, strategy, organization, and format of violence used by
the PKK reflect the nature of an insurgency. Therefore, it is argued that
Turkey, by ignoring the insurgency features, has disregarded the legitimate
parts of the cause and related popular support, and thus has responded mostly
with deterrent measures apart from the reforms of recent years. Results have
shown that policies of deterrence culminated in a steady level of support for
the PKK indicating that low level of legitimacy – as they were perceived by
the people – of the policies resulted in viable popular and political support
for the PKK. Despite the recent accommodative reforms, the existence of
pro-PKK parties rallying electoral support in the political arena provided
sustained level activities in the conventional politics in Turkey’s municipal
and national political system, in which they pursue pro-PKK agendas,
such as ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Confederation’ as well as activities to increase the
distinction in identity around the ethnic consciousness for more popular
support. Yet, no clear pattern is identified between violence level and popular
support in the macro-scale.
Keywords: PKK; popular support; counterterrorism; insurgency; political
violence; Turkey

Introduction
Turkey, in its recent history, has faced a high volume of political violence from
different parts of the political spectrum. Terrorism has placed an enormous cost on
the Turkish Republic, both economically and socially. For the last three decades,
terror incidents have been dominated disproportionately by the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK). Since its foundation, the PKK conflict has caused
approximately 35,000 fatalities, around 4800 of which were civilians and 5850

*Email: mcosarunal@yahoo.com

ISSN 0959-2318 print/ISSN 1743-9558 online

q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2012.661610
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