Kurdistan workers party - Research Paper Example

It is significant to note that the focal operation of the Kurdistan Worker Party is in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Turkey. Further, the PKK has strong financial support and huge propaganda operations in some European countries, and it mostly relies on violent and bloody crime for financing. The group started out in the beginning of the 1970’s in Ankara comprising mainly of students. By 19978, the PKK had begun establishing a strong base since it targeted people from the Kurdish group. Days later, the group was named the Kurdistan Workers Party.

It believed in a Marxist-Leninism ideology and it frequently engaged in violent and bloody conflicts as a part of its political operation in Turkey. The PKK holds that it is its role and responsibility in changing the lives of the Kurdish race in Southern Turkey. Therefore, its focus is to represent their ambitions and thoughts. The Marxist-Leninism propels the group to launch irresponsible struggle against people it calls the bourgeois (Anil, 2010). The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has been linked to numerous attacks and bombings.

For instance, PPK was accused of attacking and bombing of the Turkish embassy in Strasbourg. They collaborated with the ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), an Armenian radical group to launch the attack. In 1984, the organization took another structural formation. They changed into a paramilitary group. They used France as their base setting up training camps in different parts of France. All through to the late 1980’s, the organization became very dangerous as it continued to launch numerous terrorist activities.

For instance, the extremist group attacked state institutions, military bases, and government agencies. Some of these were linked to the Anatolia project that was taking place in the Southern part of Turkey (Marcus, 2009). The organization further expanded their activities in multiple countries in the Middle East and Europe, especially France and Germany. This expansion made them to become less and less centralized and past containment. The radical grouped continued to inflict pain and suffering to the civilian through its attacks and bombings.

For instance, the group is known to be responsible for the frequent attacks and bombings on civilian and military targets in countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Belgium, and France. In the mid 1990’s, Syria started from the radical group. This was because of a transformation of tactics in the PKK’s operations in that it had began using suicide attacks on innocent civilians. As an inevitable eventuality, it started losing the edge in its operations. Further, the group used women to launch these attacks something that Syria was not happy with.

The groups’ founder Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in 1999 and was sentenced to death. However, this sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. Without its leader, the group somewhat lost direction and posed less security threats to the people. This gave Turkish government initiative to bring down the group (Marcus, 2009). In 2004, the European Union named the group as a terrorist organization. The hit against the organization heightened later that year when the United States treasury froze resources of branches of the group claiming that it was propagating terrorism activities.

The group retreated to the Iraqi mountains and formed base there, with