History and Global Perspectives about the PKK

PKK emblem

 

I’ve figured out what the focus of my social bookmarking project will be: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known by its Kurdish initialism, the PKK. The PKK is really interesting to me because its perception and portrayal by Western media has changed very radically in the last few years. Though the United States still lists the PKK as a terrorist group (in response to Turkish political pressure), the American military has provided air support to aid the PKK in its conflict with ISIS. My first article this week was a report published  in 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations about the PKK. The report appears unbiased, but discusses the group’s guerilla tactics and terrorist acts, as well as the history of institutionalized discrimination against the Kurds in both Turkey and Iraq. My other Diigo post was much more recent. It is a news report by Hurriyet News, an online newspaper based in Istanbul. In it, the President of Turkey talks about how, to the Turkish government, ISIS and the PKK are equivalent terrorist organizations. It is interesting how the Western viewpoint on the PKK has become much more positive with their involvement in the Iraqi war and the current ISIS conflict, while Turkey, with a history of decades of conflict with Kurdish separatists, has not altered its stance.

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