A brief history of Turkey’s conflict in Southeast

At Ankara University in 1978 leftist student Abdullah Öcalan formed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and led a separatist conflict and terrorism in the southeastern provinces in Turkey. After the 1980 military coup, the Turkish army opened a new front against separatist Kurdish terrorists that gradually escalated. In 1989, then-President Turgut Özal used his position to redefine Turkey’s role in regional and world politics. Especially after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Özal saw in this the potential for a political solution to the “Kurdish problem.” Although initially his efforts paid off, the first Gulf War left Turkey in a complicated relationship with Iraq and the Kurds. The Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq, seen from the Turkish perspective then, constituted a potential incitement to the Kurds of... [read full story]