Outline the Kurdish Conflict – include the issue, group, campaign, and the future

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• The Issue.
• The Kurds are an ethnic group inhabiting northern Iraq, southern Turkey, and northern Iran.
• When other groups received national sovereignty at the end of the World War I, the Kurds remained divided among the three nations.
• The Treaty of Sevres (1920) created an independent Kurdistan, but it was never implemented.
• About 12 million Kurds live in Turkey.
• The Group.
• The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) formed in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist group. Its goal was to create an independent socialist Kurdistan.
• The Campaign.
• After training in Syria, the PKK launched a guerrilla campaign in Turkey.
• By the early 1990s, the PKK turned to urban terrorism, targeting Turks throughout Europe and in Turkey.
• After its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in 1999, the PKK pledged to work for a peaceful solution? however, it maintained various militant organizations operating under a variety of names.
• The PKK maintains links with other revolutionary groups in Turkey and with some international terrorist groups.
• The Campaign Renewed.
• Turkey is being considered for admission to the European Union.
• The EU, NATO, and the United States list the various entities of the PKK as terrorist organizations.
• In October 2003 the United States agreed to crack down on the PKK in northern Iraq, but the group remained.
• Turkey began clandestine incursions into the Kurdish area of Iraq around 2006.
• Open confrontation began in 2008, and by 2010 PKK units were crossing into Turkey attacking military outposts.
• The Future.
• After years of challenges, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the PKK is a foreign terrorist group.
Turkey conducts intelligence, military, and law enforcement operations against the PKK, and it is gradually moving further from Europe seeking closer ties with the Middle East.