Other Post The Kurdish PKK who are they?

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My interest in the topic of the Kurds and Turkey is growing, so in attempt to gleam more information I have created this thread.

I found this article on the BBC and if it is true it seems to make the position of the PKK at least very clear

What are the PKK's ambitions in Turkey?
In a BBC interview in April the PKK's military leader Cemil Bayik said "we don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state".

"We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely... The struggle will continue until the Kurds' innate rights are accepted," he said.

Turkey continues to accuse the PKK of "trying to create a separate state in Turkey".

More than 40,000 people have died in the conflict. It reached a peak in the mid-1990s, when thousands of villages were destroyed in the largely Kurdish south-east and east of Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled to cities in other parts of the country.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20971100
 
Wikipedia has the following and whilst I dont always agree with some things I read on wikipedia this seems to suggest the original purpose of the PKK has changed since its inception and now wants similar to that reported on the above from the BBC

The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê‎) is an organization based in Turkey and Iraq. Since 1984 the PKK has been involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish state, with the initial aim of achieving an independent Kurdish state, later changing it to a demand for equal rights and Kurdish autonomy in Turkey.

The group was founded in 1978 in the village of Fis (near Lice) by a group of Kurdish students led by Abdullah Öcalan. The PKK's ideology was originally a fusion of revolutionary socialism and Kurdish nationalism, seeking the foundation of an independent, socialist state in the region, which was to be known as Kurdistan. The initial reason given by the PKK for this was the oppression of Kurds in Turkey.

By then, the use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned in Kurdish-inhabited areas. The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life.

Many who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. The PKK was then formed, as part of a growing discontent over the suppression of Turkey's ethnic Kurds, in an effort to establish linguistic, cultural, and political rights for Turkey's ethnic Kurdish minority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers'_Party
 
Here is a good video
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What does this cartoon mean? sorry for my ignorance mil-smile04
 
An extract from your link

Turkey says it has begun a massive assault on Kurdish forces on the other side of the border with Syria - potentially putting it in direct conflict with its Nato ally, the United States.

This could become a significant new development in the Syrian civil war, which is now almost seven years old. We've boiled down why it matters.

Why is Turkey mounting this assault?

One main reason: Turkey considers the US-backed Kurdish militia that controls much of north-eastern Syria a terrorist group.

Turkey says the militia is an extension of a Kurdish rebel group it has fought for decades, and wants to prevent it consolidating its hold on Syrian territory.

Recent US plans to help the militia form a 30,000-strong "border security force" alarmed Ankara.

Turkey's president said Washington was "creating a terror army" and vowed to "suffocate" it.
 
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