"POLICYWATCH
Number 940January 10, 2005
Is the PKK Still a Threat to the United States and Turkey?
Soner Cagaptay and Emrullah Uslu
On December 31, 2004, terrorists belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group on the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terror Organizations (FTO) list, ambushed Turkish security officers in the Sirnak province in southeastern Turkey, near the Iraqi border. Although the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire after Turkey captured its leader Abdullah Ocalan in February 1999, in June 2004 the organization renounced its ceasefire. The PKK, which caused over 35,000 casualties between 1984 and 1999, has once again come to the foreground. Today, the organization has an estimated 1,850-1,950 terrorists in Turkey and another 5,500-5,800 in areas of northern Iraq controlled by two Iraqi Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Since the U.S. military and the Iraqi government exercise nominal rule over these parts of Iraq, continued PKK activity in northern Iraq constitutes a threat to Turkish-Iraqi/Kurdish as well as Turkish-U.S. relations, and therefore bears the potential of undermining U.S. interests. The question is: will the PKK, which has been moving between violent and peaceful facades, be able to maintain its campaign against Turkey? And if so, what should be done against this organization in the global war on terror? "
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The Washington Institute for Near East Policy