By the mid-1970s, he was advocating for Kurdish nationalism and went on to found the PKK in 1978. Six years later, the group launched a separatist rebellion against Turkiye under his command.

Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish ...

FILE - Youngsters hold a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the militant Kurdish group, or PKK, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Metin Yoksu, File) ...

Those talks collapsed in 2015, leading to crackdowns against the pro-Kurdish party, which has been accused by the Turkish government of having links to the PKK and its affiliates.

A group of fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Friday concluded a formal weapons handover ceremony in northern Iraq by burning their surrendered weapons, symbolically ending ...

The PKK has sought to create an independent Kurdish state on Turkish soil, where the Kurds make up some 20% of Turkey's 86 million population. The U.S., the European Union and Turkey have ...

Families whose children joined the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), hold their images as they sit in front of the headquarters of ...

This persistent lack of unity prevented Kurdish nationalism from becoming much more than a source of violence against and among Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. This led to the formation of the leftist ...

Founded by Ocalan in 1978, the PKK has waged a war against the Turkish state for decades. The group initially fought for an independent state in the Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.