Duran Kalkan, Murat Karayılan and Cemil Bayık, the three current leaders of the PKK, are wanted by the United States Department of the Treasury and the Government of Turkey for recruiting child soldiers, involving in drug trafficking, targeting Turkish government officials, police and security forces, and indiscriminately injuring and killing civilians.

[5] He was among a group around Abdullah Öcalan, Ali Haydar Kaytan and Cemîl Bayık amongst others which held regular meetings from 1973 onwards and were known as the Kurdistan Revolutionaries later on.

The state prosecutor demanded a life sentence[9] but he was given six years for being a leader within a terrorist organization and due to his pretrial detention he was released.

[14][15] On 13 December 2016, the Mardin 1st Criminal Court of Peace issued a detention warrant for Kalkan and Murat Karayılan, another PKK commander, as part of an investigation into the killing of the Kaymakam of Derik, Muhammet Fatih Safitürk.

[16] In November 2018 the USA declared, that within their Reward for Justice Program they offered a bounty of 3 million US-dollars for informations that led to the capture of Duran Kalkan.