International Freedom Battalion Current commanders Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Ali Yerlikaya Yaşar Güler Metin Gürak Current commanders Murat Karayılan Mustafa Karasu Duran Kalkan Bahoz Erdal Cemil Bayık YPG: 60,000–75,000[30]PKK: 32,800[31][32] PJAK: 1,000[33]–3,000[34] TAK: A few dozen[35]Currently: 116,000+ The Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency[note 2] is an armed conflict between the Republic of Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, as well as its allied insurgent groups, both Kurdish and non-Kurdish,[68] who have either demanded separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan,[35] or attempted to secure autonomy,[69] and/or greater political and cultural rights for Kurds inside the Republic of Turkey.

[103] On the other hand, the PKK has faced international condemnation, mainly by Turkish allies, for using terrorist tactics, which include civilian massacres, summary executions, suicide bombers, and child soldiers, and involvement in drug trafficking.

[104][105] The organization is historically to blame for the burning of schools and killing of teachers who they accused of "destroying Kurdish identity", attacks on hospitals which resulted in the death of doctors and nurses, and allegedly the kidnapping of foreign tourists for ransom.

[citation needed][106][107] In February 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was arrested in Nairobi, Kenya by a group of special forces personnel[108] and taken to Turkey, where he remains in prison on an island in the Sea of Marmara.

[112][113] With the resumption of violence, hundreds of Kurdish civilians have been killed by both sides and numerous human rights violations have occurred, including torture and widespread destruction of property.

[117] After the Turkish coup d'état on 12 September 1980 and a crackdown which was launched on all political organisations,[119] during which at least 191 people were killed[120] and half a million were imprisoned,[121][note 3] most of the PKK withdrew into Syria and Lebanon.

Öcalan strongly criticized the leaders responsible for the guerrilla forces during the early 1980s and threatened others with the death penalty, if they joined rival groups or refused to obey orders.

During the Congress, the leaders decided to advance the armed struggle, increase the number of fighters, and dissolve the HRK, which was replaced by the Kurdistan Popular Liberation Army (ARGK).

Despite lacking resources and manpower and being heavily outnumbered, outgunned, and encircled, the result of the operation was a decisive victory for Turkey, as the Hakurk Camp was completely destroyed and occupied by Turkish forces, and the 2 captured soldiers were rescued.

Former PKK commander turned whistleblower Şemdin Sakık has said that the massacre had been allowed to go ahead by the Turkish military, and was part of the Doğu Çalışma Grubu's coup plans.

[111] Under the new Presidency of Süleyman Demirel and Premiership of Tansu Çiller, the Castle Plan (to use any and all violent means to solve the Kurdish question), which Özal had opposed, was enacted, and the peace process abandoned.

To deprive the rebels of a logistical base of operations and punish local people supporting the PKK, the military carried out deforestation of the countryside and destroyed over 3,000 Kurdish villages, causing at least 2 million refugees.

It reduced the size of its field units from 15 to 20 fighters to teams of 6–8, and avoided direct confrontations, relying more on the use of landmines, snipers and small ambushes, using hit and run tactics.

[171] In March 2006 heavy fighting broke out around Diyarbakir between the PKK and Turkish security forces, as well as large riots because of "local anger over high unemployment, poverty and Ankara's reluctance to grant more autonomy to the mainly Kurdish region".

[262][263] On 14 February 2021, Turkish Minister of Defense Hulusi Akar claimed that 13 soldiers and police officers, who had been held hostage by the PKK since 2015 and 2016, were executed during an attempted rescue operation.

In May 2022, while calls for Finland and Sweden were made to join the NATO alliance, Turkey opposed their adhesion unless these countries crack down on local Kurdish and Gulenist networks.

The move has been commented as a political card to distract from ongoing economic crisis in Turkey and better engage in upcoming elections, taking an aggressive posture against foreign powers and Kurds being favorable to AKP.

[329][330] In late March 2006, the Turkish security forces who tried to prevent the funerals of the PKK fighters clashed with the demonstrators, killing at least eight Kurdish protesters, including four children under the age of 10.

[331] In August 2015, Amnesty International reported that the Turkish government airstrikes killed eight residents and injured at least eight others – including a child – in a flagrantly unlawful attack on the village of Zergele, in the Kandil Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

In 1993, the report published by Human Rights Watch stated:[342] Kurds in Turkey have been killed, tortured and disappeared at an appalling rate since the coalition government of Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel took office in November 1991.

In addition, many of their cities have been brutally attacked by security forces, hundreds of their villages have been forcibly evacuated, their ethnic identity continues to be attacked, their rights to free expression denied and their political freedom placed in jeopardy.According to Human Rights Watch, the authorities even executed the Kurdish civilians and took the pictures of their corpses with the weapons, they carried for staging the events, in order to show them as Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) "terrorists" to press.

[355] In February 2017, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report condemning the Turkish government for carrying out systematic executions, displacing civilians, and raping and torturing detainees in Southeastern Turkey.

During the Susurluk scandal in the mid-1990s, it was revealed the government of Tansu Çiller had employed contract killers from the Grey Wolves and Turkish mafia to assassinate between 2,500 and 5,000 members of and businessmen accused of supporting the PKK.

[361] The Kurdistan Workers' Party has faced international condemnation for using terrorist tactics, which include kidnapping, civilian massacres, summary executions, suicide bombers, and child soldiers, and for its involvement in drug trafficking.

On 25 October 1996, a suicide bombing was carried out when a PKK member detonated the explosives she had with her in front of Adana Riot Control Police Directorate, killing 5 people including a civilian and injuring 18 others.

[citation needed] This forced families whose children were already a member of the organization to cooperate and thus turning them into accomplices, which increased the number of women joining the group, according to the publication, published by the Jamestown Foundation.

The systematic kidnapping of men, women and even children was at its peak between the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the PKK decided to force every family to send someone to serve their armed wings after the third Congress.

[413] In 2014, a group of Kurdish families staged a sit-in in front of the town hall in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır to protest the forced recruitment of their children by PKK.

The latest independent reports by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United Nations (UN) and the Amnesty International have confirmed the recruitment and use of child soldiers by the organization and its armed wings since the 1990s.

The PKK was reported by this source to collect taxes per kilogram of heroin trafficked to Turkey from the borders of Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq, with potential profits reaching US$200 million annually.