Kurdistan spans multiple countries, thereby giving the potential of their struggle to help unite the masses of the entire region.

 Introduction
A historic task has been placed in the hands of the people of Kurdistan. They may not have asked for it, but that doesn’t matter. It is here, imposed by the implacable forces of history. The most visible example of that is the present war against the people of Iran.   That war would have been impossible were it not for the divisions among the peoples of South West Asia North Africa – SWANA. They are divided by religion and ethnicity, as well as on the basis of the national borders drawn by the imperialists. These divisions impede the only form of unity that can resolve the ongoing disaster – the unity of the working class. The Kurdish people span much of the geographical divisions. Yet they, too, tend to be divided from the Arab, Persian and Turkish working class and from those peoples as a whole. Healing that division can create the basis for working class unity throughout the region. That is why liberation of the Kurdish people from their oppression means liberation of the people of SWANA from imperialism, and vice versa – liberation from imperialism means liberation of the Kurdish people. The two tasks are inseparable, and none of this can be accomplished without liberation from capitalism itself. These tasks are integrated with the unification of all workers, Kurdish and non-Kurdish alike, within Kurdistan and against the class enemy – the capitalist class of all ethnic, national and religious backgrounds.

To boil it down to its refined essence, the Kurdish working class is uniquely positioned to unite the working class of the entire region and bring behind themselves the masses of the people of the entire region. 

The socialist movement in the United States has paid scant attention to the struggles of the Kurdish people. The little attention that has been paid is often confused at best. This series of articles is written in the hopes of opening a wider discussion on this important struggle.

Wikipedia estimates that there are some 35-40 million Kurds living in Kurdistan, which is an area spanning parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. (In addition to the Kurdish diaspora throughout the world, there is also a Kurdish population in Azerbaijan, but their situation is quite different and will not be discussed here.) This article will consider the situation and the struggle of the Kurds in those four countries separately, because they all have some differences. However, the role of Turkey is central to all. Since Turkey is the largest and most powerful of the states in which the Kurds of Kurdistan live, and since roughly half the Kurdish population lives in Turkish Kurdistan, the role of Turkey is central to the story.

The Turkish Republic – repression of the Kurdish people is in the DNA of capitalism in Turkey and cannot be resolved outside of the struggle against capitalism itself.

Turkey and Kurdistan
In the old Ottoman Empire, the Kurds had their own independent nation, but more modern imperialism dictated a new situation. The Republic of Turkey was founded in the aftermath of WW I and the partitioning of all of South West Asia North Africa (SWANA) by the victorious allies, especially the French and the British through the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement. Those two colonial powers drew up a map to decide which of them would get which of WW I’s spoils in SWANA. The British and French created the national boundaries of the region based on their convenience and relative power. Following that, in 1920 the Allied Powers decided what to do with the defeated Ottoman Empire through the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. They agreed to create a Republic of Turkey plus a small independent state of Kurdistan, but three years later they conceded to their class allies – the Turkish capitalists – and retracted the creation of Kurdistan, which was then consumed by the Turkish capitalists. So we see that right from the very start the Kurdish people were just play things, pawns to be pushed around in the eyes of the major imperialist powers and subject to the imperialists’ whims and perceived self interest.

The 1924 Constitution of the new Republic of Turkey banned Kurdish language and customs, carried out ethnic cleansing of some Kurdish towns in the style of what Israel is doing in the West Bank today, and even expropriated some Kurdish landowners. The Kurdish people were just “mountain Turks” in the eyes of the Turkish state. In fact, to this day such prejudices still exist. Some Turks say that Kurdistan doesn’t exist; it’s just “Western Turkey” according to them.

This repression led to a series of revolts throughout the 1920s and beyond. These revolts were brutally suppressed. According to Wikipedia, “Officially protected death squads are accused of the disappearance of 3,200 Kurds and Assyrians in 1993 and 1994 in the so-called ‘mystery killings’. Kurdish politicians, human-rights activists, journalists, teachers and other members of intelligentsia were among the victims. Virtually none of the perpetrators were investigated nor punished. The Turkish government also encouraged Islamic extremist group Kurdish Hezbollah to assassinate suspected PKK members and often ordinary Kurds.”

Stalinism and its offshoot Maoism were highly influential in the years after WW II. It was highly damaging.

Rise of Stalinism
Following WW II Stalinism and its offshoot – Maoism –  came to dominate the thinking among socialists, and even beyond them. They saw liberation struggles as being separated from the struggle against capitalism itself. As a result, for them the independence of the working class, its independent struggle and its class interests, was not central. In fact, they opposed any tendency in that direction. This was why, for example, the Iranian Communist Party helped hand over power to the Mullahs after the 1979 revolution overthrew the hated Shah. This form of thinking was especially dominant among the student youth, including in Turkey. There a group of students founded the Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) in 1968 and the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist in 1970. Both of these groups believed in a “people’s war” (which sounded very revolutionary but in fact just sought to reform capitalism). Arising from these groups and this orientation, a group of Kurdish students founded the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 1978, led by then-student Abdullah Öcalan. Today Öcalan serves a life sentence for his courageous struggle, and he is widely respected as were other similar leaders in their day. These leaders, too, dedicated their lives to the freedom of their people, and they deserve respect for that. However, if dedication and courage were enough, then repression and capitalism itself would have ended 100 years ago. It is also a question of perspectives, and it is from that point that we look at the struggle.

The early PKK mixed Kurdish nationalism with socialist rhetoric. Its principle tactic was the “armed struggle”, including acts of individual terrorism such as the attempted assassination of Kurdish moderate Mehmet Celal Bucak, as well as armed clashes with the Turkish military and police. The PKK originally called for an independent Kurdistan while simultaneously calling for worldwide communist revolution. However, it had no orientation towards independent activity of the working class, Kurdish and Turkish alike. Nevertheless, the repression of the Kurdish people by the Turkish state mandated a response and the courage and dedication of the PKK and its leader Öcalan led to mass support among the Kurds.

In 1979, Öcalan had to flee Turkey. He set up PKK headquarters in Syria, but in 1998 Assad ousted him from that country. Öcalan then toured Europe and eventually was granted asylum in Kenya. There, agents for the Turkish government captured him in 1999 and brought him back to Turkey to stand trial. He was sentenced to life in prison and there he remains to this day.

In 1995, the PKK dropped its call for independence and shifted to calling for “autonomy”. Öcalan said: “We are not insisting on a separate state under any condition. What we are calling for very openly is a state model where a people’s basic economic, cultural, social, and political rights are guaranteed.” In other words, a modern democratically ruled capitalist state, which is of course preferable to the brutal repression that the Turkish state meted out to the Kurds. The question is whether it is possible.

That declaration led to a series of discussions between Turkish dictator Erdogan and Öcalan in 2012, which led to Öcalan’s announcement of a “ceasefire” in 2013 and an announcement that the PKK would move its forces located in Turkey into northern Iraq.

Abdullah Ocalan front center, with fellow prisoners in 2025

In 2025 Öcalan went further down that same road with a February 25 letter. That letter says a lot not only about the Kurdish liberation struggle but the times in general. Among other things, Öcalan wrote: “the collapse of real socialism… led to weakening of the PKK’s foundational meaningfulness… Throughout the history of more than 1000 years, Turkish and Kurdish relations were defined in terms of mutual cooperation and alliance… The last 200 years of capitalist modernity have been marked primarily with the aim to break this alliance….

“The need for a democratic society is inevitable…. Respect for identities, free self-expression, democratic self-organization of each segment of society… are only possible through the existence of a democratic society…. There is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realization of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental way….

“The PKK must dissolve itself….”

Let us break this down point for point:

1. The first point about the return to capitalism in the Soviet Union and China is correct in that it led a whole series of movements to drop advocating socialism. That was because those movements never recognized what led to the bureaucratic nature of the Soviet or Chinese governments in the first place and therefore they couldn’t recognize the alternative to a return to capitalism.
2. Regarding Turkish/Kurdish relations, as we pointed out, under Ottoman rule it is true that the Kurds had an independent state, but what Öcalan doesn’t recognize is that that form of rule is gone forever. In its place stands what he calls “capitalist modernity”. In other words, it’s in the nature of the beast.
3. Öcalan’s call for “democracy” in reality means capitalist rule in its democratic form vs. dictatorship. However, capitalism has never been able to establish stable democratic rule in the former colonial world. In fact, capitalist or bourgeois democracy is on the retreat even in the imperialist world!
4. Rather than drawing the conclusions that the crisis of global capitalism should lead, Öcalan calls for a further organizational retreat by calling for the dissolution of the PKK. In February of 2026, Öcalan followed up that letter with what was essentially the same call. This came after the leader of the capitalist world – Donald Trump – was doing everything he could to further advance repression and discrimination and to destroy democratic rule, and while one world leader after another was kissing his ring.

In February of 2026, Öcalan reiterated the same themes. He wrote: “we must transition from the negative phase to the positive phase of construction…. We aim to close the era of politics based on violence and to open a process based on a democratic society and the rule of law…. Democratic society, democratic consensus, and integration are the building blocks of the mindset of this positive era….It is important for the state to be sensitive to democratic transformation during this process. Democratic integration is at least as important as the foundation of the Republic….We base our approach on a legal solution framed by democratic politics….The citizenship relationship should be founded not on belonging to a nation, but on the bond with the state.”

We must be very blunt here: Öcalan’s direction is out of step with the entire direction of global capitalism. That direction is away from democratic rule, towards more wars, more environmental destruction, and greater repression of both ethnic groups and women. Posing the illusion that the repression of the Kurdish people can be ended through capitalist democratic rule is a false hope. It’s like chasing the end of a rainbow, which recedes the more one advances towards it. In war, retreats are sometimes necessary, but not such a political retreat that leads to political quicksand.

Öcalan was driven to this point by the failure of the perspectives and strategy that he had adopted. Repression of the Kurdish people is integral to capitalism itself, and any attempt to separate the two will inevitably lead to failure. Often this mistaken perspective is combined with the method of the “armed struggle” (guerrillaism and individual terrorism). This method may appear to be the most direct route to revolution, but actually it is not, because it removes the revolutionaries from the only force that can wage a successful revolution: the working class. We have seen that time and again – in Chile (1973), Iran (1979) and South Africa (1980s).

Alternative
An alternative was there. That alternative was to turn to the wider working class and left wing. In 2013, for example, there were the so-called Gezi Park protests. This movement started around the plan to develop Gezi Park in Istanbul. The issue spread far more widely and included protests against political repression in general. The protests spread throughout Turkey and also led to a strike movement. More recently, in 2025 there were widespread protests against the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu. Protesters spanned the political spectrum from the right to the far left. There have also been worker strikes for decades in Turkey. There is no record, however, of the PKK turning to such movements and linking up the issue of repression against the Kurds with the issue of repression and exploitation in general.

The role of the PKK in Turkey had a direct impact on the Kurdish struggle in Syria, which we will discuss next.

Kurdistan spans multiple countries, thereby giving the potential of their struggle to help unite the masses of the entire region.