Kurdish–Turkish conflict: A Visual History

The Kurdish-Turkish conflict began with the founding of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) by Abdullah Ocalan in 1978 and its armed campaign from August 1984 for a Kurdish state, later autonomy, in south-eastern Turkey, where Kurdish identity and language were long suppressed. The war peaked in the 1990s with the army's evacuation and burning of some 3,000 villages, village guards, death squads and PKK attacks; Ocalan was captured in Kenya in 1999 and the PKK declared ceasefires. A peace process from 2013 collapsed in July 2015 into urban warfare in Cizre, Sur and Nusaybin and Turkish incursions into Syria and Iraq against PKK-linked forces. In February 2025 Ocalan called on the PKK to disband; it declared dissolution in May 2025 and burned weapons in July, but the settlement remains uncertain. About 40,000 to 45,000 have died.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Kurdish-Turkish conflict. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Deaths per year in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict

Timeline of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict

1. 1978
   PKK founded
2. 1984
   Armed struggle begins15 August.
3. 1993
   Peak of village evacuations
4. 1999
   Ocalan captured
5. 2013
   Peace process and ceasefire
6. 2015
   Truce collapses; urban war
7. 2018
   Turkish operation in Afrin
8. 2025
   Ocalan's call; PKK dissolves; weapons burned

Origins and the 1990s war

The Turkish Republic denied Kurds' existence as a people, calling them 'mountain Turks', banning the language and crushing revolts in 1925, 1930 and 1937-1938 (Dersim). Ocalan's Marxist-Leninist PKK, founded in Lice in 1978, launched attacks on 15 August 1984 from bases in Syria and Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War created a Kurdish enclave in Iraq the PKK grew to 15,000 fighters; the Turkish state depopulated the countryside, forcibly evacuating 3,000 villages, arming village guards and tolerating the murders of thousands of Kurdish activists by 'unknown perpetrators'. Kurdish MPs were jailed in 1994; the PKK killed teachers and village guards' families.

Ocalan's capture and the peace process

Syria expelled Ocalan in 1998 under Turkish threat; he was seized by Turkish agents with CIA help in Nairobi in February 1999 and sentenced to death, commuted to life on Imrali island. The PKK withdrew to Iraq's Qandil mountains and declared ceasefires; Erdogan's government lifted some language bans and, in 2013, opened talks through the pro-Kurdish HDP that brought a two-year truce. The Syrian war made the PKK's Syrian affiliate the YPG a US ally against ISIS, alarming Ankara; the Suruc bombing and PKK killings of police in July 2015 ended the truce.

Urban war, incursions and dissolution

PKK youth declared autonomy in Cizre, Sur (Diyarbakir), Nusaybin and Silopi in late 2015; the army retook them with tanks and months of curfew, destroying historic districts and killing hundreds; the HDP's leaders were jailed. Turkey invaded northern Syria against the YPG in 2016, 2018 (Afrin) and 2019, and struck the PKK in Iraq's mountains with drones and permanent bases. In October 2024 the nationalist leader Bahceli unexpectedly invited Ocalan to renounce arms; on 27 February 2025 Ocalan called on the PKK to lay down weapons and dissolve, its congress agreed in May, and fighters burned rifles in Sulaymaniyah in July. Whether Turkey will grant Kurdish rights in return, and how the Syrian YPG fits, remain open.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)

Wars of the same era and region

• Turkish War of Independence (1919 to 1923)
• Syrian Civil War (2011 to 2024)
• Iraqi conflict (2003 to present)
• Iran-Iraq War (1980 to 1988)
• Gulf War (1990 to 1991)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)

8 surprising things about the Kurdish-Turkish conflict

1. Turkey did not officially acknowledge the word 'Kurd' in public life until the 1990s; broadcasting in Kurdish was legalised in 2002.
2. Ocalan has been the sole inmate of Imrali island prison for most of his 26 years there.
3. About 3,000 villages were emptied by the army in the 1990s and over a million people displaced to cities like Diyarbakir and Istanbul.
4. The PKK's Syrian affiliate, the YPG, was the main ground force that defeated ISIS with US air support, putting Washington and Ankara at odds.
5. The 2016 siege of Sur destroyed much of Diyarbakir's UNESCO-listed old city.
6. Turkey's Bayraktar drones were first used at scale against the PKK before Ukraine and Ethiopia made them famous.
7. The PKK's ideology shifted from Marxism-Leninism to Ocalan's 'democratic confederalism' inspired by the American anarchist Murray Bookchin.
8. The PKK burned its first weapons in a cave near Sulaymaniyah in July 2025, 41 years after its first attacks.

Sources

• Kurdish-Turkish conflict Wikipedia
• Who are the Kurds and why is the PKK disbanding? BBC News
• Kurdistan Workers' Party Encyclopaedia Britannica
• International Crisis Group, Turkey's PKK Conflict International Crisis Group

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