How the PKK sustained its insurgency, from black market 1940s rifles to anti-aircraft missiles
By Robert Tollast, The National, February 27, 2025
The leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan called on his followers to disarm, possibly ending more than four decades of insurgency against the Turkish state that has caused the deaths of about 40,000 people.
The PKK has said it could end its armed rebellion several times in the past under the right conditions.
Murat Karayilan, the head of the armed wing, once promised that “arms can be abandoned at the end of a specific process, if the Turkish state clears the way for the democratic struggle of the Kurdish nation, if it ceases to continue its policies of denial, arms may lose their meaning.”
But just where did the group get those arms, enabling it to mount such a potent insurgency for so long? Many insurgent groups like the PKK often lack sustained foreign backing and turn to crime and extortion for funds.
In the past, the PKK has received arms from Syria, Armenia and Iran, but shifting political currents have undermined those weapons transfers.
In some instances, the group has even made its own guns, like the large calibre, long range Zagros rifle. The weapon has also been used by the US-backed People's Protection Units (YPG) part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the US' main ally in the war against ISIS in Syria. The use of the gun by both groups has fuelled long-standing Turkish accusations that the YPG and PKK closely co-operate, despite US claims to the contrary.
Karayilan, also known as Cemal, was designated a “Significant Foreign Narcotics Trafficker,” by the US Treasury in 2008, and subject to a $5 million bounty.
Drug running on a massive scale was one way the group could maintain a supply of arms and funding after Baathist Syria - formerly one of the group’s main backers - expelled Ocalan in 1998 under Turkish pressure, the year of his arrest and a unilaterally declared PKK ceasefire.
Weeks after the ceasefire ended, another Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, launched a bombing campaign which would soon target tourist areas and public transport.
This was a low point for the PKK, following harsh and often bloody Turkish government crackdowns in Kurdish majority areas, widely condemned by human rights groups.
Over the years, the PKK has been able to recruit and raise funds during these periods of oppression and chaotic episodes in the region’s history, building an arsenal of weapons, often hidden in mountain hideouts, including some of the oldest guns in service.
Syria's collapse
Some of their weapons date to the Second World War or earlier, but include modern weapons, including deadly first-person view drones, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft weapons and Russian anti-tank weapons such as the Konkurs, likely to have come from former Syrian army stocks.
SA-18 and SA-7 portable anti-aircraft systems have also been used to shoot down Turkish helicopters, almost certainly from Syrian stocks (originally purchased from Russia) or obtained during Syria’s collapse into civil war after 2011.
One 2017 Turkish raid on a major PKK weapons cache in the mountains of southern Turkey illustrates the issue well. The army said they had found “237” of the ubiquitous Kalashnikov assault rifle, 23 G-3 rifles, a Zagros rifle, several Mauser rifles and an M-16, among other weapons.
The Soviet-era Kalashnikovs are the easiest to explain, for decades the standard-issue rifle of the Syrian army with many different variants made in around 20 countries, and an estimated 100 million manufactured worldwide. But just how old are some of the PKK’s Kalashnikovs?
According to Militant Wire, a website dedicated to tracking arms, PKK fighters have recently been spotted with AK-74s from 1981, three years after the gun, a successor to the AK-47, entered service.
It’s likely that many of the Kalashnikovs used by the group are far older, if some of the other rifles are a guide. No model for the Mausers is mentioned in the Turkish statement, but the German company made the standard issue rifle for the Nazis and, after the Second World War, revived operations in the 1960s making sniper rifles, until it was purchased by Rheinmetall in 1995.
It is possible the guns found could have been Second World War era because Militant Wire notes, the PKK has used heavily modified Mosin-Nagant rifles.
The Mosin-Nagant, developed over a century ago in Russia, was widely used by the Soviet Army in the 1930s and 40s and, like the Mauser, made its way to Baathist Syria in the 1950s and 60s when Damascus was closely aligned to the Communist Bloc. Mosin-Nagants with new barrels and modern sights have often been seen in the Syrian civil war, along with other Second World War weapons likely transferred from Eastern Germany or Communist Czechoslovakia.
The G-3 rifles, made by German firm Heckler & Koch, may have been weapons made under licence by Iran, which at times has been a supporter of the PKK, backing the Iraqi Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which at times worked with the PKK. Turkey suspects Iran may still be attempting to equip the PKK, possibly supplying 358 loitering munitions, a type of missile designed to hunt down enemy helicopters and drones.
Finally, the M-16 might have been captured from Turkish forces, which over the decades have been heavily equipped with American weaponry or, might have been purchased on the black market after tens of thousands of arms supplied by the US to the Iraqi army after the 2003 US invasion disappeared.
Those included many M-16s abandoned by Iraqi forces crumbling in the face of militant insurgents or soldiers who simply left the army and sold their rifles for additional income.
This class of US-purchased weapons could extend to AT-4 anti-tank weapons, supplied to Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi forces during the war against ISIS, and captured from the PKK in Turkish operations.
Disclaimer
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of CEMAS Board.
Timeline: PKK's four-decade insurgency in Turkey
Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), issued a historic call to the group to disarm as part of a new path towards a peace agreement with the Turkish state.
On a plane back to Turkey following his capture in 1999, Mr Ocalan said he loved his country and “would serve it if required.” Decades later, the group remains one of Turkey's major national security issues.
Here is a list of key dates in the conflict.
1974: The PKK was formed as a clandestine Marxist-Leninist group by left-leaning Kurdish students led by Mr Ocalan.
In 1978, it held its first congress at a teahouse near Diyarbakir, establishing itself as an organisation with the aim of creating an independent Kurdistan in the north-east of Turkey.
1982: The group established its first training camp in the Bekaa Valley with support of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
August 1984: PKK carried out its first attacks in south-east Turkey, killing two soldiers. Fighting escalates over the following years and the group starts using bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq as refuge.
September 1998: Mr Ocalan flees his base in Syria after it signed the Adana Agreement with Turkey which committed Damascus to ending support for the group. PKK's main headquarters were also moved to the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq following the leader's departure from Syria.
February 15, 1999: Turkish special forces captured Mr Ocalan from Kenya. Bound and blindfolded, he was flown to Turkey.
June 1999: Mr Ocalan was tried and sentenced to death but the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment when Turkey abolished the death penalty in October 2002.
Following his capture, the PKK announced a unilateral ceasefire which ended in 2004.
2003: In an effort to work towards European Union membership, Turkey introduces legislative and constitutional reforms that increase Kurdish political and cultural rights, allowing for greater use of the Kurdish language. As prime minister, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a more liberal course with regards to the Kurds.
2010: Secret talks were held in Oslo between Turkish intelligence officers and PKK representatives. Talks break down.
Summer 2012: Fighting reaches new intensity. Turkish authorities round up Kurdish activists.
In October, Mr Ocalan and government representatives open talks while imprisoned Kurdish activists hold hunger strike. Kurdish militants end hunger strike in response to an appeal from Mr Ocalan the following month, opening way for talks.
March 21 2013: Mr Ocalan announces ceasefire and orders his fighters to withdraw from Turkish soil.
2015: The rise of ISIS in neighbouring Iraq and Syria led to the emergence of the YPG as a force fighting against the extremist group, taking control of areas near the Turkish border. Ankara views the YPG as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK.
In March, Mr Ocalan urged the PKK's leadership to disarm. The leadership in Qandil did not follow the call.
In July, the ceasefire collapsed, unleashing the bloodiest period in the conflict and resulting in extensive destruction in urban areas of south-east Turkey.
June 2020: After alleged attacks by the PKK on Turkish bases, Turkey launched Operations Claw-Eagle and Claw-Tiger, including air and land campaigns on the group in the Kurdish areas of Iraq. The operations spark criticism from the Iraqi government, labelling them an attack on the country's sovereignty. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) also expressed concern over civilian casualties but neither Baghdad nor Erbil stop Ankara from continuing and mounting bases.
February 2021: Turkey sent a military mission to rescue 13 nationals captured by the PKK. It failed and all of the captives were found dead, with Ankara blaming their deaths on the PKK. The group said the captives were killed by Turkish bombing. A US State Department statement did not blame the PKK, increasing the rift between Ankara and Washington.
July 2024: Iraqi government announced a ban on the PKK and issued instructions for the group to be described as the "banned Kurdistan Workers' Party" in all official correspondence. It marked the most significant statement from Baghdad with regards to the PKK's status in the country. Iraq has not designated it a terrorist group.
October 2024: PKK claimed responsibility for an attack on a defence company near Ankara that killed five people and injured 22 others.
Disclaimer
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of CEMAS Board.
