The Pkk And The Kurdish Issue In Turkey In The Post-cold War Study

The Turkey 's Kurdish nationalism is a part of the Kurdish nationalism of the Middle East,but has its own charictaristics. It emerged at the end of 19th century and has experienced two phases since the founding of Turkish Republic.From 1920s to 1930s, Turkey's Kurdish nationalists organized several rebels against the government mainly for religion reasons, but were crushed down fiercely and ruthlessly by kemalists.After World War Two,especially from 1950s, many changes has happened toward Turkish politics. The adoption of multi-party system and liberalization led to the resurrectoin of many non-Kemalism social thoughts and orgnizations.The Kurdish nationalism boomed quickly . Many Kurdish nationalists involved into all kinds of political activities . In 1970s, Kurdish nationalism developed greatly .The Kurdishnationalists founded several political parties serectly . PKK(the abbreviation of "Workers Party of Kurdistan"in Turkish) is the biggist and most influencial one .From 1984 PKK began to launch large scale attacks against Turkish government and its regime , aiming for an independent kurdish nation . PKK's early strategy was trying to cause frighteness among Turkish and Kurdish people through terrorism dispite what their opportunities or social status were . This led to anti-PKK mood not only among Turkish left parties but Kurdish populars as well .So PKK had to change its mind and turned to military actions with its guerrilla.From 1991 to 1993 PKK reached its zenith but soon it began to decline . To de"al with problems brought by this ,Turkish government strengthened its military power inthe south-easten region lived by Kurdish. It also launched a foreign movement against countries such as Syria which had shielded and backed PKK all the time for their own interests.Based on these efforts Turkish information department arrested ozalan, the leader of PKK in Febraury 1999 . PKK got its total failure in Turkey.But this doesn't mean Turkish Kurdish problem were solved completely . There isstill a long way to go to Turkish authority toward this question .First, it has to make a transition about its nationality policy on kurdish people so that their cultural requirement be satisefied in the future .Second, Turkey must try its best to shorten the economical gap between Kurdistan and other parts of the country.Third, a good relationship between Turkey and its neighbouring countries is very important because this would prevent the latter from intervening into Turkey's internal affairs, especially the Kurdish question .There are still something to be mentioned . The Iraqi War caused recently by America and its fellower Britain also has potencial threats to Turkey's kurdish problem. Knowing the comprehensive relations between it and Iraqi kurdish, Turkish government has been paying more attention to the development of this war and Iraqi future seriousely.