Paul White
Zed Books, 2015
ISBN: 9781783600373
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is infamous for its violence. The struggle it has waged for Kurdish independence in south-eastern Turkey has cost in excess of 40,000 lives since 1984. Less known, however, is the fact that the PKK now embraces a non-violent end to the conflict, with its leader Abdullah Öcalan having ordered his fighters to ceasefire and engage in a negotiated peace with the Ankara Government. Whether these tentative attempts at peacemaking mean a long-term end to the bloodshed remains to be seen, but either way the ramifications for Turkey and the wider region are potentially huge.Charting the ideological evolution of the PKK, as well as its origins, aims and organizational setup, Paul White provides the only authoritative and up-to-date analysis of one of the most important non-state political players in the contemporary Middle East.
Dr. Paul White is a Visiting Lecturer at Universitas Muhammadiyah Jakarta, Indonesia. He has taught Middle East Politics courses at Deakin University, in Melbourne, at Macquarie University in Sydney, and at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. He is the author of Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (Zed Books, London, 2000). He was a member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and serves on the Board of Directors of the Kurdish Institute, Washington DC.
Kurdish Studies Network 