Start of PKK Campaign

Date: August 15, 1984 • Location: Çankaya, Turkey

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla group primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria. It was founded in Ziyaret, Lice, on 27 November 1978 and was involved in asymmetric warfare in the Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency. Although the PKK initially sought an independent Kurdish state, in the 1990s, its official platform changed to seeking autonomy and increased political and cultural rights for Kurds within Turkey.