The Kurdistan Workers Parties (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK, Turkish: Kürdistan İşçi Partisi), sometimes linked with KADEK and Kongra-Gel, is a militant group founded in the 1970s and led, until his capture in 1999, by Abdullah Öcalan.The PKK’s ideology was founded on revolutionary Marxism-Leninism and Kurdish nationalism. The PKK’s goal has been to create a democratic and independent Kurdish state in a territory which it claims as Kurdistan, an area that comprises parts of south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and north-western Iran.It is an ethnic secessionist organization that uses force and the threat of force against military targets for the purpose of achieving its political goal. More than 37.000 people have been killed in the Turkish-PKK conflict since 1984.
Since its establishment, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has included a small number of female militants. Over time, however, this number has increased significantly. By the early 1990s, 30 percent of its 17,000 armed militants were women (Cumhuriyet, June 17, 1993). The PKK’s increased use of female militants is a concerning development since women provide great potential for both propaganda and recruitment, and they often have better access to certain soft targets.
Italian N G O Emergency looks after civilian war victimsin several countries. It has pened the only rehabilitation centre for mine victims in Suleymaniya,in northern Iraq. The region boardering Iran,is one of the most mined in the world,due to the war between Iran and Iraq in the eighties. In Suleymaniya the N G O used to run a hospital for burn victims too,which was recently taken over by the Kurdish Federal government.
