From revolutionary violence to blind violence
FROM “REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE” TO “BLIND VIOLENCE”
PRAGMATISM AND ONE’S APPROACH TO THE PEOPLE
One’s approach to the people and the form that actions take are closely connected with one another, they affect one another. For this reason it is more sensible to present the PKK’s approach to the people before examining the form its actions take, or its line of action.
The people are the source of the material and moral support for the movements conducting the class struggle and the national liberation struggle. The following aspects are very important in winning and in changing the peoples of Turkey and also the Kurdish people, whose identity historically has been trampled underfoot. Patient work on a correct basis is needed to win them over, educate them and change them. A method that is sectarian, contemptuous and rooted in coercion will simply end by destroying any relationship that has been formed. Only the enemy can derive advantage from this and make use of it.
The people pay no heed to those who talk a lot, but prefer to listen to those who turn their theory into practice. The reaction of the Kurdish people reflected this when the PKK developed its armed struggle. The actions of the national movement found an echo among the Kurdish people. The development of the national movement into a force brought with it the support of the people. Despite this support, the PKK’s multifaceted errors in organising the people, in leading the masses in a particular direction and in spreading its sphere of influence have come to light through the methods that have been applied by it.
If there is no steady and definite method of work applied, if there is no staying power or diligence shown, if there is no trust in the people, if thinking is always short-term and attempts are made to organise and mobilise the people without expending any efforts, then the result is that coercion will be resorted to.
The practice of the national movement also shows that short-term requirements and convenience are what is dominant in the practice of the PKK. Relations to countries, the revolutionaries and the people are based upon the principle of pragmatism and achieving results without effort.
Whatever effect pragmatism has had on relations with political forces, the results of it and whatever kind of alliances have arisen will be analysed in a later section. The lack of principle, pragmatism, desire to avoid expending effort and to force one’s authority on people are the core of it. This approach is also applied towards the people. Instead of organising the people and creating stable organisations, the people have the task of supplying the needs of the guerrillas foisted upon them. The people themselves are left in a passive condition. At the point when the war demanded even more input from the people, force was employed instead of persuasion to get the people to flock to the cause and mobilise them for the war. The people’s property was forcibly confiscated in reference to “citizens’ duties”, and “compulsory taxation” and “compulsory military service” were placed on the agenda. Those who resisted these acts were punished by the PKK, either with “death” or in other ways. In this regard, the mistakes cause particular concern because they came about on the authority of the centre. In the 1990s, when revolutionary movements began actions in Kurdistan, the PKK stepped up its use of force against the people. Sympathisers and party members in the revolutionary movement were abducted and banned from engaging in politics, and some were even murdered. Such acts had nothing to do with revolutionary methods of behaviour. This negative behaviour was moreover supplemented by the PKK’s declaration that it was the “houseowner” in Kurdistan and other parties were “guests”. In this way the harmful methods were legitimised.
“Those who call themselves left-wing, progressive, revolutionary and democratic, the forces which are active in Kurdistan must accept the fact of the PKK and the Kurdish people. The PKK is the only force responsible for actions in our sphere of sovereignty. Other forces are obliged to share their decisions with us and await our consent.” (September 1993, PKK Military Committee for the Dersim Region)
PUNISHING THE PEOPLE!
What lies behind these measures is a lack of trust in the people and in themselves. The PKK is a party which lacks self-confidence, which had particular difficulties organising the people in Dersim and thus sought to intimidate other revolutionary organisations. The result of this mentality was that in September 1993 four members of the TDKP (Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey) who were active in the countryside were attacked and killed. The PKK, which was responsible for placing bans on the people, for using force to try to make things go its way, for abducting members and sympathisers of other revolutionary organisations and for killing four revolutionaries, did not alter its attitude despite protests from the people of Dersim.
“It is forbidden without our consent to close shop gates or switch off machines (a form of protest), those who are guilty of doing this will be punished for it. It does not matter what the reason is, we know the ringleaders and those who shut their shop gates and switch off their machines. They will be subjected to the most severe punishment.” (September 1993, PKK Military Committee, Dersim)
It is the PEOPLE who are being punished with declarations such as this. The people saw the mistakes of the PKK and reacted by protesting. A revolutionary organisation should be able to see its mistakes and be modest enough to learn from the people. This is not so much modesty as a task. If these mistakes are not seen, and they are not corrected, the result will be that the people are distanced from the revolutionaries. Only the PKK did not learn from the people’s reaction and it continued to use violence against the people, employing new methods.
Irrespective of what they wanted to watch, those in Dersim who switched on the TV were warned in the following manner by the chief commander of the PKK in the Dersim Region: ” Whatever the reason given, TVs may not be switched on (not even to watch the news)”, otherwise the “laws of national liberation will be applied in the sharpest way”. In the villlage of Dogan, which is part of the Cemisgezek area in Dersim, three members of the Kahraman family who had not paid the prescribed tax of five million lira were punished with death. These examples show how far the PKK is prepared to go in using coercion. It should be remembered that there is no advantage to be derived from subjecting the popular masses to “laws” and sentences when they are simultaneously under pressure from the state. For in those areas where revolutionary authority would like to be established but revolutionary power does not have a firm footing, the counterrevolutionary structure has not yet been destroyed and its means of punishment have not been prevented, one must take into account the state’s pressure on the people and not use one’s own methods of compulsion to set up one’s authority. If the people are expected to follow the decisions of revolutionary and patriotic movements, they must be convinced beforehand of the rightness of these decisions and organise themselves accordingly. If this is not done, the revolutionaries will be placed on the same level as the tyrants in the minds of the people. Authority based solely on force will not achieve voluntary support from the people and this fact can be used against the revolutionaries.
In the time when the Kurdish national movement was strong, its authority was stable. When the movement lost strength, it began to lose authority, and this can be seen in practice today. The failure of the PKK to mobilise the people for the war can be laid at the door of its negative approach.
Relations with the people built upon pragmatism and carried out in the same way over a period of years nowadays have ceased to bear fruit, and the violence used against the people has, in the PKK’s practical activity, demonstrated that it will have major trouble pushing forward the Kurdish national movement. This deterioration in its own practice was assessed by the PKK in the following way in 1997: “Irrespective of whether it was children or not and without a decision, a number of innocent people were killed, which is not in our party’s tradition. At the start we were concerned that something like that could not occur and it was laid at the door of the contra-guerrillas. Then we saw that it had been done by our own units, and we were in mourning because of the weight of our own moral responsibility. We were very concerned to correct this but the methods that gave rise to it were not set aside. Even those from whom bread and water had been received were massacred. Twelve-year-old children were abducted. This kind of thing is not contained in any regulations on military justice… There is no transparency here.” (Özgür Halk, Ali Firat, December 1997)
Viewed in one way, this is a realistic approach. But that is all. It is not an approach which takes responsibility and draws consequences from it.
Of course, results such as this cannot be separated from the mentaliity of the PKK. It results from pragmatism at various levels. A mentality which gives a low value to the people and is not convinced of the victory of the people’s struggle and no longer accepts a protracted struggle has an understanding of politics which involves using force to foist one’s own politics on the people. A nationalist viewpoint which seeks to monopolise Kurdistan and its people led to a line later on which made violence against the people legitimate.
They issued “decrees” which were justified on the basis of the movement’s needs, and which led to every problem which arose being dealt with by using force. The situation of the people was completely ignored. Also, with regard to “punishments”, justice and injustice was mixed and thus trust in the justice of the revolutionaries was destroyed.
The violence of the PKK against the people, involving neither principles nor rules, could also be observed inside the organisation. Without investigations or searching for evidence, many fighters were “punished” for incompetence, or in some cases there were also accusations that they were “agents”.
“… Because of inadequate performance and attrition that had been suffered, in its approach to people and its efforts to organise them, our party committed many unjust practices and carried out unjust punishments, which can themselves be classed as infractions and presented as contravening the party’s conception of justice.” (Fifth Congress of the PKK, page 256)
Even if the PKK calls all this negativity “contrary to the line of the party”, the attitude based on coercion, apparent in the past and continuing now, is a result of the PKK’s politics.
The people can observe a party’s conception of justice expressed in the struggle. Actual justice and injustice can be observed more easily through the struggle in practice than through party programmes or resolutions. In practice, the PKK’s idea of justice is negative.
Instead of analysing the problem more deeply and questioning its own utilitarian conceptions which arise from its nationalism, the PKK looks at everything superficially and tries to solve the problem by “rehabilitating those who have been punished”.
From the present viewpoint, the PKK, because of its setbacks , is no longer able to compel the people to do what it wants. But it persists in following a line based on violence.
So long as this mistaken line is not rejected, problems will continue to exist.
PRAGMATISM IN ACTIONS
The peace politics of the PKK and the tactics connected with them seeking to force the oligarchy to the “negotiating table” tend to deepen problems and continue the false line of action. The tactic of “struggling for unity” applied on the basis of the peace politics and combined with the nationalist line, have led to a loss of perspective in actions and a lack of clarity as to their aims. In an effort to make the state in Turkey change its direction, attacks were started against the people, without making any distinctions between friends and enemies. Actions were carried out which sacrificed the justice and legitimacy of the revolutionary struggle.
“If you force the Kurds into a dirty war, burning and destruction, they can sabotage the economy of Turkey in various places. They can turn their attention to tourism. Individuals can set fire to forests.” (Özgür Ülke, August 25, 1994, M. Hayri Dogan) What is clear here is that there is an attempt to shrug off responsibility for actions.
The PKK can deceive nobody this way. Does the PKK think that all political circles are blind, deaf and dumb?
The statement “individuals can set fire to forests” can be taken as an order to “set fire to them!” Or at least it legitimises their burning.
A struggle like this can only be waged with the kind of mentality that is a slave to nationalism. A revolutionary movement makes a distinction between the oppressors and the oppressed, between friend and foe and determines its aims accordingly. Actions resulting from the nationalist mentality could not be defended by the PKK in the beginning because of ideological weakness, but they were legitimised through the statement “if you attack, the Kurdish people will also attack”. But what is decisive here is whether the PKK politically stands behind attacks of this kind or not, whether it supports them or rejects them. The way such actions are organised is merely a detail. Nevertheless there are also “official” declarations which seek to defend such actions.
“It was announced by the ARGK press centre that a guerrilla group from the Garzan area planned reprisals in the Cukurova urban area, because the Turkish state set fire to forests in Kurdistan.
These guerrilla groups carried out the following actions:
The destruction of three transformer stations:
The burning of a TNT storage depot:
The burning of forests and cornfields in 29 different places.” (KURD-A, July 25, 1994)
There is no possibility here of talking in terms of left and right. These actions are the consequences of the PKK’s politics.
The oligarchy harms the people by burning houses, forests and fields. The ARGK does the same by burning forests and fields.
Such actions are more likely to serve the oligarchy as a tool to use in psychological warfare than to drive them into a corner.
The state uses these actions to inflame hostility towards the Kurds.
What did the PKK expect from such actions? A reasonable explanation for them is impossible. The result of these actions is to aggravate the hostility among the peoples, and chauvinism and nationalism is merely strengthened by them.
WHO IS THE ENEMY? THE PEOPLE, THE OLIGARCHY OR THE “TURKS”?
Only a movement with a nationalist mentality can overlook the results that have been brought about. Even if it sees them it acts as though it has not, because the “peace” politics make it thirst for swift results.
The line of action directed against forests arises in a form that causes concern and is directed against the people.
A movement which has the liberation of the Kurdish people as its aim targets other peoples when it is in a jam and cannot develop the struggle further.
Instead of targetting the enemy, the PKK leadership declares that “we will give the order to go into shopping streets and open fire on the crowds.” (Interview with Abullah Öcalan, 7.12.91, Sabah newspaper)
This attitude of the PKK leadership is also carried on by the cadres of the PKK. “Our party and people will punish in the most severe way those who are responsible for the massacres. If Sirnak is destroyed, Istanbul and Ankara will also burn. The civil forces and officials of Turkey will also be the targets of our war.” (August 1992, declaration with the signature of the commander of the training camp in the North Botan Region)
The massacre in Sirnak was caried out by the contra-guerrillas. Here the personnel and institutions of the Turkish state’s contra-guerrillas should be held responsible. But the people are being made responsible for what the contra-guerrillas did. They talk of bombing and burning Istanbul, Ankara and other cities.
Because of the PKK’s nationalist perspective it makes the Turkish people responsible for policy of annihilation, they ignore contradictions between classes, the oppressors and the oppressed. From this pespective the Turkish people are targetted for reprisal actions following the attacks in Kurdistan.
From the nationalist perspective it will not be possible to separate the oppressor and the oppressed from each other, and so another oppressed people is declared to be an enemy. The reality of a country and a people cannot be assessed like that. In every land there is a people which is oppressed by the rulers and subjected to every kind of repression. In any country, irrespective of the nationality of the oppressors, there may be people of the same nationality as the oppressors, but that does not mean that they are not themselves oppressed. On the contrary. The rulers exploit everything and everybody, paying no heed to nationality. This is also the case in Turkey, a country where more than one nationality lives. The Turkish oligarchy, the collaborator with the imperialists, does not consist simply of Turkish rulers but all nations are represented in the exploiting class, drawn together by greed for profit. The character and viewpoint of a class is determined by its class interests. The true enemies of the Turkish, Kurdish and other nations are the same, the oligarchy of the exploiting class. If these facts are ignored and a nation is seen as the enemy, their common struggle will be prevented and hostility stirred up among nations. This hostility will be exploited by the ruling classes and they will fan the flames yet more to safeguard their own status.
For this reason all these measures were like manna from heaven for the oligarchy – measures like reprisal actions aimed at bringing about a political solution from the oligarchy, setting forests and fields on fire, putting bombs in rubbish bins and planting bombs in shopping centres and stations frequented by countless people. The contra-guerrillas exploit this weakness in the national movement and set off several bombs in various places, saying the PKK had done it. The PKK’s line, which even gave contra-guerrillas the possibility of carrying out actions in the PKK’s name, did the Kurdish national movement no good. On the contrary, the product of the nationalist line of action was to create new prejudices among the peoples and stir up hostility. The oligarchy profits from it and prolongs its own life by stirring up the peoples against each other more and more. The PKK must distance itself from this line, whose results are unambiguous and which have not benefited the Kurdish people.
THE WEAPON AND THE ACTION – WHO PROFITS FROM IT?
From the statements made up to this point the following conclusion can be drawn: the reformist tendency, the tendency which seeks reconciliation in the petit bourgeois nationalist movement has appeared and is becoming stronger and stronger. The politics being pursued are determined by it. It has developed to the point where every statement by the PKK declares willingness to enter into negotiations. To give strength to these statements, to have a strong hand in negotiations and to compel opposing forces to sit down at the same table, it tries to develop new threats. At first glance it may seem to be a paradox that a movement conducting an armed struggle and in some places even strengthening it should be inclined towards peace negotations. But it is not a contradiction. Petit bourgeois nationalism seeks a way out of a complex struggle, out of increasingly bigger tasks which it no longer believes it can fulfil when it no longer believes in victory. The way out lies not in revolutionary solutions which are beyond this political force, but rather in seeking unity with the enemy. The national movement which is conducting an armed struggle reckons on giving up its weapons at the negotiating table since otherwise it means death for a movement to give up weapons unconditionally. So that weapons can be given up at the negotiating table the oligarchy must first be induced to take part in negotiations at all. The way to do this is on the one hand to make constant appeals for negotiations and on the other carry on with actions to show one’s own strength and, if prospects for rapprochement with the enemy grow dimmer, the actions can be stepped up. The logic of the national movement can be characterised in this way:
“Much blood will flow… We will give the order to go into Kapalicarsi (a shopping centre) and begin firing wildly.” This attitude says something, as does the following: “What profit could be derived by Turkey from a Turkish-Kurdish clash which would make the Croatian-Serbian confrontation pale by comparison? Blood for blood, an eye for an eye, this is a primitive approach in our view. Instead of this we should attempt to find more civilised ways, one must be courageous.” (Cumhuriyet, December 7, 1991, interview with Öcalan)
Yes, the revolutionary struggle is “blood for blood, an eye for an eye”. But that is not primitive. What is primitive is what is expressed when they talk of firing wildly in the Kapalicarsi shopping centre. Nobody wants to be seen as primitive. But is the PKK reluctant to do these things? Of course not. What sense is there in them saying things like that?
Messages are being sent to the oligarchy. The armed struggle, which can be the hope of liberation for the peoples and which has brought the Kurdish national liberation struggle as far as it has come, is called “primitive” while negotations are called “civilised”. The oligarchy is not threatened with the development of a “revolutionary struggle” but with a conflict similar to the Croat-Serb one. Two things are always expressed in the messages: firstly, they are openly in favour of negotiations and want democratic and political solutions; and secondly, if the government does not do this, the intensity of the war will be stepped up and much blood will flow…
Building up organisations does not proceed in parallel to the armed struggle, it is much more the product of it. An atmosphere of “if you do not come around to what we say we will strike blows everywhere” is meant to be created by this. On the one hand, while “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is called primitive, on the other hand the order to launch an attack in Kapalicarsi is given. We experienced the events in the Cetinkaya shops. Trains and central railway stations were the target of attacks. Ordinary innocent people were the targets of these actions.
At the point where nationalism and wishes for reconciliation (with the system) meet, such actions will proliferate but they do not prove advantageous to anyone, on the contrary they confuse aims. Although no advantage is derived – although they hope to do so – they give the enemy propaganda material and injure themselves through engaging in unprincipled and lawless violence. The PKK, which wants nothing other than to bring the oligarchy to the negotiating table, killed 10 innocent people with its actions in Bakirköy-Kapalicarsi and afterwards it said: “Reactions of this kind will proliferate… and as much as it is in my power, I will organise them, strengthen them and of course direct them.” (…) If they go on, I think they will also escalate.
“(…) Come, let us leave the way open for political negotiations, we said they should have sent an ambassador. We said let us jointly put a stop to this blind violence and terror. Why don’t we come towards each other? I am ready, I repeat it once more. To stop a rise in the level of terror, a political representative should step forward and in this way prevent terror. Why don’t they come forward? What are we supposed to do?” (Öcalan, Berxwedan special issue, December 31, 1991, interview with BBC)
These words of Öcalan reveal a great deal:
Firstly: the PKK carries out such actions for its own reasons and sees them as correct and legitimate.
Secondly: the form of such actions are referred to as blind terror and this is completely correct.
Thirdly: calling the actions blind terror and persisting in carrying them out is a great contradiction of the PKK.
Fourthly: “Come, let us jointly put a stop to this terror” means suspending any differentiation between the violence of the contra-guerrillas and the violence of the revolutionary people.
Fifthly: despite these contradictions and inconsistent behaviour, the actions are continued because the overriding aim is “political negotiations”.
The PKK tries with all its strength to force the oligarchy to negotiate, and for this reason the actions that it itself calls “blind terror” are carried out. And then it almost screams when it asks “why won’t they come? What are we supposed to do?” It was obvious that the action at Bakirköy did not achieve its aim or bring them nearer to it, so what happens now: is more “blind terror” to be used?
Petit bourgeois nationalism, which lacks self-confidence about using weapons correctly to achieve victory, now sees weapons only as a trump card in negotiations. Laying down their weapons is a new condition. Lessons can be derived from examples in other countries – and they will show how this process ended up.
The PKK is not the first example of how weapons went from being a means of struggling for power to being used for reformist and conformist purposes. El Salvador and Guatemala are similiar examples. There the forces which waged an armed struggle to achieve people’s power laid down their weapons for “peace” because of a lack of political foresight and courage. More recently they only used weapons when they were attacked or in order to have more weight in the negotiations. In El Salvador the rulers sat down at the negotiating table when they were in an impasse and could not defeat the armed guerrillas. By making small concessions they succeeded in disarming them, rendering them harmless and tying them to the system. But at the point when weapons were laid down, the holy values of struggling for a new order, for a new world were left hanging in the air. The revolutionaries were not the winners, but rather imperialism and its collaborators. In the “New World Order” problems were “solved” like that. Now the rulers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Palestine play with the forces which laid down weapons and sought reconciliation, in much the same way as a cat plays with a mouse. How sad it is to see that the rulers who managed to tie their negotating partners to themselves did not even keep their promise to improve the condition of the people by giving ex-guerrillas work.
How can such a logic make a revolution? “Destroy those who are trying to destroy your culture.”
The national viewpoint of the PKK also brought with it an abnormal cultural distortion. This distortion has penetrated into all parts of the PKK. It plays a decisive role in its statements, its practice, its nationalism and in its culture of pragmatism. The PKK talks of Turkification and of the common struggle of the peoples but this runs up against the barriers it itself has erected. These barriers are those that have been exploited by the same enemy, it is the nationalist line and the result of it, which is the longing to liberate just one people. Once more on what flows from this:
The General Secretary of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, said the following in a report published in Özgür Gündem:
“If they force our people to emigrate, we also know ways of making people emigrate. (…) Kurdistan is being turned to dust and ashes… Turkey also has places that can be turned to dust and ashes. If our cultural values continue to be destroyed, we too can turn against their cultural values.”
The dimensions that can be attained by such a national viewpoint are expressed very concretely in this statement. Whom do the cultural values belong to? Who are the ones trying to destroy the cultural values of the Kurdish people? Cultural conceptions have been developed over many generations, up to the present one. These values were created by working people and the enemies of these values are the rulers. The revolutionaries enrich the ethical and material values of the peoples and try to convey them in the present day. But they neither burn it nor destroy it. Next to the cultural damage the PKK have done through their policy there is also the greater damage done to fraternity and the unity of the peoples.
The PKK inflames nationalism and hostility among the peoples when it says: “We can take cultural values as a target for our attacks.” One of the most important methods the rulers use to continue their system and their existence is to split the peoples and disorganise them. This is well known but that is not enough. Can we oppose this policy? Does this policy serve rather to strengthen this method? For decades the oligarchy has sought to stir up the Turkish, Kurdish and peoples of other nationalities, beliefs and religions against each other, by creating prejudices and stirring up hatred. That was why the massacres in Sivas, Maras, Corum and Malatya were carried out. During the 1980s many efforts were made to organise among Alevis, but at the same time no value was placed on organising among Sunnis, and this strengthened the enemy. The PKK is making the same mistake with regard to Turks and Kurds. The mentality has reached the point that Kurdish revolutionaries struggling inside revolutionary organisations are referred to by the PKK as “cahs” (traitors).
The attack on the village of Basbaglar after the massacre in Sivas and the murder of the village inhabitants because they were Turks and Sunnis, the murder of teachers in Kurdistan, the attack on a building site and the abduction of three engineers, followed by the murder of the Turkish engineers and the release of the Bulgarian one, all these are products of the PKK’s distorted logic. These actions helped Turkish chauvinism, nothing else. As long as the PKK does not cut itself loose from this kind of politics, it can never become a mass movement in the whole of Turkey, not even at the theoretical level. The nationalist mentality they have encouraged among their cadres, and the Turkish chauvinism whose path they have smoothed will be an obstacle for them everywhere.
“Was this done by the contra-guerrillas or the PKK?”
Unfortunately this question has become increasingly frequent among revolutionaries and democrats. It is not simply the actions of the contra-guerrillas that have given rise to this, but the PKK’s practices have also contributed. Every action directed against the people causes the question to be asked whether it is the contra-guerrillas. But chaos results if it is discovered that it was the PKK and not contra-guerrillas. A month ago the PKK leadership said a bomb blast in Istanbul/Sultanahmet could have been the result of “infiltration”.
But this kind of action is not exceptional for the PKK and that is where the problem lies.
They always explain away the situation as “infiltration” or the special needs of the war, and in this way the falseness of their line of action is apparent.
“The third congress of our Party in 1986 took place in Lebanon. We worked on wide-ranging solutions. We battled with provocations, liquidation, conspiracies and many other problems… Particularly in 1987 in Mardin, there were provocations. There were provocateurs among us. Most probably it was one of the methods of special warfare by the Turkish state to denigrate our struggle…” (Abdullah Öcalan, Serxwebun, Number 119, page 20)
This logic is far from being able to actually learn from developments, the false approaches, taking account of deviations and critically analysing the situation so mistakes can be overcome. Since they do not have a correct approach, they see every development as a plot or try to explain them with theories about provocations. For example, the Mardin events were not declared to to be the result of blood feuds and nationalism, but were mistakes by individuals or were “TR (Republic of Turkey) provocations”. A movement or leadership should not try to explain the logic of these events so lightly. The task of the leadership is to educate people, and to propagate the movement’s logic in the movement itself. If this does not happen and there is a lot of talk of agents, provocations, liquidationism and plots, it is clear that the line itself is the problem.
Bombs exploded in Kapalicarsi, in the Galleria, in trains, central railway stations and in city squares. Sometimes these actions were denied, sometimes responsibility was claimed, sometimes they wavered between one or the other. The lack of consistency towards actions gives the contra-guerrillas a foundation to work on. At this point the PKK should ask itself to what extent it is responsible when contra-guerrillas set off bombs and then pass it off as the PKK’s work.
With statements about “blind terror” and “going to Kapalicarsi and firing wildly” in an an effort to get the oligarchy to negotiate, innocent people were targetted. This kind of logic gives the contra-guerrillas a loophole to carry out actions in the name of the PKK. The line is becoming blurred. The people and even the revolutionaries and progressives cannot tell right away who is responsible for a particular action. This logic does not benefit the national movement and even does it harm.
