February 17, 1999

Kurds' Rebel Leader May Prove a Discredit to His Cause

By STEPHEN KINZER

STANBUL, Turkey -- One of the greatest modern tragedies for the hapless Kurds, who have been
oppressed, exploited and slaughtered by dozens of regimes over the centuries, may have been the rise
of Abdullah Ocalan as their revolutionary leader.

Ocalan, whose return to Turkey as a prisoner Tuesday seems to have ended his 14-year career as a
guerrilla leader, is by most accounts dogmatic and tyrannical. Many Turkish Kurds have followed him,
and some still consider him to be their only authentic leader. In the eyes of much of the world, however,
he has done as much as anyone to discredit their cause.

Most of the people with whom Ocalan formed the Kurdistan Workers Party in the 1970s were later killed,
some of them tortured to death, on his orders -- or they fled to live clandestinely in Europe. He branded
them as traitors after they challenged him or pressed for more democracy within the revolutionary
movement.

Ocalan was able to build his party into a strong guerrilla movement in the late 1980s in part because the
Turkish government did not allow any Kurdish organizations to exist legally. With no moderates to follow,
many Kurds turned to him despite their doubts about his tactics and personal traits.

Although he has encouraged a strong personality cult, Ocalan (pronounced OH-ja-lan) is not believed to
have fought in a single engagement with Turkish troops, preferring the safety of exile in Syria.

His group has thrived largely because of support from foreign powers. It was first subsidized by the
Soviet Union, which encouraged all movements that might weaken Turkey. Later it was adopted by Syria.
According to Turkish officials, it has also received various forms of backing from Greece and Armenia.

Kurdish exiles in Europe have contributed millions of dollars to his movement, some of it voluntarily and
the rest under threat. Prosecutors in several European countries have asserted that the organization also
operates lucrative heroin-smuggling rings.

Violence became such an integral part of the group's operations in Europe that the Swedish police spent
years investigating claims that it was behind the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme. The claims
were never proven.

By the early 1990s, Ocalan's movement had won at least nighttime control over large parts of eastern
Turkey. It appointed local officials, collected taxes and administered its own justice system.

Alarmed at this success, the Turkish government launched a savage counterinsurgency campaign during
which many Kurdish villages were burned and many suspected rebel sympathizers were tortured or killed
or disappeared. This campaign was a devastating military success, but it also brought a great political
victory to the Kurdistan Workers Party by allowing it to portray the Turkish military as savagely
repressive.

Ocalan was born into a peasant family with six children in a village on the Syrian border. He became a
left-wing militant during his university years in Ankara, where he studied politics. He was imprisoned for
seven months in 1972 for "pro-Kurd activities." He has led the Kurdistan Workers' Party since 1978, when
he created the Marxist-oriented party with a group of fellow students.

He fled Turkey prior to the September 1980 military coup and has since lived in exile. On August 15,
1984, he launched his armed struggle against Turkey, choosing arms over talks for the Kurdish cause so
as not to "waste time with political debates."

He wrote editorials in the pro-Kurd newspaper Ozgur Ulke prior to its suspension in 1995, and then began
broadcasting on the London-based satellite channel MED-TV beaming directly to Turkish Kurdistan.

There are more than 20 million Kurds in eastern Turkey and nearby regions of other countries. They are
native to the region and were already there when the Turks arrived from Central Asia about 1,000 years
ago. The Kurds are said to be the largest group that has never had a state of their own.

In recent years, Ocalan has made several peace overtures to the Turkish government. All have been
rejected. Advocating negotiations with his party is a criminal offense here.

Now that the Turkish authorities have finally caught the man they have demonized for so long, some
Turks are wondering if the political climate will change.

"There are tons of Kurds who I believe are prepared to play the pluralist game, recognizing that separatist
and secessionist agendas are a downhill slippery slope to chaos, pain and violence," said Kemal Kirisci,
author of a recent book on Turkey's Kurdish dilemma. "This could finally be the occasion of Turkey
reaching maturity and finally embarking on the path its people deserve."