Kurdistan Workers' Party in the context of "Syrian-Turkish relations"

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a Kurdish-led coalition of U.S.-backed left-wing ethnic militias and rebel groups, and serves as the official military wing of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES; also unofficially known as Rojava). Founded on 10 October 2015, the stated mission of the SDF is to create a secular, democratic, and federalized Syria. The SDF is opposed by Turkey, who view the group as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which it has designated a terrorist group. On 10 March 2025, the SDF agreed to integrate into Syrian state institutions under the Syrian caretaker government. Mazloum Abdi met with the committee formed by Ahmed al-Sharaa to implement the deal; further meetings were planned for April.

Formed as a rebel alliance in the Syrian civil war with American support, the SDF is composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian/Syriac, as well as some smaller Armenian, Turkmen, and Chechen forces. It is militarily led by the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia which is designated as a terrorist group by both Turkey and Qatar. The SDF also includes several ethnic militias and various factions of the Syrian opposition's Free Syrian Army.

Kurds have had a long history of discrimination perpetrated against them by the Turkish government. Massacres have periodically occurred against the Kurds since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Among the most significant is the massacre that happened during the Dersim massacre, when 13,000–70,000 civilians were killed by the Turkish Army and 11,818 people were sent into exile. According to McDowall, 40,000 people were killed. The Zilan massacre of 1930 was a massacre of Kurdish residents of Turkey during the Ararat rebellion, in which 5,000 to 47,000 were killed.

The use of Kurdish language, dress, folklore, and names were banned, and the Kurdish-inhabited areas remained under martial law until 1946. In an attempt to deny an existence of a Kurdish ethnicity, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until the 1980s. The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", and "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. But even though the ban on speaking in a non Turkish language was lifted in 1991, the Kurdish aim to be recognized as a distinct people than Turkish or to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction, but this was often classified as separatism or support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Currently, it is illegal to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools, yet there are schools who defy this ban. The Turkish Government has repeatedly blamed the ones who demanded more Kurdish cultural and educational freedom of terrorism or support for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Abdullah Öcalan (/ˈoʊdʒəlɑːn/ OH-jə-lahn; Turkish: [œdʒaɫan]; born 4 April 1948 or 1949), also known as Apo (short for Abdullah in Turkish; Kurdish for "uncle"), is a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Öcalan was based in Syria from 1979 to 1998. He helped found the PKK in 1978, and led it into the Kurdish–Turkish conflict in 1984. For most of his leadership, he was based in Syria, which provided sanctuary to the PKK until the late 1990s.

From 1978 until 2025, the Republic of Turkey was in an armed conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) as well as its allied insurgent groups, both Kurdish and non-Kurdish. The initial core demand of the PKK was its separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan. Later on, the PKK abandoned separatism in favor of autonomy and/or greater political and cultural rights for Kurds inside the Republic of Turkey.

Although most of the conflict took place in Northern Kurdistan, which corresponded with southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish-Turkish conflict spread to many other regions. The PKK's presence in Iraqi Kurdistan resulted in the Turkish Armed Forces carrying out frequent ground incursions and air and artillery strikes in the region, and its influence in Syrian Kurdistan led to similar activity there. The conflict costed the economy of Turkey an estimated $300 to 450 billion, mostly in military costs. It also had negative effects on tourism in Turkey.

The Peoples' Democratic Party (Turkish: Halkların Demokratik Partisi, acronymized as HDP; Kurdish: Partiya Demokratîk a Gelan), or Democratic Party of the Peoples, is a Turkish political party mainly representing ethnic minorities in Turkey, especially Kurds. Generally left-wing, the party places a strong emphasis on participatory and radical democracy, feminism, minority rights, youth rights, and egalitarianism. It is an associate member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), a consultative member of the Socialist International, and a party within the Progressive Alliance (PA).

Aspiring to fundamentally challenge the existing Turkish–Kurdish divide and other existing parameters in Turkish politics, the HDP was founded in 2012 as the political wing of the Peoples' Democratic Congress, a union of numerous left-wing movements that had previously fielded candidates as independents to bypass the 10% election threshold. The HDP is in an alliance with the Kurdish Democratic Regions Party (DBP), often described as the HDP's fraternal party. From 2013 to 2015, the politicians of the DBP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Mazloum Abdi is a Syrian Kurdish military leader, serving as the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

According to organizational media, Mazloum Abdi was a member of the executive council of the PKK's branch, Kurdistan Communities Union, in 2013. Abdi's SDF reached an integration agreement with the Syrian transitional government on 10 March 2025 after Abdi congratulated Ahmed al-Sharaa on assuming the Syrian transitional presidency.

Andrew Craig Brunson (born January 3, 1968) is an American pastor. Before becoming a lecturer in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, he was the evangelical pastor of a Protestant church with a congregation of 24 people in İzmir, Turkey.

Brunson was arrested in Turkey, where he has lived since the mid-1990s, in 2016 on allegations of spying and links to the Gülen movement and the PKK during the purges following the coup attempt against 65th cabinet of Turkey. In 2019, Brunson published a memoir.