Kurdistan Workers' Party insurgency in the context of "Political violence in Turkey (1976–1980)"

The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or the 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 (with several ceasefires between 1993 and 2013–2015). 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.

The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan. Some analysts and organizations disagree with this designation, believing that the PKK no longer engages in organized terrorist activities or systemically targets civilians. Turkey has often characterized the demand for education in Kurdish as supporting terrorist activities by the PKK.

The Maoist insurgency in Turkey, referred by the Maoists as the People's War (Turkish: Halk savaşı), is an ongoing low-level insurgency in eastern Turkey between the Turkish government and Maoist rebels that began in the early 1970s. The insurgency declined in the late 1980s and 1990s and has been sidelined by the larger Kurdish–Turkish conflict (1978–2025). Low-level armed attacks continue to be carried out by Maoist insurgent groups, the most significant of which are the Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey (TİKKO) (the armed wing of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist–Leninist) and the People's Liberation Army (HKO) and People's Partisan Forces (PHG), both armed wings of the Maoist Communist Party.

Political violence in Turkey became a serious problem in the late 1970s and was even described as a "low-level civil war". Far-left groups and Turkish right-wing ultranationalist gangs, sometimes allied with the state, were responsible for most of the violence. Ultimately, over 5,000 people died in the conflict. The violence lessened for a while after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, and was later overshadowed by the PKK insurgency in 1984 and the revival of the Maoist insurgency.