Radicalisation processes of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK): ideology and recruitment tactics

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper provides an overview of the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) ideological trinity, their recruitment tactics, radicalisation routes and sociological dynamics that are giving way to recruitment within Turkey. This paper argues the PKK is utilising five key recruitment tactics within Turkey and the Middle East, these being: 1) Family and kinship ties 2) Charismatic figures and local institutions 3) Marriage as a recruitment tool 4) Indoctrination camps and 5) Printed materials such as magazines, memoirs, novels and autobiographies. By utilising published interviews from organisational written and visual sources, this paper has analysed twenty interviews of current or former PKK members to identify their motivations, radicalisation processes and ways of recruitment to the organisation. This paper demonstrates the PKK is exploiting the social fabric of Turkeys Southeast by utilising Marxist, Kurdish nationalist, anti-governmental discourses for its modus operandi in addition to other sociological issues currently present.