Radio War Nerd EP #522 — The PKK
Recorded: May 13, 2025
The PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) voted to end their 40-year insurgency for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey. We look back at the party's origins in the 1970s, its leader Abdullah Ocalan, and the many betrayals of the Kurds.
Music interlude by Brendon Anderegg. Check out music from his group Mountains here
Total time: 1:23:22
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (20)
I went to Diyarbakir in 2011 and there was a lot of good will there still for George Bush’s contribution to Iraqi Kurdistan. But my peers at the Turkish university I was visiting were appalled when I came back with fun stories about attending Newroz :D
Those peers also explained to me that the state violence against Kurds in the southeast were mostly CIA false flag operations. And Kurdish and Armenian independence movements, citing the Treaty of Sèvres as evidence, were invented and sustained by western powers.
Gents, can you do an episode on the Armenian genocide? This episode had so much relevance to that.
Guys… you gotta get Flint Arthur back on the show. The guy who you interviewed who got attacked by Erdogan’s goons, remember? He has extensive knowledge and contacts with Rojava, he’s been there, he’s bound to be an interesting interview.
That part about Polish poets and snobby exiled nobles was a quite a surprize.
I wonder if John knew Peter Dale Scott while at Berkeley. Would be a terrific guest with an impossible range stretching from poetry to contemporary history to drug trade to deep politics. He is 96 yet absolutely lucid and articulate.
It's so nauseating to imagine the world the Angloids dream of creating. Thieving, self-serving technocrats handing off their people's wealth to the highest bidder in the West, an omniscient police and security state rigidly enforcing compliance and conformity, the global south reduced to a mining pit powered by slave labor and overseen by a few white overseers and their collaborators, and brutal authoritarian regimes that know how to appeal to white tourists ruling over everything east of Poland. Their lies about upholding democracy and civil rights are a hypocrisy so vile that it makes me sick.
Trump claims “Saddam should’ve never been deposed” yet, in the same fowl swoop, it’s leaked he was in talks to “relocate” the people of Gaza to Libya, or maybe even Syria - so it’s like .. well I guess you don’t feel the same fervor for Gadaffi or Assad 🤔.. not to pigeon hole what your were trying to say, it just drew this to mind for me.. we’ve been marching into a dark age, and now they can play in the wreckage and philosophize about their mistakes like it doesn’t even matter .
Great episode, congratulations! Any reading recommendations on the PKK you can share? In relation to how scary the Turkish state is, I cannot but remember how the Turkish embassy in my town literally forced the local government to push the anti-fascist rally that I participated in on the sidewalks (with police vans parked on the street in such a way as to even visually block seeing the embassy from within the rally) because the Anarchist faction that was also organizing the rally are staunch supporters of the Kurdish cause and wanted to stop in front of the embassy and, well, say a few "good" things about Erdogan.
Read Öcalan’s Sociology of Freedom, Vol 3. Or any of his prison writings really. The Gramsci of our times
A lot off topic, but it’s not often I get to geek out on anything Anarchist…and this show seems to love a good Tragedy: Nestor Makhno has his entire memoirs translated from his time in the Russian Revolution (well the ones that weren’t destroyed by the Gestapo). The first 3 volumes are available from Black Cat Press. He commanded an Anarchist Peasant Army and runs into a lot of interesting characters including Maria Nikiforova. She was a fellow anarchist partisan leader, but with a much more spotty record with the rules of war…but she did command her very own war-train! So…ya…sorry…I’ll stop my de-railing now hahaha but there is a lot of interesting Anarchist History out there, overshadowed by the much bigger brother Marxist Leninist/Maoist and company
Makhno comes up in RWN ep 102
billy woods - "For the thousandth time, went ahead and armed the Kurds Dead birds as far as the eye can see"
I feel for John, I feel like this is the equivalent of him doing a podcast a day after the 2002 Raiders SB disaster... It's insane how Jolani and HTS basically outlived the Assad regime, the PKK, and even a lot of Hezbollah (although that's obviously a bit premature). Imagine telling that to fans of the show on 2017 or so? Lol. Just goes to sure you that it's impossibly to predict anything, and that the long, patient game is so important. But I'm sure we'll say the same thing in 5 years when Syria and the region are in a completely different state
“While the world forgets, RWN remembers.” You have to pay me to use that tagline
Great episode!
Fuck israel
I didn't expect the PKK to surrender like that. Some Kurds have explained it as an attempt to save what's left of Rojava from an open Turkish invasion. Militarily speaking, drones have also been devasting to the PKK and have made it essentially impossible for them to make any incursions into Turkish controlled territory. Also, since you mentioned it in the epiosode: If I remeber correctly, the reason Öcalan went to Kenya was to get to South Africa. Mandela's goverment apparently wanted to grant him exile there.
South Africa makes sense and Nairobi is the air hub for east Africa (the second biggest hub in Africa after Joburgh) so it makes sense he would have been trying to change planes there
John, I liked your Carduchii joke