Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence

Aliza Marcus

Aug 2007 · NYU Press

About this ebook

This in-depth study of the Kurdistan Workers' Party combines reportage and scholarship for “a scholarly, gripping account” (The Economist).

The Kurds, who number some twenty-eight million people in the Middle East, have no country to call their own. Yet today, they are highly visible actors on the world's political stage. To understand modern-day Kurds—and their continuing demands for an independent state—we must understand the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). A guerilla force founded in 1978, the PKK radicalized the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, becoming a tightly organized, well-armed fighting force of some 15,000, with a 50,000-member civilian militia in Turkey and tens of thousands of active backers in Europe. 

Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world—including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up—Marcus provides an in-depth account of this influential radical group.

Blood and Belief combines reportage and scholarship to give the first in-depth account of the PKK. Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years for a variety of prominent publications before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world—including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up—Marcus provides an in-depth account of this influential radical group.

Ratings and reviews

Aliza Marcus. Blood and Belief. A Critical Review from a Pro Kurdish Freedom Struggle Perspective. After the establishment of the modern Turkish state, the 'Young Turks' set about a policy of forced assimilation of the Kurdish people, after the Kurds had supported Kemal Ataturk in his war of independence. A betrayal that sowed the seeds of the present conflict. First provided with the possibility of a state in the Peace Treaty of Sevre, the Kurds were denied by trickery and betrayal in The Treaty of Lausanne. The Shiekh Said uprising in 1925 was in response to this stated policy of annihilation and forced assimilation summed up nicely by Ismet Inounu to the Turkish Congress in May of 1925. "We are frankly Nationalist......and Nationalism is our only factor of cohesion. Before the Turkish majority other elements have no kind of influence. At any price, we must turkify the inhabitants of of our land, and we will annihilate those who oppose Turks or 'le turquisme." And annihilate they did, brutal suppression and criminalisation of the Kurds began during this period. Over 29 Kurdish uprisings have taken place against Turkish genocidal policies towards the Kurds since that time, the present one led by the PKK being the most recent. Recently, many media outlets have been quoting from a new book written by Aliza Marcus, Blood and Belief. Hevallo has read this book and unfortunately, this book, nor the issues that it address's, cannot be understood without placing the PKK in its historical and political context, which the book does little to address. For example, the book is based, solely, on interviews with ex members of the PKK, firstly. We all know that ex members of any group have axes to grind. Secondly, and much more importantly, the book focuses solely on 'internal discipline' issues, again from the point of view of ex members, but does not look at how the Turkish intelligence forces have aggressively tried and succeeded, to infiltrate, agitate and provoke the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Not to mention the many assassination attempts upon the lives of many of its leaders. The fact that the PKK is not a state, with organs of judiciary, police, courts nor laws, but is fighting for the rights of millions of Kurdish people with little more that Kalashnikovs, plimsolls and a thirst for justice, deserves a little more depth of analysis, especially in regards to the all consuming strength of the Turkish psychological warfare aspect of this conflict. I'm sure if you look into any freedom struggle you will see an ugly side, consider the placing of a tyre full of petrol around the neck of a traitor who gave information to the enemy during the struggle of the ANC against Apartheid. Or the 'knee capping' punishment given to 'informers' of the Irish Nationalist Movement in Ireland. Oppressed people who do not have a judicial system, nor organs of state, often have little option but to resort to summary punishments as a way of maintaining discipline and avoiding information being given to the enemy. This has happened in liberation struggles and wars since the beginning of time. Many Kurdish people have joined or have been forced to join the State sponsored 'Village Guard' system where Kurds are forced to fight against the PKK. They are uniformed, armed and fight alongside the Turkish Army and yet when attacked by the PKK they are continuously called 'civilians' by critics of the PKK. This at best disingenuous and at worst it is promoting Turkish psychological warfare. The Kurds have not chosen the conditions under which they have had to carry out their profound struggle for freedom, against a particularly cruel enemy and this book only further demonises the Kurdish Freedom Struggle, without any real context in regards to the situation in which the PKK found itself in, in any particular time. I'm sure if given the right of reply and in some future date a history of the PKK is written by someone within the organisation

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About the author

Marcus Aliza : Aliza Marcus is formerly an international correspondent for The Boston Globe and lives in Washington, D.C. She covered the PKK for more than eight years, first as a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and later as a staff writer for Reuters, receiving a National Press Club Award for her reporting. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant for her work.