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

Aliza Marcus

សីហា 2007 · NYU Press

អំពីសៀវភៅ​អេឡិចត្រូនិកនេះ

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.

អំពី​អ្នកនិពន្ធ

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.