COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has long dominated the Kurdish discourse on the streets of European capitals. Whenever flash demonstrations break out across Europe to support the Kurdish cause, Kurdish associations linked to the PKK are most likely behind them. Banners bearing the portrait of Abdullah Ocalan, the movement’s jailed leader, are usually the giveaway. But as world attention focuses on a region in which Kurds of various political stripes are confronting the forces of Islamic State on a variety of fronts in Syria and Iraq, other groups are joining in. A demonstration in Hamburg, Germany on September 26 was organized by the Platform for Hamburg's Kurds, which groups various Kurdish associations, including Komkar, its women's branch and youth branch and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Komkar is often at odds with the PKK. In Copenhagen, the Kurdish National Council-Syria and the Confederation of Kurdish Associations in Denmark (SKFD) staged a demonstration in front of Parliament on October 3. The KNC is backed by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, who has had strained relations with the PKK in the past because of his close links with Turkey. Overwhelmingly in Europe, however, the PKK has pre-dominated and continues to attract the largest attendance at demonstrations. An estimated 20,000 turned out to the largest recent demonstration, in Düsseldorf, Germany. Since the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the group often operates under cover names. Therefore it is difficult to know exactly how much support it has among diaspora Kurds, many of them Turkish-born. Ahmet Alis, a historian from Bogazici University in Istanbul, who has studied Europe’s Kurdish diaspora, estimates the “PKK is the biggest group among Kurds in almost all European countries, except Sweden”. According to a 2012 report of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BFV), the PKK has nearly 13,000 supporters in Germany, making it “biggest foreign and radical force” in Germany. It is a small number out of an estimated 800,000 Kurds living in Germany, but Alis said that none of the PKK’s rivals were able to organize on anything approaching that level. In Germany, the PKK started mobilizing among non-political Kurdish immigrants from Turkey in the early 1980s. By contrast Sweden’s Kurds are primarily political refugees from other long-established Kurdish nationalist parties, such as the Flag of Liberation (Ala Rizgari), Workers Vanguard Party of Kurdistan (Peseng) and the Kurdistan Socialist Party (PSK). According to the PKK’s supporters the reason for its popularity is the fact that the PKK long engaged in a bloody war with Turkey, while other parties have not seen armed struggle for years, at least until the upsurge in violence in Syria and Iraq. "Had it not been for the PKK and YPG, my family in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) would have been killed by the Islamic State," Firyel Shingali told Rudaw. She lives in Germany and has roots in Shingal in Iraqi Kurdistan, but has also family in Syria. Mikhail Pirmeh lives in Denmark and is from an Iranian-Kurdish family that originally supported the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDKI). PDKI ended the armed struggle in the 1990s and was weakened by internal strife and split into several factions. "The PKK has been good to stay together, so they can be strong, rather than being split into small groups,” Pirmeh told Rudaw, adding that it was active throughout all parts of Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Communities Group (KCK) is an umbrella organization founded by the PKK, which also includes, Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), Iran’s Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), and the Iraqi branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK). “The PKK is open to everybody, regardless of which part of Kurdistan you come from, and it attracts me as an Iranian Kurd," Pirmeh said. According to Alis PKK is adept at mobilizing supporters to show up for demonstrations via networking, social media and its own media. It also has supportive broadcasters and other media outlets. The PKK earned its terrorist designation because of attacks on civilians and tourists in Turkish cities in the 1990s, according to Jacob Lindgaard, an expert on Turkey at Britain’s University of Warwick. The formerly hardline Marxist party has refrained from such tactics in recent years, Lindgaard noted. Times have changed and events are pulling together former rivals. Even the United States is now talking to the PKK’s Syrian offshoot, the PYD. Europe and the US are likely for the foreseeable future to retain the PKK’s terrorist designation and Lindgaard notes Ocalan’s party has not entirely set aside its old ways. He criticized it for still using authoritarian and non-democratic methods, stemming from its “extreme leftist background, which originally did not tolerate criticism.” “The PKK intimidates people who disagree with them. There is a perception that it is necessary to stand together. But it is also undemocratic, thus conflicting with the ideals the PKK itself claims to be fighting for,” Lindgaard told Rudaw.
