'The Ideological Codes of the PKK' by Fikret Bila

'The Ideological Codes of the PKK: A Blueprint' by Fikret Bila, translated by Gülşah Dikmeci (Doğan Kitap, 223 pages, 25TL)

With the ongoing war in Syria and the U.S.'s recent anti-ISIL alliance with the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), more attention is being paid to the latter's ideological bedfellows, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The group has been waging a war for over 30 years against the Turkish state, in a conflict that has killed almost 50,000 people and disrupted the lives of many more.

"The Ideological Codes of the PKK: A Blueprint" by Fikret Bila does not linger over the psychological, material and political damage wrought by the insurgency and the response by the authorities. Instead, Bila, currently the editor-in-chief of the Turkish version of Hürriyet, examines the motivating ideological convictions of the PKK over the years. As the blurb states, the book aims to "demystify the meaning and purpose of each of the group's many tentacles, undertaking a deep dive into the ideology that motivates it in war and peace." 

The PKK has had to reinvent itself constantly over the years. Most recently, the group's Syrian wing has even begun attracting idealistic young recruits from across America and Europe. After the end of the Cold War, the PKK gave up its ideological commitment to Marxism and adopted the ideas of an obscure American political theorist Murray Bookchin on how to create a new society.

The Syrian Kurdish YPG's attritional ground campaign against ISIL has garnered it flattering coverage in many Western media outlets. Brave, photogenic young feminist ecowarriors contrast sympathetically with barbaric jihadists. In the wasteland of the Syrian war, the Kurds' apparently socialist,...