‘The Palestinian Dream’ in the Kurdish context

Abstract

Turkey’s rising leftist student movement in the late 1960s admired the Palestinian Fedayeen movement and considered it as a school for their own future struggle. In the late 1960s young Turkish-Kurdish leftist students went to Palestinian guerilla camps in Lebanon to be trained in preparation for armed struggle in Turkey. That relationship gained new momentum following the 1980 military coup in Turkey, which heavily impacted Turkish and Kurdish radical movements. The Palestinian camps turned out to be a major retreat for these Turkish-Kurdish groups, among whom the PKK was a primary beneficiary. The PKK seized this opportunity not only for military training but also for organisational recovery which almost no other Turkish or Kurdish movement managed. This article aims to trace the relationship between Turkish-Kurdish radical movements and Palestinian organisations, focusing mainly on the PKK. I argue that the PKK has made use of this relationship in realising the so-called “Palestinian Dream” within the Kurdish context.