Who is Ocalan? Abdullah Ocalan, who as a student of political science in Ankara became deeply involved in leftist movements, formed the PKK in 1978 as a Marxist organization.

PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, long imprisoned by Turkey, said it was "a voluntary transition from the phase of armed conflict to the phase of democratic politics and law." ...

Thirty PKK fighters destroyed their weapons at a symbolic ceremony in Iraqi Kurdistan on Friday, two months after the Kurdish rebels ended their decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.

After Mr. Ocalan was sentenced in 1999 for treason and separatism, he shifted the P.K.K. away from the pursuit of statehood and toward greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey.

The PKK — an acronym for its Kurdish name, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan — is officially founded in the village of Fis, in Turkey’s mainly-Kurdish province of Diyarbakir by Abdullah Ocalan and ...