The previous chapter showed how specific political opportunities in Turkey affected the emergence of migrant organisations in the Netherlands. It also illustrated how third-country transnational ties and the use of supranational opportunity structures were especially relevant for groups excluded from political participation in their homelands. This chapter continues this line of analysis for (self-identifying) Kurds living in the Netherlands. It focuses on the impact of the political climate and opportunity structure in Turkey, new Dutch and European opportunity structures and third-country and ethnic transnational ties on Kurdish diaspora politics.

I begin with the growth of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey in the 1970s up to the 1980 coup. I then examine the strategies of both legal and illegal Kurdish and pro-Kurdish political parties, in Turkey and in European exile. Special attention is devoted to the PKK in Europe, the organisation that dominated both the ‘Kurdish question’ in Turkey and Kurdish activities in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The final section examines the ties between Kurdish parties and migrant organisations in the Netherlands and Europe between 2002 and 2004.

The rise of Kurdish nationalism

The TİP was the first legal party to recognise Kurds in 1970. This led to its closure by the constitutional court and the prosecution of its leaders for encouraging activities to divide the country (Ahmad 1993: 311). Kurds had been prominent in Marxist groups in the 1970s and were engaged in street fighting with extreme right youths (Poulton 1997: 212). This period saw the founding of two important Kurdish parties, the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (PSKT) and the PKK. Their leaders had roots in the workers party TİP and the student movement Dev Genç, respectively (see Appendix C).

The PSKT saw Turkey as colonising the Kurdish people. It desired independence for the Kurdish nation but remained open to a federal solution. In any case, the Kurdish question should be solved by democratic means (PSK 2000). The Marxist-Leninist PKK was equally opposed to the ‘Turkish imperialism’ that prevailed in ‘Turkish Kurdistan’ (Güney 2002: 123). It aspired to a united and independent socialist Kurdistan (including the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran and Syria) through a ‘national democratic’ revolution (White 2000: 142).