Blood and Belief

This book was very informative. As I said in an earlier post, it starts off defining it's purpose as being for a better understanding from the position of US Foreign Policy development and it is quite unsympathetic to Ocalan and the PKK. The book ends without critical engagement in the US "War On Terror" rolling through Iraq at this time, which is gross. Taken with the prior note as a grain of salt, I think the book is a worthwhile read, sources it's interviews mostly from public statements, articles, memoirs and direct interviews with former PKK members and Turkish leftists. Again, the fact that it's not sourced from Turkish government or other state sources is a point in it's favor. In this book you get a critical overview of the development of Kurdish resistance, with a focus on the PKK, against the modern Turkish state up to about 2006: the stages of the party's development; the stages of guerrilla development and engagement; the party's congresses; the governments and other rebel groups it allied or fought with over a quarter of a century. The insights into purges and executions in the party, the autocratic decision-making and the repeated charge of blame-shifting by the party chief, Apo, are quite interesting. As an anarchist, I've always been uncomfortable, from my distanced view, with the adoration and idolism for Ocalan but have to admit that I haven't been there and don't have the experience of involvement in the movement. The political connections between groups and states in the region to leverage arms, training space, positions from which to attack Turkey or with whom the PKK conflicted was quite interesting. Because this was published a few years before the start of the uprisings that would lead to the Syrian Revolution and civil war (as well as the inauguration of the Rojava Revolution), there is little coverage of Syrian Kurds, only notes about the relationship between the PKK & Hafez Al-Assad (Ocalan spent much of the 16 years he lived outside of Turkey in one of two compounds in Syria with state knowledge) and puts some pieces into the puzzle for me of the foundations of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria. Similarly, there's interesting background into conflicts between the Barzani / KDP-dominated Peshmerga of KRG and how the KDP has related in the past to Iran & Turkey. Anyway, there's a lot here. It's a recommended read.