Kurdistan National Liberation Front

(ERNK)

   In March 1985, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) established the Eniye Rizgariye Navata Kurdistan (ERNK), or Kurdistan National Liberation Front, as its popular front and propaganda division. As such, the ERNK was mainly in charge of urban activities such as producing local recruits for the PKK and its professional army, the Kurdistan Peoples Liberation Army (ARGK), organizing PKK activities such as mass riots, collecting money and information, liaison, carrying out Islamic activities and propaganda for the PKK, maintaining the logistical supply lines to ARGK guerrillas in the mountains, and organizing rural settlements.

   In Europe, the ERNK liaised with the PKK membership abroad, carried on propaganda activities and staged demonstrations to attract attention to the PKK cause, found new recruits for the ARGK, and camouflaged ARGK militants. In the United States, the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN) to some extent carried out the function of the ERNK on a much smaller level.

   Although ERNK members were able to fight and sometimes did, they did not wear uniforms, as did the ARGK. During the day, ERNK members worked as waiters, students, shopkeepers, and peasants. During its heyday, from the late 1980s into the mid-1990s, the ERNK may have had as many as 50,000 formal members and an additional 315,000 sympathizers. After the capture of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999, the ERNK was dissolved. Subsequently, a number of other PKK affiliated bodies have been created.