Kalkan, Duran (Abbas)

   Duran Kalkan is an important leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In the mid-1980s, he served as the head of the Hazen Rizgariya Kurdistan (HRK), or Kurdistan Freedom Brigades, a forerunner of the Kurdistan National Liberation Front (ERNK) and Kurdistan Peoples Liberation Army (ARGK), now called the Hezen Parastina Gel (HPG), or Peoples Defense Force. In 1988, Kalkan reportedly broke with Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, over the party's usage of violence against Kurdish villages, which he believed hurt its recruitment efforts. After being imprisoned in Germany in 1989, he was reinstated into the PKK. In the mid-1990s, Kalkan served on the PKK's leadership council (politburo) and was also chosen to be on the PKK's presidential council to act for Ocalan after his capture in 1999. As of 2009, he was a member of the Executive Council of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK), or Kurdistan Democratic Confederation, the umbrella organization bringing together the PKK and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), a PKK-Iranian offshoot.