Kurdistan Socialist Party

(PSK)

   The Kurdistan Socialist Party of Turkey (in Kurdish Partiya Sosyalist a Kurdistan) was originally established in 1974 as the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (SPTK) by Kemal Burkay as a nonviolent Marxist party. It was also know as Riya Azadi (Road to Freedom) in Kurdish and as Ozgurluk Yolu in Turkish after its monthly journal, which lasted from 1975 until its suppression early in 1979. The PSK adopted its present name in 1992, when it reorganized itself at its third congress.

   During the 1970s, the PSK had a small urban following of workers and intellectuals, possessed some influence in trade unions and teachers unions, and was known for its pro-Soviet stance. The party also claimed to work through a legal youth front in Turkey, the Devrimci Halk Kultur Dernegi (DHKD), or Revolutionary Popular Cultural Association, a descendant of the earlier Devrimci Dogu Kultur Oc-aklari (DDKO), or Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths.

   For most of its existence, the PSK has denounced the armed struggle of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as premature, counterrevolutionary, and terrorist. Instead, the PSK supported a nonviolent, two-stage strategy that would first lead to autonomy for the Kurds in a federation in Turkey and later achieve a unified socialist Kurdistan.

   After the Turkish military coup in 1980, the PKK marginalized the PSK. The PSK leader Kemal Burkay and his associates lived in exile. Ironically, however, the PKK in theory came around to adopting the nonviolent strategy long advocated by its rival the PSK, after the capture of the PKK's leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999. As of 2010, the PSK has become virtually moribund.