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Terrorism versus insurgency: a conceptual analysis

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Abstract

This study analyzes the distinction between terrorism and insurgency by drawing upon the case of the PKK conflict in Turkey. It provides a conceptual discussion through multi-dimensional analyses from the actor-oriented, the action-oriented, the purpose-oriented, and the ontology-oriented perspectives. In so doing, in addition to the organizational characteristics, it critically identifies the PKK’s varying strategies of terrorist and insurgent violence, and their temporality and reasoning as the conflict unfolded to make conceptual inferences. This study found, first, that while the PKK as an actor indicates an insurgent character, the PKK’s use of violence reflects intense terrorism action particularly after its military defeat. Second, the use of terrorism by the PKK reflects an inextricable overlap in temporality and a direct link with guerilla methods. Despite the PKK’s terrorist and insurgent violence resulted from different factors and reasoning at the intermediate level; they are designed to converge at the overall aim of the PKK’s political campaign. Third, the PKK violence reflects varying purposes of terrorism, e.g., intimidation, attrition, survival and group solidarity. Fourth, after reaching the tipping point that resulted in its military defeat in 1994, the PKK resorted to more indirect and asymmetrical violence in an increasing tendency to deflect state power and, thus, to coerce Turkey into a political compromise, i.e., a negotiated settlement.

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Notes

  1. Fatalities refer to number of killed only while casualties (in Table 1) refer to number of both killed and injured.

  2. Fatality and casualty figures are extracted from the Turkish National Police, Intelligence Department Database.

  3. PKK’s ontological factors refers to the grievance and cause as claimed and declared by the PKK.

  4. More specifically, where the PKK would stand, for instance, in the three echelon spectrum of armed conflicts not of an international character, namely rebellion, insurgency, and belligerency, or how the ascription of the PKK’s status would be according to other international law considerations such as the Geneva Convention of 1949 and additional protocol II of 1977 are considered to be a separate discussion of customary and conventional international law and thus it is beyond the scope of this analysis.

  5. The PKK congresses were periodic (every four years) while the conferences were sporadic or on ad hoc basis until 2000, when the PKK held a transformational Congress and reformed itself under different names.

  6. Directness of challenge in this study particularly questions the relevancy between the nature, form, and purpose of the violence employed and the ontological factors of the violent uprising.

  7. Indeed, al-Qaida broadly (and ISIS specifically) cannot easily be subsumed under any one typology.

  8. The first two stages in Mao’s theory includes guerilla workforce while the final stage, if the first two are successful, three is a regular army in which the guerrillas become strong and form a regular army to face their counterparts on ‘conventional’ terms.

  9. As known, the jus in bello concept basically questions the justness (legitimacy) of how the war is conducted irrespective of the concept of jus ad bellum, which refers to why (the legitimacy of the cause) the war is started, which is very subjective (the Theory of Just War).

  10. Such discussion depends on different variables, model specifications, and conceptualization and operationalization of variables but they are all beyond the scope of this study.

  11. A critical analysis from a jus ad bellum perspective is beyond the scope of this study.

  12. Mardin Province winner Ahmet Turk participated in the elections as an independent candidate. This is because he was banned from joining any political party and was expelled from the Turkish Grand National Assembly by the Constitutional Court decision of December 2009 on the account of being in connection with the PKK. He was elected as mayor of Mardin Province with the support of BDP.

  13. Data are extracted from High Board of Elections in Turkey, the official department for elections.

  14. The HDP captured also certain level of strategic votes in the latest national elections in addition to supporting and sincerely voting Kurds.

  15. There exist certain important issues in reading the election results; such as, the demographic shift from east to west, feudal structure (bloc voting), fecundity rate difference between Kurds and Turks, etc. These are beyond the scope of this analysis.

  16. In 2009, the Turkish Government adopted a series of democratization policies toward the Kurdish issue, which is known as “Democratic Opening,” or “Kurdish Opening,” or “National Brotherhood Project”. This process has been disrupted when the first peace group (a group of PKK members) entered the country from the Habur Border Gate (Iraq border) because of demonstrations and were perceived as the PKK’s victory parade by the mainstream society. The government renounced and suspended the project for that period.

  17. Datasets reflect information on individual violent incidents (i.e., incident level data) including the variables of incident type (e.g., armed assault, bombing, arson, assassination, hostage taking, kidnapping, vandalism, sabotage, military operation, police operation), the date of incident, number of casualties/injuries (civilian, security personnel and government staff), target type, and the location of the incident. In institutional datasets, incident type reveals information on whether the violent incident occurred based upon a military strike or a violent attack initiated by the PKK that allows for singling out violent incidents initiated by the PKK and violent incidents subject to military counterinsurgency operations.

  18. Government datasets are centralized official datasets that include each violent incident regardless of whether it resulted in any casualties. For instance, there existed PKK attacks and raids to army outposts that did not result in casualties but there was a rural militant attack.

  19. Shaded areas in plotted figures refer to significant breaking points in PKK strategies in its entire (process of violent campaign 1984–2011) evolution.

  20. Non-combatant civilian casualties include killed and injured civilians including government staff, teachers, imams, mayors, district governors and etc., (as the result of PKK activities). Security force casualties include soldiers (including gendarmerie) and police forces.

  21. In order to maintain better control of the region and to reduce the PKK’s flexibility and mobility, the Turkish Government established the Provisional Village Guard System (Gecici Koy Koruculugu Sistemi, GKK) in April 1985. Under the GKK system, the Turkish military trained and armed volunteer villagers to guard their residents and villages against the PKK militants.

  22. Indiscriminate violence does not necessarily mean to relate to terror attacks in the case of the PKK. The PKK conducted selected terror attacks just to reach specific periodical objectives in its struggle with Turkey. For example, the PKK conducted bombings in the western areas (touristic locations) to reduce Turkey’s revenues extracted from tourism.

  23. Shaded areas in Fig. 2 denote the breaking points of PKK violence in the process of conflict.

  24. Third Conference-May 1994, fifth Congress-January 1995, fourth Conference-March 1996, fifth Conference-May 1988, and sixth Congress-February 1999.

  25. Pro-PKK political parties participated in national elections with independent candidates with no official party affiliation due to the 10 % threshold for political parties to make it to the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

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  1. Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Adjunct at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

    Mustafa Coşar Ünal

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Ünal, M.C. Terrorism versus insurgency: a conceptual analysis. Crime Law Soc Change 66, 21–57 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-015-9601-7

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