Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence First Edition. 1 in numberline Edition

by Aliza Marcus (Author)

15 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0814757116

ISBN-10: 0814757111

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The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq.

Essential to understanding modern-day Kurds—and their continuing demands for an independent state—is understanding the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. A guerilla force that was founded in 1978 by a small group of ex-Turkish university students, the PKK radicalized the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, becoming a tightly organized, well-armed fighting force of some 15,000, with a 50,000-member civilian militia in Turkey and tens of thousands of active backers in Europe. Under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, the war the PKK waged in Turkey through 1999 left nearly 40,000 people dead and drew in the neighboring states of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, all of whom sought to use the PKK for their own purposes. Since 2004, emboldened by the Iraqi Kurds, who now have established an autonomous Kurdish state in the northernmost reaches of Iraq, the PKK has again turned to violence to meet its objectives.

Blood and Belief combines reportage and scholarship to give the first in-depth account of the PKK. Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years for a variety of prominent publications before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world—including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up—Marcus provides an in-depth account of this influential radical group.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“;Marcus’ dispassionate recounting of events is impressive in its factual, documented style and avoidance of partisan shrillness.”
-The Bloomsberry Review

“Blood and Belief offers unusual insight into the rebels' shadowy universe and, by extension, into Turkey's festering Kurdish problem. . . . [A] scholarly, gripping account.”
-The Economist

“It’s an achievement of Blood and Belief that despite the bloodletting, Marcus still generates empathy—not for the murderous Ocalan, but for the desperate Kurds who joined the PKK revolution feeling they had nowhere else to turn.”
-The Washington Post Book World

“Marcus’ dispassionate recounting of events is impressive in its factual, documented style and avoidance of partisan shrillness. While never condoning any of the PKK’s excesses, she points out its one achievement: to have put the Kurdish problem on the agenda in Turkey and in front of the world.”
-Bookforum

“Blood and Belief gives meaning and context to the grinding guerrilla war that claimed tens of thousands of lives.”
-Boston Globe

About the Author

Aliza Marcus is formerly an international correspondent for The Boston Globe and lives in Washington, D.C. She covered the PKK for more than eight years, first as a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and later as a staff writer for Reuters, receiving a National Press Club Award for her reporting. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant for her work.

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Product details

Hardcover: 351 pages
Publisher: NYU Press; First Edition. 1 in numberline edition (August 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0814757111
ISBN-13: 978-0814757116
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 15 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,167,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2108 in Nationalism (Books)
- #1635 in Turkey History (Books)
- #2818 in Political Freedom (Books)

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Customer reviews

5 star		78%
4 star		9%
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1 star		13%

15 customer reviews

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Gentleman Jim

This was a good book. Having spent some time in Kurdistan (Iraq) ...

July 4, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This was a good book. Having spent some time in Kurdistan (Iraq) I found it quite interesting. While there I did not get a clear picture of the fact that the Turks were fighting the PKK and the occasionally crossing into Iraq. It was hard enough to figure out why Barzani and Talabani were fighting at one time and then finally decided to stop and divide the spoils. I worked a bit with the peshmerga and the special police. They were indeed a motivated group.

It was an especially timely book for me to read as now Erdogan is especially concerned about the Syrian Kurds. My Iraqi friends told me about a year ago how Turkey was letting the IS fighters into Syria. Now Erdogan is concerned about the Kurds displacing the Arabs and Turkomans. This book put a lot of the situation in historic perspective.

3 people found this helpful

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Msmith

Recipient was very pleased

March 27, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Was a gift for Christmas. Recipient was very pleased

One person found this helpful

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Peadar

Fantastic read. I'm not sure why people thought this ...

October 7, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Fantastic read. I'm not sure why people thought this was a biased book. It isn't at all. Worth reading.

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

February 22, 2017

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Great BOOK

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Stan Karber

Five Stars

April 28, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I have lived in what could be called Turkish 'Kurdistan'.....very factual account.

One person found this helpful

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Leslie Ayers

Five Stars

March 7, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Great book

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Mir Asirak

A path to learng Kurdish Struggle and world

April 26, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

That book gives you reality of Kurdish Nation which you really have not heard at all.Face to face of an unfair world with interests while a nation ruined and related a one hundred years that cruel and hiden war in Turkey last 30 years.Over thirty thousand peaople lost their life and over four thousand Kurdish village has been burnt plus missing peaople.PKK used a weapon which has been used against Kurdish all the places they are.Turkey,Iraq,Syria and Iran.Forgatten nation just come up first line with a organisation(Kurdish worker Party) and get bigger and bigger with a very hight level war.A organisation set up a group of university student and became hope for a nation and tight rules of Guerilla war.But hidden war from all world media because of interest. That book will take you to a jurney that sometimes you would feel guilty, sometimes youl will cry.you will learn how humanbeing can be wild when interests are stand up there.You will learn that MARCUZ ELIZA did great job with a very high risk.She deserve alot of thanks..

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Michael Rubin

Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.

January 17, 2008

Format: Hardcover

Most writers on the Kurdistan Workers' Party, best known by its Kurdish language acronym, the PKK, substitute advocacy for accuracy, so their books about the PKK tend to have limited practical use for policymakers. But Marcus, a former international correspondent for The Boston Globe who spent several years covering the PKK, has done important work in Blood and Belief. While sympathetic to her subject--the substitution of "militant" for "terrorist" grates--she retains professional integrity and does not skip over inconvenient parts of the PKK narrative such as its predilection to target Kurdish and leftist competitors rather than the Turks; the patronage it has received from the Syrian government; and the important role of European states and the Kurdish diaspora in its funding.

Blood and Belief has four sections: on PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's life and the PKK's beginnings, the PKK's consolidation of power, the civil war, and the aftermath of Öcalan's 1999 capture.

The Kurds inhabit a region that spans Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, and Marcus does not let national borders constrain her analysis. Events in Iraq--such as the squabbling between Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani--influenced Öcalan, who concluded that he should tolerate no dissent. "We believed in socialism, and it was a Stalin-type of socialism we believed in," one early PKK member relates.

Steeped in Kurdish and Turkish history, Marcus provides better context than many of the other journalists who tackled this subject. The PKK took hold, she shows, largely because of the weakness of the Turkish state in the 1970s. Between 1975 and 1980, the Turkish government barely functioned. After the 1980 coup, the Turkish military restored order. But when Barzani offered the PKK shelter in northern Iraq, the group remained beyond reach, allowing it to plan and launch a full-scale guerilla war against Turkey. Marcus concludes that the group's continued survival in Turkey is because, at some level and among some constituents, it remains popular; its support is not all driven by intimidation as some Turkish analysts claim.

Marcus impressively covers the civil war years (1984-99), and her narrative, combining dialogue and context, is rich and accessible. While many journalists and authors satisfy themselves with a single round of interviews, Marcus concentrates not on active PKK members, who she realizes do not enjoy the freedom to speak, but rather on past members, villagers, and family members whose accounts she cross-checks. She also incorporates Turkish language press accounts and interviews with Turkish officials.

It is unfortunate, though, that her coverage of PKK resurgence, between 1999 and 2007, is just thirteen pages long. An exploration of how Öcalan has retained control while in prison and where he and his henchmen might take the PKK has seldom been more relevant. One hopes that this new chapter of PKK history will become the basis for a sequel.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2008

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Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence First Edition. 1 in numberline Edition

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