Civil Protection Units
militia in Turkey
The Civil Protection Units (Kurdish: Yekîneyên Parastina Sivîl, pronounced [jɛkinɛjen parastɪna sɪvil]; YPS), also known as Civil Defense Units, was a primarily Kurdish rebel group and main armed force in Turkish Kurdistan. The YPS was formed by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to better organize and train the youth fighters in the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, otherwise known as the YDG-H. In 2015 the YDG-H reorganized themselves in to what is known as the YPS today.
On 12 May 2025, the Kurdistan Workers' Party announced it would disband as part of a peace initiative with Turkey.
History
It was claimed that the YPS was originally formed on 20 December 2015 by the Kurdish rebels as a version of the YPG in Northern Kurdistan (Turkey). A youth wing of the PKK, is the YDG-H, which in 2015 reorganized itself into what is known as the YPS of today. The YPS is mainly composed of members of the former YDG-H, who have been operating since 2013. The YPS is currently training for conventional urban warfare against the Turkish government; previous Kurdish rebel groups have followed predominantly guerilla tactics of warfare, however the new method of warfare seen in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict has led to speculation of civil war in Turkey.
The YPS initially took a defensive posture in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict (1978-present) and has become a major opponent of the Turkish army (TSK) and Turkish government and has co-operated with Kurdish opposition fighters against TSK. Multiple branches of the YPS have been formed in Kurdish districts in Turkey, usually as a result of clashes or curfews imposed by the Turkish government. Such branches are in Nusaybin, Sirnak, Sur, and Yüksekova (also known as Gever).
There is also a female branch of the YPS known as the YPS-Jin that was founded in 2016 one year after the initial YPS foundation, one of the causes which they fight for is gender equality.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22034164. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015, 2025, 2013 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Civil Protection Units” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.