Kurdistan Freedom Hawks
militant Kurdish nationalist group in Turkey
The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, or TAK (Kurdish: Teyrêbazên Azadiya Kurdistan), is a Kurdish nationalist militant group in Turkey seeking an independent Kurdish state in Turkish Kurdistan (eastern and southeastern Turkey). The group also opposes the Turkish government's policies towards Kurds in Turkey. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by the US, UK and Australian governments.
The group presents itself as a break-away faction of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in open dissent with the PKK's readiness to compromise with the Turkish state.
The PKK distances itself from the TAK, stating that the Turkish government uses the TAK to portray the PKK as a terrorist organization in the international arena, that the PKK only targets the Turkish Armed Forces or their proxies, that it always takes responsibility for its attacks, and that there are no links between the PKK and TAK. Analysts and experts disagree on whether or not the two groups are in reality linked.
The group first appeared in August 2004, just weeks after the PKK called off the 1999 truce, assuming responsibility for two hotel bombings in Istanbul which claimed two victims. Since then, TAK has followed a strategy of escalation, committing numerous violent bomb attacks throughout Turkey, with a focus on western and central Turkey, including some tourist areas in Istanbul, Ankara, and southern Mediterranean resorts. TAK also claimed responsibility for the February 2016 Ankara bombing, which killed at least 28 people, the March 2016 Ankara bombing in the same city that killed another 37 people, and the December 2016 Istanbul bombings which killed 47 people.
Historical context
After several decades of oppressive measures by the Turkish government towards the ethnic Kurdish population of Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was formed in 1978 in an aim to establish equal rights and self-determination for the Kurds in Turkey, who comprise between 18% and 25% of the population. Since 1984, however, an armed conflict began between the PKK and the Turkish security forces resulting in the deaths of around 7,000 Turkish security personnel and over 30,000 Kurds.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kurdistan Freedom Hawks” 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.