Governance without territorial control: The experiences of the PKK in 1970s Turkey

Much academic attention focuses on armed movements once they launch their campaigns of violence, yet the drift into violence is often a gradual descent rather than an abrupt adoption of violence. This article addresses a major gap in the increasingly important Rebel Governance approach in the study of insurgencies and civil wars: it argues that by only addressing movements after they obtain territorial control that Rebel Governance unnecessarily limits its scope and excludes movements who provide different forms of governance in the absence of any physical control of territory, such as phases of early mobilisation or subsequent decline and in areas of marginal insurgent presence. The article looks at the incipient phase of the PKK’s mobilisation in in the late 1970s in Turkey, prior to the military coup in 1980. The authors argue that the rudimentary forms of governance the PKK implemented in a number of Kurdish regions and its experiments in municipal rule allowed it to develop a supportive constituency which has proved the foundation for its decade’s long insurgency. It builds on extensive archival sources and interviews with individuals active during this period.