Leaving the PKK: Toward a process-oriented model of disengagement

Abstract

While the involvement in terrorist organizations and social movements has generated a plethora of literature, little work exists on the exit from these two types of collectives. In order to grasp the plurality of factors involved in these processes, we based ourselves on an empirical sociological survey of 64 activists of the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK). This party experienced a major wave of departures from the guerrilla movement in the early 2000s. The micro-sociological study of desistance trajectories make it possible to develop a relevant explanatory model of disengagement combining attention to diachronicity, the identification of micro-level turning points and meso-level windows of opportunity. After recalling the conditions under which the survey was carried out, we will show how desistance brings into play a certain relationship to time, key moments which, in the case of the PKK, concern not so much state repression as the internal dysfunctions of the party, as well as the “possibilities” that open up for the actors, either during moments of the party restructuraction or in civilian life.