By Chris Kutschera

Five or six of its original central committee have been physically eliminated, three others committed suicide, eight are still alive, acting semi-clandestinely, including Selahattin Celik and Sukru Gulmus in Germany and Mahir Walat in Moscow. Others have been driven underground.

Some of the survivors were among the founder members of the PKK. Sukru Gulmus joined Ocalan's movement as early as 1977, even before the PKK was formally founded in November 1978. Arrested by the Turks in February 1980 and sentenced to death, he spent 11 years in Diyarbekir's prison before being released on the grounds of ill health.

The prestige these 'old war horses' once enjoyed has given way to disgrace

Selahattin Celik participated in the secret meetings which preceded the foundation of the PKK and was one of the small number of PKK leaders who organised the armed struggle and the first military operations against Turkish army bases on 15 August 1984, a historic date in the history of the PKK.

Mahir Walat and Selim Curukkaya became members of the PKK central committee later on, in 1986 and 1991 respectively, but nevertheless played an important role in the history of the party. A role that cost Selim Curukkaya 11 years in Turkish prisons. Mahir Walat ran the camp of Zaleh, a huge base on the Iraqi-Iranian border where 2,000 men and women were trained as fighters for the cause, before becoming the PKK representative in Moscow, a post he continued to hold until Ocalan's capture.

However, the prestige these 'old war horses' once enjoyed has given way to disgrace. Victims of a campaign of systematic denigration, they are now considered 'traitors' by the mass of Ocalan's partisans.

The PKK, supposed to be monolithic, has a long history of dissidence and exclusions: the first fissures inside the central committee showed up with the second congress (1982) and were followed by the first assassinations (Cetin Gunger in 1984, Rasul Altinak in 1985). But it was the third congress (1986), in a Bekaa camp, which really marked the beginning of an era of bloody repression comparable, in a way, to the era of the great purges and Stalinist trials of the Soviet communist party in 1937.

Arrested shortly before the congress, with Kesire Yildirin and Duran Kalkan, Selahattin Celik spent three months in a cell where he had to write a report of self-criticism on his 'mistakes' before appearing before a 'court'. Relieved of his official positions, he was sent to Europe. At one time he shared his cell with another member of the central committee, Ali Omer Can (known under the alias of Terzi Djemal), who was severely tortured by his former comrades. Ali Omer Can nevertheless stayed with the PKK until the 1990 congress, at which he co-presided with Djemil Bayik, presently the PKK Number Two.

It was at this time that he broke off links with the party, creating the 'PKK-Refoundation'. He was assassinated shortly afterwards in Syria, on 1 November 1991.

"There were between 50 and 60 executions just after the 1986 congress," claims Selahattin Celik. "In the end there was no more room to bury them! Some of them were simple militants, Lebanese Kurds, accused of being 'agents', guilty of 'not implementing orders'."

So why do these men, who yielded for years to Ocalan's will, now denounce the excesses of a leader they now compare with Mussolini, after years of revering him like a "prophet"?

"Ocalan, the man who used to call people 'traitor' has himself betrayed us", says Selim Curukkaya who knows that his revelations are now falling on more receptive ears.

All these opponents face huge material problems: full-time militants, most of them have no professional training and no means of making a living in Europe. In addition, they face the ostracism of the PKK, which further isolates them from their community.

The arrival in Holland of Murat Karayilan, a member of the "presidential council" sent to Europe by Ocalan to control an organisation which showed alarming signs of division, and the release of threatening press communiques against the "war profiteers and traitors" probably foretell more settlings of scores.

But it is obvious that while the opposition inside the PKK in Europe can play a role by awakening Kurdish public opinion - temporarily stunned by Ocalan's capture and trial - it is actually on the ground, in Kurdistan, that the decisive events will take place. Already Hamili Yildirim, military commander of Dersim and member of the central committee, has refused to obey the orders of the 'presidential council' to stop fighting. On 9 January his men shot down a Sikorski helicopter, killing six Turkish soldiers, including two officers, and wounding four. And according to information released by the PKK itself, more regional commanders are about to follow suit.

The Turkish contra-guerrilla experts who have until now superbly manipulated Abdullah Ocalan could realise very quickly that the Kurdish leader jailed on Imrali island does not hold all the keys of the Kurdish question - unless they are able to achieve their final aim and destroy the PKK by persuading its members to kill each other.

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