How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Eventually the military won their campaign in southeast Turkey and sent the PKK toward a sharp decline, catalyzed by Öcalan’s capture in 1999. The case proves that, whether or not it is a democracy, if a state is willing to employ its full force, without scruples, it can crush a terrorist campaign. Turkish elites believed there was a serious threat to the state, gave the military virtually carte blanche to crush it, and had the support of the broader population as they did so.58 Their anxiety helped to fuel the military campaign. But the cost to civilians in the Kurdish regions, victims of slaughter, displacement, human rights abuses, and sheer exhaustion, as well as to the international standing of Turkey, whose aspirations to join the European Union were damaged partly as a result, was enormous. And the threat did not completely disappear, as it spread to the broader region. Subsequent international events, especially the second war in Iraq and the apparent sanctuary given to fighters by Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, later led to a resurgence of the PKK, with implications that at this writing have yet to play out.