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Microcycles of Terrorist Violence in Turkey: a Spatio-temporal Analysis of the PKK Attacks

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Abstract

Geography and time are the two constraints on illegal acts. The extant research on terrorism suggests that terrorists make an expected cost-benefit analysis, and thus make bounded, rational choices regarding their attacks. They carry out attacks that are likely to benefit their organizational goals, and they commit attacks choosing the easiest way with the least effort. This assumption leads to the conclusion that their attacks are likely to be clustered over space and time, and hence predictable. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the attacks of the PKK—a separatist terrorist organization—form microcycles in Turkey. In this study, we use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to examine 1261 terrorist attacks of which locations are known and attributed to the PKK. Our research findings suggest significant evidence to conclude that a pattern exists over both space and time regarding distribution of the terrorist attacks. Results from our logistic regression model demonstrate that non-lethal attacks or those occurring in Istanbul or Ankara are more likely to be contagious. We argue that our research findings and policy implications could be useful to create more effective terrorism prevention strategies and policies.

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Notes

  1. We used data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) that attributes 2025 incidents between 1984 and 2016 only to the PKK.

  2. Behlendorf et al. (2012) studied the FMLN and ETA as two of the most prolific terrorist organizations in the GTD. The PKK is similar to both FMLN and ETA in that sense, because it has the ninth highest number of terrorist attacks in the GTD.

  3. In the present study, we found the same exact percentage as LaFree and Dugan (2017); 84% of all attacks by the PKK are bombings, armed assaults, and assassinations in our dataset (see Table 3).

  4. START Center, Global Terrorism Database Codebook (http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/downloads/Codebook.pdf, 2015)

  5. The terrorist group’s name in the GTD is stored in three fields: gname, gname2, and gname3. If the group name in any of these three fields included the following names, the attack was assumed to be PKK’s:

    1. 1.

      Kurdish Marxist Separatists—1 incident

    2. 2.

      Kurdish Militants—4 incidents

    3. 3.

      Kurdish Rebels—3 incidents

    4. 4.

      Kurdish Separatists—7 incidents

    5. 5.

      Kurdish guerrillas—2 incidents

    6. 6.

      Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK)—17 incidents

    7. 7.

      Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—1983 incidents

    8. 8.

      Kurds—7 incidents

    9. 9.

      Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—1 incident

  6. If the number in the actual Knox table is larger than the numbers in 99% of the simulated Knox tables, then it means the number in the actual Knox table is larger than expected at the p level of about 0.01. If the number in the actual Knox table is larger than the numbers in 99.9% of the simulated Knox tables, then it means the number in the actual Knox table is larger than expected at the p level of about 0.001.

  7. Nine different attack types were recorded in the GTD, including armed assault, assassination, bombing/explosion, facility/infrastructure attack, hijacking, hostage taking (barricade incident), hostage taking (kidnapping), unarmed assault, and unknown. However, very few of the attacks by the PKK involved hijackings (N = 2), barricade incidents (N = 6), or unarmed assaults (N = 2). Therefore, dummy variables were not created for these three attack types. In addition, there were five attack type fields in the GTD (attackty_1, attackty_2, attackty_3, attackty_4, and attackty_5). If the value in any of these fields was, for example, “armed assault,” then the “armed assault” variable was coded as 1.

  8. There are three target type fields in the GTD (targtype1_, targtype2_, and targtype3_). If the value in any of these fields was, for example, “police,” then the “police” variable was coded as 1.

  9. Istanbul is the most populous city of Turkey and it is an economic and cultural capital. Ankara is the capital city of Turkey. Diyarbakir is the most populous city in the southeastern region of Turkey that can be considered a regional capital.

  10. OHAL stands for Olaganustu Hal (i.e., State of Emergency in Turkish language). From 1987 to 2002, 14 of the provinces in the southeastern region of Turkey were under a State of Emergency rule. These provinces were known as OHAL provinces. They were highly populated with ethnic Kurds and the PKK had (still has) a higher level of popular support in these provinces. Thus, they can be considered “defended spaces” according to Behlendorf et al.’s (2012) definition.

  11. This is interesting because nearly 49% of the attacks in the GTD are bombings/explosions and 24% of the attacks are armed assaults. In the PKK case, the proportion of bombings (34%) is smaller and the proportion of armed assaults (43%) is much larger than the proportions of these types of attacks in the GTD. This may be because of the nature of the PKK violence; namely, because it is mainly a rural insurgency.

  12. Whether or not an incident is in a microcycle depends on what date it happened. Some incidents had approximate dates in the GTD, and we initially used the approximate date in the analyses as if it was the exact date of the incident. Then, we excluded the incidents with approximate dates and reconducted the same analysis. The results were virtually the same. Therefore, we present the results for which we used all available data, those with exact and with approximate dates, for the analyses.

  13. The coefficient for the defended space variable is close to statistical significance; see the z value in Table 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Criminal Justice Department, The College at Brockport, State University of New York, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY, 14420, USA

    Haci Duru

  2. Sociology, CJ & Criminology Department, University of Scranton, O’Hara Hall 800 Linden St., Scranton, PA, 18510, USA

    Ismail Onat

  3. College of Arts and Sciences, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Bridgeport, Carlson Hall, Room 211, 303 University Avenue, Bridgeport, CT, 06604, USA

    Kadir Akyuz

  4. Troy University, 600 University Ave, 320B McCall Hall(MSCX), Troy, AL, 36082, USA

    Halil Akbas

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Duru, H., Onat, I., Akyuz, K. et al. Microcycles of Terrorist Violence in Turkey: a Spatio-temporal Analysis of the PKK Attacks. Asian J Criminol 16, 235–256 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-020-09326-z

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