Along Iraq-Turkey Border, Kurdish Guerrillas Remain Resolute

Describing themselves as a "democratic humanitarian movement," the PKK's leaders insist they want a peaceful solution and said they are only defending themselves from Turkish attacks. They have killed more than 40 Turkish soldiers in the past month.

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"Self-defense is a legal right in all laws," Chaderchi said. "Turkey is displacing Kurds and burning villages. Aren't these actions terrorism? How many times have we announced a cease-fire but Turkey was staging military campaigns against us?"

Pressure is mounting on the fighters. President Bush has given Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan a commitment to root out the PKK, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. Last weekend, Kurdish security forces in northern Iraq shut down offices of Jehangir's party and vowed to stop the guerrillas' supply routes.

But at two frontline redoubts, the guerrillas displayed no fear of capture or death from Iraqi Kurds, even though they were near border checkpoints operated by the Kurdistan Regional Government, the semiautonomous body that administers three northern Iraqi provinces. These knife-edge spires and webs of goat trails are their time-tested ally, impossible for conventional armies to penetrate, fighters said.

The guerrillas refused to give their names because they were not authorized to speak to a reporter who found them by asking villagers and border guards for the locations of their camps.

Over hot tea and, later, a dinner of lukewarm rice, tomatoes grown near their base and bread they had baked, the guerrillas said they were impelled into a life of war by Turkey's persecution of Kurds and treatment of Ocalan. Some said they had grown accustomed to their way of life and principles.

"We don't like war or violence. I'm young. I want to live my life," said a fighter in his mid-30s. "But I have a faith that makes me stay here."

The PKK, founded in 1974, launched an armed struggle against Turkey in 1984. Since then, more than 30,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been displaced in eastern Turkey. In 1999, Ocalan was arrested and jailed.

But the PKK, driven by its founder's teachings rooted in Marxist-Leninist philosophy, continued to stage attacks from mountain bases. A few years ago, a sister group began launching assaults inside Iran, where Kurds are also seeking rights. Today, PKK leaders say they no longer seek a separate state inside Turkey, but rather more autonomy for Kurds, official recognition by Turkey of Kurdish culture and identity and, of course, Ocalan's release.

"What we want is basically the fundamental rights that are natural for people to have," Murat Karayilan, the top PKK leader, said in an interview in the Qandil Mountains in September.

After graduating from college in Turkey, Karayilan went to work for the Turkish government in 1980. But, he recounted, he quit three months later after he was marginalized for being a Kurd. "This period was like I was in jail," Karayilan said. "So from my work, I took my bag and I came to the mountains. This is what we have to do."

Since then, several thousand Kurds have followed this path. About 3,000 fighters are in the movement. Most hail from Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, but their ranks include Kurds who are German, Russian and Swiss citizens, fighters said.