los bandidos desperados

in türkiş garfucius yesterday, i suggested that the pkk should not be referred to as a terrorist organization. not only is terrorism the worst defined concept in the world (even worse than aggression) that it has no meaning anymore except as a word of denigration for any act or actor that displeases one side in a fracas, it accords the other side a measure of implicit legitimacy. "one man's terrorist is the other's freedom fighter," runs the well used (and abused) cliché.

i insisted that the pkk is an organization dealing in common crime and must be treated as a gang of common criminals. i was wrong, i apologize...

a "gang" is, sociologically, if not by historic origin, more or less an urban, therefore a civilized phenomenon. it assumes by definition, some sort of capacity to organize, albeit, outside the law, which requires some sort of adaptive autonomy in members' actions.

the pkk arises from the rural world of the peasantry and the corvée of the east. the only organization it can manage is through forming a rigid hierarchy. it cannot form a gang because autonomy is impossible without disbanding. that is what the pkk is: a band.

they are not gangsters but only rural bandits. or, using the term from a culture they are more akin to, los bandidos desperados.

let us not exalt them or ascribe them any legitimacy, however dubious, by calling them terrorists.