Mahsum Korkmaz Academy

To establish the Mahsum Korkmaz Academy was decided at the Third Party Congress of the PKK in October 1986.[2] Its first location was in the Beqaa valley in Lebanon,[3] which at the time was under Syrian control.[4] It had to leave Lebanon due to Turkish pressure in 1992, following which it settled to Damascus, the Syrian capital.[3] After the expulsion of the PKK from Syria in 1998, the academy moved to Iraqi Kurdistan.[3]

It is estimated that about 10'000 militants underwent training in the years between 1986 and 1998 when the academy had to leave Syria and settled in Iraq.[3] In 1991, the education consisted of two months of ideological and one-month military training.[3] After the arrival of new students, they took on a new Kurdish name and delivered an oath to remain loyal to the party line, the martyrs and the leader.[3] The new name was intended to avoid repression and as a sign for the beginning of a new life.[3]

Until 1998, Abdullah Öcalan gave lectures of several hours every week at the academy, which were called Çözümlemeler (Analyses).[3] They consisted of experiences of his own life and followed by the challenge to engage in self-criticism.[3] The students were often reminded that the main battlefield was oneself, who was to become a new human and only to a lesser extent the fight was against an external enemy.[3] Sometimes an attack by the Turkish army was simulated.[3]

In April 1992 the Interior Minister of Turkey Ismet Sezgin pressured the Syrian president Hafez al-Assad to close the camp in Lebanon, following which the PKK then closed it down and speculations arose if the camp would be re-established in either Iran or Cyprus.[4] Ünal Erkan, the Governor of the State of Emergency region in Turkish Kurdistan and the Turkish defense minister Nevzat Ayaz both welcomed its closure at the time.[4]