Having banned far-right parties, Greece overlooks terror group PKK’s operations on its soil

Amid media reports that the Greek government seeks to outlaw the Ellines party, led by Ilias Kasidiaris, a former deputy and spokesperson of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party that was declared a criminal group and banned in October 2020, one rightfully wonders what Athens thinks about the terror group PKK’s current operations on its soil.

The presence in Greece of the PKK, which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and UK, dates back to the 1980s. Athens saw the PKK, along with other far-left terror groups, including the DHKP-C and ASALA – the latter infamous for its campaign to assassinate Turkish diplomats in 1973-1986 – as a “strategic asset” against Ankara. This was marketed to the Greek public as part of Greece’s policy of supporting so-called “national liberation struggles.”

Against this background, Greece provided numerous PKK terrorists with political asylum, safe houses, and the freedom to operate freely to enlist the political and financial support of the Greek public.

Greece’s support for the PKK terror group reached its zenith in the 1990s in parallel to the deterioration of relations with Türkiye. Many PKK arsonists and terrorists who were arrested at the time confessed that Greek spy services had trained them.

Even though Greece kept rebuffing the accusations as “Turkish propaganda,” Ankara’s arguments proved vindicated in the events surrounding the 1999 capture of the terrorist PKK ringleader Abdullah Ocalan, who stayed for a couple of days in Athens after being expelled by Syria and ended up in the Greek Embassy’s residence in Kenyan capital Nairobi before his capture.

It was later understood that then-Prime Minister Costas Simitis had ordered the Greek secret service to remove Ocalan from Greece and Greek protection out of concern that Türkiye would become aware of his presence and sever ties with Greece, triggering a crisis that could even lead to war.

Consequently, Athens, caught red-handed, significantly reduced its support for the PKK terror group. The improvement of Turkish-Greek relations from the late 1990s to the mid-2010s also played a role in this state of affairs.

In recent years, along with the deteriorating relations between Ankara and Athens as a consequence of Greece’s maximalist demands in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, provocative actions, and rhetoric against Türkiye, Athens brought back its “PKK card.”

In March 2022, a major Greek broadcaster aired footage of a PKK camp in the central city of Lavrion and interviews with some terrorists and sympathizers affiliated with the terror group. Moreover, Turkish authorities last September arrested some PKK terrorists who said they had been trained in the same camp.

Often reminding European countries of its stance against PKK terrorism, it would be a delusion for Türkiye to expect Athens to be as harsh towards PKK terrorism as it is towards extremist movements. PKK is known to be both a threat to democratic regimes and human life.