Murat Karayılan

He became the PKK's acting leader after its original founder and leader, Abdullah Öcalan, was captured in 1999 by Turkish intelligence agents. On 2014, he left the PKK leader position and was assigned as the new commander-in-chief of the PKK's armed wing, the People's Defence Forces.

Murat Karayılan
Karayılan in 2005
Born	(1954-06-05)5 June 1954 Birecik, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Allegiance	Kurdistan Workers' Party
Battles/wars	Kurdish–Turkish conflict Kurdistan Region–PKK conflict Operation Kiran

Karayılan was born on 5 June 1954, in Birecik, Şanlıurfa, Karayılan finished his studies at a vocational college of machinery and joined the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 1979. He was active in his native province of Şanlıurfa until he fled to Syria at the time of the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. He called on Kurds to stop serving in the military of Turkey, stop paying taxes and stop using the Turkish language.

On 13 December 2016, the Mardin 1st Criminal Court of Peace issued a detention warrant for Karayılan and Duran Kalkan, another PKK commander, as part of an investigation into the killing of the Kaymakam of Derik, Muhammet Fatih Safitürk.

In March 2017, there were reports of a failed assassination attempt against Karayılan, but it was unclear as to whether the attempt was made by Turkish forces or a group within the PKK.

Karayılan and two other PKK leaders were wanted by the government of the United States and the government of Turkey; the PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States European Union and Turkey. PKK-affiliated groups operating in Iraq have been accused by human rights organisations of recruiting child soldiers.

From 28 October 2015, he was in the red category of the "most wanted terrorists" list published by the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Turkey. The Ministry offered a reward of up to 10 million ₺ for his capture.

Murat Karayilan was also the author of a book called Bir Savaşın Anatomisi (Anatomy of War).

Suspicions of drug trafficking

On 14 October 2009, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated senior leaders of the PKK as significant foreign narcotics traffickers: Karayılan, as head of the PKK, and high-ranking members Ali Rıza Altun and Zübeyir Aydar. Pursuant to the Kingpin Act, the designation froze any assets the designees may have had under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibited U.S. citizens from conducting financial or commercial transactions with them. As of 2011, Karayılan still had the designation.

The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated in the same year, that it had no evidence that the organisational structures of the PKK were directly involved in drug trafficking in Germany.