Page 276 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

activities and planning have been intensified. In other
words, every ceasefire was used for not peace, but for
obtaining a fiercer, more destructive and larger scaled
firepower. You can see this in the fact that after every ceasefire,
the clashes were fiercer, the attacks were larger in scale. 105

In fact, Sakık cites the retreat after the 1980 military coup as a
most significant example:

When we could no longer take the operations of the military
coup of September 12, 1980, we either buried our weapons or

sold them and went to Syria en route to Lebanon in small
groups. This retreat continued until there was not a single mil-
itant left on Turkish soil and it was done without weapons.

274 America's Failure to Perceive the PKK