Erdoğan’s Turkey Has Enabled the Comeback of Kurdish Islamic Terrorist Network
The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has effectively paved the way for the resurgence of a radical Kurdish Islamist network that seeks to establish a sharia-based independent Kurdish state spanning territories in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, after Turkish courts quietly dismantled key terrorism convictions of members of the group and reframed years of organized militant activity as ordinary criminal conduct.
The group, known as the Kürdistan İslami Devrim Hareketi (Kurdistan Islamic Revolution Movement in English, Tevgera Şoreja İslamiya Kürdistan in Kurdish, KİDH), first emerged publicly in the 1990s as a clandestine Islamist Kurdish organization advocating an armed campaign to create an Islamic Kurdish state across what it described as the divided Kurdish lands of the Middle East.
Turkish judicial documents, police investigations and court rulings reviewed by Nordic Monitor describe the organization as combining Kurdish nationalism with radical Islamist ideology, aiming to replace the constitutional order with a religious regime based on Islamic law.
Although the group was largely dismantled through police operations and prosecutions in the 2000s and early 2010s, the Erdogan government’s behind-the-scenes interventions over the past decade, culminating in a recent retrial in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakır, dramatically reversed the legal characterization of the organization and overturned some of the most serious terrorism-related convictions linked to the movement.
In a decision issued on May 13, 2026, a Turkish court acquitted seven defendants of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, despite earlier rulings that had sentenced them to aggravated life for carrying out an armed bank robbery on behalf of the KİDH. The retrial came after the Supreme Court of Appeals, dominated by Islamist judges appointed by the Erdogan government, surprisingly overturned previous convictions.
The ruling marked a striking reversal from earlier judicial findings that had portrayed the organization as a structured militant network pursuing separatist Islamist objectives through armed conflict, robberies, extortion and underground organizing.
The original case stemmed from the October 13, 2009, armed robbery of a branch of state-lender Ziraat Bank in Diyarbakır’s Bağlar district. According to court records, masked gunmen stormed the bank shouting, “This is a robbery, everybody get on the floor,” before seizing cash in Turkish lira, US dollars and euros at gunpoint.
The first trial concluded that the robbery had been conducted in the name of the KİDH to finance the organization’s activities and propaganda operations. Seven defendants — Bayram Bulduk, Bayram Güney, Mustafa Hocaoğlu, İrfan Yıldız, Mehmet Şirin, Muhammet Aslan and Bayram Kılıç — were sentenced to aggravated life for attempting to overturn the constitutional order through armed action, in addition to lengthy prison terms for armed robbery.
Court rulings at the time stated that the organization considered robbery, extortion and similar criminal acts religiously permissible to fund the movement. Judges determined that the suspects had planned the bank robbery after concluding that “the only way to escape poverty was robbing a bank,” especially as the organization struggled financially and could no longer sustain publication of its propaganda magazine, Mizgin.
However, during the retrial concluded this month, defendants recast the robbery as an ordinary criminal act motivated by personal financial hardship rather than ideological militancy. One defendant claimed he carried out the robbery because his father was addicted to alcohol, drugs and gambling and that creditors constantly harassed the family over debts. Others similarly denied acting on behalf of the KİDH and insisted they merely needed money.
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