Cemil Bayık

Who is Cemil Bayık?

Cemil Bayık, also known as Cuma, is one of the five founders of the Kurdish movement Kurdistan Workers' Party, who are still alive and is among the organization's top leadership as he is a member of the 12-man leadership council of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan, a Kurdish political umbrella organisation where the PKK is part of and is also part of the three-man PKK Executive Committee, the leading body of the organisation, which consists of himself, acting PKK leader Murat Karayilan and Fehman Huseyin, a Kurd from Syria, who is the PKK's military commander.

In the PKK's first Party Congress in 1978, Bayik was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the organisation, making him the PKK's second man and until 1995 he served as the leader of the PKK's military wing: the Arteshen Rizgariya Gelli Kurdistan or Peoples' Liberation Army. In the early nineties he was the camp director at the Mahsum Korkmaz Academy, the PKK's in the Syrian controlled Beqaa Valley in Lebanon.

After the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, Bayik teamed up with Murat Karayilan against the reformists in the PKK, as result reformist leaders such as Osman Öcalan, Nizamettin Tas and Kani Yilmaz left the organisation, Karayilan served as acting leader of the PKK with Bayik as his nr.2. Bayik's position was however weakened when Fehman Huseyin was made leader of the PKK's new military wing Hezen Parastina Gel or Peoples' Defence Force. Since then Bayik has been a political leader in the PKK and is in charge of the organisation's relations with Iran, Bayik himself is said to have been to Iran numerous times including to a base in Urumiyeh.