In 2010, UNICEF condemned the recruitment of child soldiers by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which had been fighting the Turkish government since 1984. After 9/11, Ankara tried to use the PKK's adoption of this practice against the organization in its international solidarity campaign against terrorism. On Oct. 5, after three years of dialogue, the People’s Defense Forces/Center (HPG), the armed wing of the PKK, signed the Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment to protect children from armed conflict. The HPG's sister organization, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria, are now also in discussion with Geneva Calls, a Switzerland-based non-governmental organization, to sign the commitment as well. The statute of the International Criminal Court criminalizes the act of using children under the age of 15 in armed conflict.
The Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 asserted that the PKK had used children in its forces “since 1994, and was believed in 1998 to have had 3,000 child soldiers, more than 10% of them girls, in its forces based in Iraq and operating in south-east Turkey.” A survey by the Turkish analyst Nihat Ali Özcan, based on data from 2001 to September 2011, estimated that 42% of PKK rebels were 18 and under.
