Village guard system

Village guards (Turkish: Korucular lit. "Rangers"), officially known as Türkiye Güvenlik Köy Korucuları ("Security Village Guards of Turkey"), are Gendarmerie General Command-aligned border guards involved in the Kurdish-Turkish conflict. They are mostly Kurds^[2] but also Circassians,^[3] Turks,^[4] Uzbeks^[5] and Kyrgyz people.^[6][3] Originally they were set up and funded by the Turkish state in the mid-1980s under the direction of Turgut Özal. Their stated purpose was to act as a local militia in towns and villages, protecting against attacks and reprisals from the insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The rationale behind the establishment of the village guards was that it would be helpful to the Turkish Army to have an additional force of people who knew the Southeastern Anatolia Region and the language in order to assist in military operations against the PKK.^[7] In 2019, the force consisted of approximately 54,000 village guards in total.^[1]