Abdullah Öcalan, also known as Apo, is a founding member of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Öcalan was based in Syria from 1979 to 1998. He helped found the PKK in 1978, and led it into the Kurdish–Turkish conflict in 1984. For most of his leadership, he was based in Syria, which provided sanctuary to the PKK until the late 1990s. From Wikipedia
