The formerly corporatist/populist states of Mexico and Turkey have faced significant armed peasant-based insurgencies in their post-1980 period of neoliberal reforms. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s southeast serve as ideal case studies in order to deal with long unresolved questions in the literature on peasant rebellions: What is the role of greater capitalist penetration in the growth of these movements? Which peasants are the ones joining these movements? What role do political and militant organizations play in the process of mobilization?

Although the literature suggests that there is a correlation between peripheral states/regions and revolutionary movements, this project seeks to make those links more explicit by taking a process-oriented approach to how regions become peripheral and how revolutionary movements emerge. In doing so, I argue that Mexico and Turkey, with respect to the regions in focus, evince a distinct pattern of state building in comparison to European models.

The exercise of state power in Chiapas and Turkish Kurdistan has taken on institutionalized patterns. These patterns serve as a backdrop for understanding the ways different kinds of villages have been affected by state power. A basic typology of villages was established in terms of their relationship to the commercial economy, its social structure, and nature of social life. Stories of people who participated in, supported, or witnessed both insurgencies were collected. A small database of PKK insurgents was also created.

Together the data indicate that capitalist expansion did not play a primary or direct role in the formation of these insurgencies. Rather, villages where commercial agriculture had not come to dominate were the ones who participated. Such villages also had greater social-class diversity, contributing participants who were mobilized in varied ways. They responded to increasing land tensions, to greater repression from the state and its local allies, and to greater involvement in national politics in the form of leftist organizations building networks in local sites. The EZLN and the PKK were effective at linking themselves to these pre-existing networks. In doing so they built an elaborate organizational capacity.