Kurdish nationalists have referred to the PKK as a party without a history. Though the PKK does not have its political background in Kurdish politics, it was not a party without history, but one with a very different one than Kurdish nationalist contemporaries. The PKK's founders did not have previous political relations with Kurdish nationalist political actors. Reviewing the early history of the PKK, this contribution will discuss not only that, but also how the PKK was born from the revolutionary left in Turkey. The contribution will discuss the political backgrounds of the core-group from which the PKK emerged and the convictions of this inner circle. It will trace the origins of the PKK in the history of the the Turkiye Halk Kurtuluu Ordusu, THKO (the People's Liberation Army of Turkey) and Turkiye Halk Kurtulus Parti-Cephesi, THKP-C (the People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey). Both THKO and THKP-C were politico-military organizations, in the sense that they practiced the idea that only an armed struggle, guided by a political party, could bring the necessary changes to the existing political system. Based on internal sources and interviews, it will be argued that the PKK was developed from the experiences in the organization of armed and political struggle by these revolutionary leftist organizations in Turkey during the early 1970s. Furthermore, it will also be argued that the PKK constituted itself as the ideological and political movement that both had the intention and the capability to unite the divided revolutionary left in Turkey. Though the PKK has experiences profound changes over the last decades, this paper will argue that the party's political strategy, past and present, should be analyzed against the background of radical leftist political theory.