http://new-compass.net/articles/we-have-lot-learn

They did start as Marxist-Leninists of a rather familiar variety. They
did have a quite authoritarian structure. They did have a cult of
leader, which they still have to some degree, but it is rather different
now that the leader is in prison. It is funny that with a case like the
Zapatistas we don't have a problem with that. They also started as a
group of fairly hardcore doctrinaire Maoists, who did listening
exercises and actually listened and transformed themselves. In a way,
the PKK did the same thing, except that it was a much more difficult
process. It was a fairly small number Maoist cadres who went down to
become the Zapatistas – maybe a few dozen people – whereas the PKK
already had thousands and thousands when they went down the process of
change.

One of the most interesting ideas Öcalan develops is that the positivist
scientism in traditional Marxism means nothing to the people we claim to
want to liberate. Actual workers and peasants don't think in positivist
terms, it is rather the thoughts of the petty bourgeoisie and the
technical administrative classes. It's hardly surprising that when
revolutionary movements do take over it's essentially the petty
bourgeoisie and the bureaucrats who do take over, because the whole
project is founded from their world-view. From the world-view of the
popular classes the things we write off as religious, magic and mystical
actually make a lot more intuitive sense. We need to embrace what we can
actually learn from those strains of thought.

Why does, for example, revealed religion speak to people? Öcalan argues
that one of the reasons it makes intuitive sense to people is that the
way it explains social change is true at some level. Social change is
not a matter of continual, gradual, cumulative change like the
positivists tend to it. Rather, there are great moments of almost
revolutionary change where things come out of nothing. Like the
Neolithic revolution. Almost all of our everyday habits that we don't
even think about – sitting on chairs, eating from plates – were all
invented in fairly brief period of time. They seemed to come out of
nowhere, and once invented those patterns just stay and are repeated in
a ritual fashion ever since. That's reality, that's the way life
actually is. Religion captures that and gives you a way of conceiving
it, which positivist science doesn't.

Explains about the unique middle eastern narrative they are constructing:

Öcalan’s work is a way of reimagining history from a libertarian
socialist perspective, taking in issues such as the rise of patriarchy,
and he's constantly trying to understand the appeal of historical
alternatives coming from a Middle Eastern and Kurdish perspective. In a
sense he's constructing a great historical myth, but I don't think
that's a problem. History, if it's not myth, is just a meaningless chain
of events. In so far as it's possible to take out any meaning from
history, you are essentially mythologizing it. That is not a bad thing,
as long as you understand that that it is what you are doing. Öcalan is
trying to create a great myth in the same way as all the revolutionary
thinkers from the mid-nineteenth century did, back when revolutionary
thinking was still compelling and mobilizing of people – almost despite
itself.