After the Kurdish freedom movement leader Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party, was captured and imprisoned in 1999, he became an avid reader of Bookchin's work in Turkish translation and recommended it to the movement. Drawing in part on Bookchin's ideas, he formulated democratic confederalism as a political program, which the PKK adopted. In 2004 several intermediaries tried to arrange a dialogue between Bookchin and Öcalan but were unsuccessful due to Bookchin's failing health. In 2012 Biehl translated (from German to English) the book "Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan" by the solidarity group TATORT Kurdistan, a field study of democratic institutions built by the Kurdish movement in southeastern Turkey to implement democratic confederalism.