Geography and time are the two constraints on illegal acts. The extant research on terrorism suggests that terrorists make an expected cost-benefit analysis, and thus make bounded, rational choices regarding their attacks. They carry out attacks that are likely to benefit their organizational goals, and they commit attacks choosing the easiest way with the least effort. This assumption leads to the conclusion that their attacks are likely to be clustered over space and time, and hence predictable. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the attacks of the PKK—a separatist terrorist organization—form microcycles in Turkey. In this study, we use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to examine 1261 terrorist attacks of which locations are known and attributed to the PKK. Our research findings suggest significant evidence to conclude that a pattern exists over both space and time regarding distribution of the terrorist attacks. Results from our logistic regression model demonstrate that non-lethal attacks or those occurring in Istanbul or Ankara are more likely to be contagious. We argue that our research findings and policy implications could be useful to create more effective terrorism prevention strategies and policies.

地域和时间是违法行为的两大制约因素。现有的关于恐怖主义的研究表明，恐怖分子会进行预期的成本收益分析，从而对他们的袭击做出有限的、理性的选择。他们实施的攻击可能有利于他们的组织目标，并且他们选择最简单的方式以最少的努力进行攻击。这一假设得出的结论是，他们的攻击很可能在空间和时间上聚集，因此是可预测的。本研究的目的是检验 PKK（一个分离主义恐怖组织）的袭击是否在土耳其形成了微循环。在这项研究中，我们使用全球恐怖主义数据库 (GTD) 来检查 1261 起已知地点并归因于库尔德工人党的恐怖袭击。我们的研究结果表明，重要的证据表明，恐怖袭击的分布在空间和时间上都存在模式。我们的逻辑回归模型的结果表明，非致命攻击或发生在伊斯坦布尔或安卡拉的攻击更有可能具有传染性。我们认为，我们的研究结果和政策含义可能有助于制定更有效的恐怖主义预防战略和政策。