ISTANBUL -- Volunteers who join the Kurdish insurgency against Turkey must abandon Islamic religious practice and must forego “emotional ties” to anyone outside the group, as well as swear words and sex, or face trial and prison, according to a Syrian-born Kurd who defected from the group to Turkey over the summer.

The 21-year-old defector, who surrendered in June, brought with him not only a tale of life inside the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by its Kurdish initials as the PKK, but also detailed information about a planned attack inside Turkey that helped Turkish authorities beat back the PKK offensive.

McClatchy obtained a copy of a 19-page Turkish-language account of his debriefing, which was dated July 4 and was not marked classified. The debriefing contained his name, but McClatchy is identifying him only by his initials, R.S., to protect family members who might still be in territory held by the PKK’s Syrian affiliate.

The PKK has been waging a war against Turkey for three decades, demanding the creation of a Kurdish state in southern Turkey. Thousands of Turks have been killed by PKK actions, and the United States and the European Union have branded it a terrorist organization.

The defector’s disclosures helped avert the PKK capture of Semdinli, a mainly Kurdish town of 19,000 in southeast Turkey, officials there said in August. The PKK was routed instead, losing more than 100 fighters. But the PKK offensive continues, with at least 112 Turks and 325 separatists killed between July and mid-October, and casualties mounting daily on both sides.

The defector revealed that 250 to 300 insurgents were being mustered to attack Semdinli, the weapons they carried, where landmines would be planted and even the tactics for evading surveillance by Israeli-manufactured Heron drones.

He also disclosed a fact of strategic significance: Part of the staging for the Semdinli operation took place at Sehidan, a PKK base inside Iran, where he had also been stationed, a sign of a tacit, though possibly passive, role by Iran in the PKK’s assault against Turkey.

“Because Turkish planes and artillery cannot strike Iranian soil, the (PKK) organization moves freely on Iranian soil,” R.S. told Turkish authorities. “We do not interfere in Iran, and they do not attempt to provide enforcement against us.”

Kurds also inhabit portions of Iraq, where they’ve established an autonomous regional government in three provinces that operates largely independently of the central government in Baghdad; and portions of Syria, where a PKK affiliate now controls much of northeast Syria with the apparent acquiescence of the besieged government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

R.S. portrayed the PKK as anti-Islamic. Performing daily prayers, fasting and reading the Quran are among the offenses that could land a recruit in prison, he told Turkish authorities. Instead, fighters were told that the religion of Kurds is Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s most ancient religions, and they should worship fire. There are said to be fewer than 200,000 Zoroastrians today, mostly in Iran and India.

Other offenses that could land a recruit in jail were forging an emotional relationship outside the organization, sexual relations, carrying an electronic device or disobeying orders. PKK members held for spying or sexual relations “are tortured in prison,” and those who sold weapons or have spied “are sentenced to death . . . by firing squad.” Civilians who disobey PKK orders are kidnapped and detained in prison, then either executed or released after payment of a fine, he said.