‘A radical social struggle must be waged to build a free life outside the system’

Jiyan Reşit is one of the commanders of the Free Women’s Troops, YJA Star. On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, she has the following message to all Kurds and women worldwide:

“As YJA Star, we say that in opposition to the male domination system, a real world, a real life and a real freedom are possible for all women. In order to build a free life outside the existing system, a serious and radical social struggle must be waged. Women seeking freedom must organize and establish their own basis of struggle by developing their thinking, their will, their ideas of ethics and aesthetics, and their own world. They must struggle continuously and radically to develop free will and organize themselves in a self-determined way.

That such a development is not possible with a limitation to class struggle or to national struggles has been shown by revolutionary attempts in the past. Women of all nations and classes are judged by the same gender patterns and are affected by the same culture of violence and rape. Rape culture has been shaped by the male system of thought for five thousand years and affects women regardless of class, nation, and ethnic or religious background. Awareness must be raised against this. Women must organize their cohesion and fight together.

The way to women’s liberation is to free themselves from the male thought system that has existed for five thousand years and the various false ideas of freedom of the patriarchal mentality. Women must break away from this, they must separate themselves definitively and find their own ideological and philosophical arguments.

Without a radical cut from the patriarchal culture that dominates women and, with women, all of society, true love is also impossible. In order for love based on freedom to find its true meaning, the forms of relationships that have existed for five thousand years must be purged of violence and domination. Such a purification is only possible through the resistance of all women.

In Kurdistan, Rêber Apo [Abdullah Öcalan] put forward an ideology of women’s liberation and gave women a consciousness of freedom. For us, his freedom also means our freedom. The freedom perspective of women and peoples in Kurdistan is based on his democratic, ecological and women’s libertarian paradigm, with which a new social system is being built under the leadership of women. Our struggle as YJA Star is at the same time a call especially to young women to come to the mountains and participate in the campaign to defend women and society.”