Raperin Munzur, a member of the Coordination of the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Party (PAJK), spoke to ANF about the role of women cadres in the PKK and their legacy.
The first part of this interview can be read here.
What was the role of the first women cadres of the PKK in forming this legacy? What would you say about the place of the PKK’s founding and struggle within the women’s freedom movement?
The struggle of women within the PKK is the struggle that created socialism, freedom, and the communal spirit; it is the history of that process. It is the history of the weakest becoming strong, of fulfilling its role according to historical sociology, and of this dialectic becoming transformative and creative. Just as history itself is the story of the struggle between the commune and the state, this dialectic was lived in its entirety within the PKK for 52 years.
The PKK became a stage on which history came alive, a place where, in one way or another, “all Kurds from the time of Noah and the prophets” took part, and for this reason it became a terrain of relentless struggle. Only a small percentage of this struggle was waged against the enemy. For the most part, it was the struggle for women’s liberation. It was an arena of reckoning with men, with the system, with history, with betrayal, with all forms of backwardness and weakness. It was an arena of empowerment, of gaining dignity and agency, of becoming conscious, of becoming oneself.
This is why our comrade Sara (Sakine Cansız) said, “My entire life was a struggle.” Through the dialectic of a life defined by struggle, a life that nurtured and liberated, we, as women, arrived at this point. The price was immense. But extraordinary and noble women emerged; identities were revealed; history produced truly historic personalities, free women.
The greatest distinction of the PKK is that it placed the women’s freedom struggle at its very center. It was not only about overcoming women’s weakness, but also about bringing to light the vast social and creative power that women possess. This is, of course, the product of President Öcalan’s philosophy and line. The PKK was born as an organization influenced by real socialism. However, as President Öcalan clearly understood the conditions, sociology, and politics of Kurdistan and the world, our struggle took shape according to the specific character of this geography. In connection with his focus on analyzing Kurdistan’s sociology and addressing its problems, President Öcalan placed the issue of women’s freedom at the forefront.
From the late 1980s onward, women’s autonomous organizations began to develop. Women became active in the war, in daily life, in every field of the struggle in the mountains, and in social struggle. What began through positive discrimination and autonomous organization evolved toward equal representation in all areas of life and toward becoming the pioneering force of social transformation. It paved the way for the development of the free and equal life theory. Free and equal life is the transformation of women, who for thousands of years were distanced from society, from life, from decision-making power, from self-governance, and from fighting in their own name, into the subjects and fundamental force of life.
It is the reconstruction of relations between women and men as relations of freedom, breaking out of the socially constructed boundaries of gender. It is women’s reintegration into life with their own decisions, agency, and consciousness; in other words, it is their renewed social contract with society.
Our great martyrs are the greatest values of this struggle. From Zîlan to Bêrîtan, from Azime to Delal, from Asya to our comrade Sara, thousands whose names we cannot even list, we are bound to them not only because they fought with extraordinary sacrifice and fell as martyrs. We are bound to them because they lived rightly and beautifully; because through their extraordinary comradeship, their commitment, and their ideological and philosophical consciousness, they created their distinction. We take them as examples because they represented the virtue of being human in its strongest form. In life, and in the moment they fell, they were the most beautiful of people, those who revealed the true meaning of life and who embodied the strength to stand at the very forefront of struggle and resistance. They were comrades who gave profound meaning to life and lived with meaning.
They were comrades who always thought of others before themselves, who took upon themselves the pain and burdens of others; who destroyed individualism and dedicated themselves to the existence of society, the commune. What made them great was the way they lived. Their lives were not a dream or a utopia. They were concrete, realized communal personalities. They forged this stance in the harshest and sharpest reality of the mountains and the struggle. Only literature and art can truly express this. But it is not enough to express or commemorate them; we carry the responsibility of turning into life the truth they represented, of building life according to those measures.
The lifestyle of our martyrs, their qualities, their searches, their struggles, their relationships, their sacrifices, and their socialist character forms the measure of the individuals of the society we seek to create. A society can only be free if its individuals are free. A life can only become a real life through the existence of people who represent beauty and noble values, who make these the fundamental measure of life. We saw these measures in them, and we learned them from them. The new life will be created through making the truths embodied in them into the social standards of our existence.
How has such a high level of women’s participation in the 52-year struggle of the PKK transformed society?
The PKK became a space where women’s participation transformed both the organization and men, and where a new model of life, based on free relations between women and men, began to be shaped. It became a ground on which, through gender struggle, the dominant male mentality was confronted and a democratic balance was established. The women’s struggle that advanced within this space, grounded in ideology, philosophy, and politics, gave birth to the women’s revolution.
The thesis of the women’s revolution is a thesis President Öcalan put forward in the 1990s. Within this framework, women first formed their own military structures, then became a party through the identity of PAJK, and later reached the level of forming a women’s system through the Kurdistan Women’s Communities (Kongreya Jinên Kurdistanê – KJK). Women gaining organizational strength, acquiring the power, consciousness, and experience to carry out the self-defense of women and society is the reawakening of history. It is the revival of the communal spirit that resisted the historic femicide perpetrator.
From Northern Kurdistan (Bakur) to Southern Kurdistan (Başur), from Rojava to Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhilat), Kurdish women who fought the darkest forces of history with the powerful formula “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (Woman, Life, Freedom) drew their strength from this 52-year struggle.
Our women’s freedom struggle has led to the questioning of gendered ideologies and relations, and to women gaining power in social and political life. Through the great strength President Öcalan gave to women, Kurdish women have gained confidence and agency and have built organized power. Today, from Northern Kurdistan to Rojava, a women’s revolution is unfolding, a process in which women are empowered, present in political life, making decisions about their own lives, and taking part in social life with their own choices.
Of course, this is a process of struggle; it is neither complete nor a state of full liberation. Because the women’s revolution continues to develop, the male-dominated system now targets women and women’s struggles. The rise in femicides, the increase in harassment and rape against women, and every form of attack on women’s dignity and the policies meant to corrupt and degrade them are not coincidental. These are attacks aimed at breaking the impact of the growing women’s struggle, attacks that target women who resist and seek freedom; attacks that seek revenge for women’s efforts to liberate themselves.
The condition of slavery into which Kurdistan and the reality of the Middle East have been trapped is essentially tied to the position of women. A society that faces the loss of its communal life, its culture, and its very existence has been condemned to “familialism” as a reflex for physical survival. Within family relations, women have no role other than the physical reproduction of life. Women must first question these family relations and reclaim themselves. A woman should belong to herself, not to a man. Instead of shaping herself according to male standards and preferences, she must develop her own standards and preferences. She must build her own political and ideological stance against all the policies of the male-dominated system.
Women’s movements must develop greater joint struggle than ever before and stand against divisive and weakening policies. Especially the experiences and practices of our women’s struggle must be shared more widely and claimed by women across the world. President Öcalan’s fundamental theses on women’s freedom must be treated as revolutionary theses, and their political and practical expression must be created.
What does the dissolution of the PKK mean for women, and what kind of participation is expected from women in the reconstruction phase of the Peace and Democratic Society Process?
The dissolution marks the beginning of a new phase of struggle. It is the beginning of building the period of Peace and Democratic Society. In other words, the agenda of Kurdish society and of women is now reconstruction. We can resolve the crisis society is experiencing only through the women’s revolution. The phase we are in is a struggle phase. It is a period of becoming an organizational, transformative, and action-driven force. It is a period of intervening in social problems, producing concrete solutions, and developing their institutional forms.
Today, life and society are in crisis. We can overcome this only by reorganizing the social fabric that has been fragmented and by enabling women to lead the social struggle. At the root of this crisis lies the imposition of male-dominated standards, the resulting dissolution of organization, the loss of freedom, and the degradation of life. Life must be restored to ethics and aesthetics, and this struggle must be waged more powerfully.
For a social life based on women’s freedom, we must develop organization grounded in communes. Communal life is an ethical life; it is an aesthetic life. We must recognize that sharing, collective production, co-existence, democratic culture, and self-defense are the most fundamental human and moral principles. The period of peace and democratic struggle is the period in which women can become the most active, ideologically, theoretically, and practically.
Women, as the founding force of society, have reached the power and consciousness to play their historical role once again today. By turning this strength into political and organizational power, they are capable of making the 21st century the century of women.
The women’s revolution is not like the revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a process of liberation and construction, a cultural revolution. It is a positive revolution, because it is based on reproducing life, revitalizing moral and political existence, and reconstructing communal life. It moves beyond the destructiveness of negative revolutions toward a position that produces, creates, offers alternatives, solves problems, and expands democratic space.
In this sense, the struggle for democracy and peace is the struggle to create an alternative to all statist, power-centered, and dominant mentalities. It is the struggle to create socialist life. Our accumulated experience, knowledge, and strength over all these years is sufficient to build this.