Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its affiliated groups have pushed women out of public life and carried out practices that have led to the killing of hundreds of women, yet Syrian women refuse to settle for “the lesser evil.” Journalist Beritan Sarya said that structures such as the Syrian Women’s Assembly have been organizing from Idlib to Damascus, from Latakia to Aleppo, despite the repression. She added that the Rojava Revolution is also a “Women’s Revolution” and continues to inspire hope around the world.
The popular uprising that began in Rojava on 19 July 2012 has, in its 14th year, remained one of the most advanced experiences of social transformation led by women. Patriarchal and reactionary forces that cannot tolerate the women’s revolution have launched an all-out attack on women’s achievements. Yet women neither surrender nor accept “the lesser evil.” Guided by the line of the Women’s Defense Units (YPJ), women continue their struggle through communes, self-defense structures, and grassroots organizing. With HTS and the forces it leads taking control of Damascus on 8 December 2024, women’s achievements in the region have been confronted with the heaviest wave of attacks in modern history. On the occasion of 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, journalist Beritan Sarya spoke to ANF about the situation of women in the 14th year of the Rojava Revolution.
The revolution of the women who defeated ISIS
Journalist Sarya said that the Rojava Revolution is, at its core, also a Women’s Revolution; since 2012, women have organized in every sphere of life, from self-defense forces to people’s assemblies, from communes to the Autonomous Administration, through a 50 percent quota and a co-chair system. Sarya emphasized that women delivered the Islamic State group (ISIS) its first major defeat during the Kobanê Resistance and added: “This revolution is the revolution of the women who defeated ISIS. In its 14th year, the Rojava Revolution survived through immense labor and heavy sacrifices. It continues to evolve while steadfastly preserving its existence. This revolution has been defined in many ways, but its strongest definition is this: it is a Women’s Revolution. In the Middle East, a region gripped by sexism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and capitalism, a deep state crisis is unfolding. It is precisely in this darkness that the birth, rooting, and growth of a women’s revolution carries a meaning rarely seen in history.”
The product of decades of labor
Sarya said that the Rojava Revolution is, at its core, the result of Abdullah Öcalan’s twenty years of intense work in Syria beginning in 1979, as well as the struggle of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and, in particular, the Women’s Freedom Movement. She explained: “Abdullah Öcalan crossed into Syria through Kobanê on 2 July 1979. He lived first in Damascus and later in Lebanon. During this period, not only Kurds but thousands of Syriac, Armenian, and Arab people encountered his ideas, were influenced by them, and became part of the Movement. The people of Rojava, especially women, began recognizing women’s pioneering power as early as the 1980s. A significant number of the militants trained at the Mahsum Korkmaz Academy were women. After completing their training, these women were sent to villages and towns, where they both educated the people and learned from them. Mothers were sending their daughters to the guerrilla, to the struggle for freedom. Öcalan’s analyses on women were openly discussed in women’s meetings and public gatherings across Rojava. The heavy gendered and religious repression imposed by the Syrian regime also became clearly visible in these discussions. Under these conditions, trust in women within the Movement’s mass base grew rapidly.”
They wove the revolution thread by thread
Sarya noted that women have been at the forefront of the revolution from the very beginning. She recalled that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) was founded in 2003, followed by Yekîtiya Star in 2005; and when the revolution effectively began in 2011, young women defended the borders with sticks, hardly even having proper weapons. She described the organization of women in military, political, and social spheres as follows: “In the first months of the revolution, the very first institution established was the ‘Mala Jinê’ (Women’s Houses). Soon after, women joined the self-defense forces, and on 4 April 2013 the Women’s Defense Units, the YPJ, an unprecedented formation in the world, was officially founded. The attacks began shortly thereafter: first from the regime, then al-Nusra, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and finally ISIS. ISIS suffered its first major defeat in the world in Kobanê. Women played a decisive role in the Kobanê Resistance. With almost no resources, the women of Rojava waged an extraordinary resistance. Internationalist women and youth from across the world joined this struggle. ISIS, the most brutal embodiment of the male-dominated system, was dealt its first major blow in Rojava by women. This was the beginning of its end.”
The greatest strength of the revolution
The greatest strength of the Rojava Women’s Revolution is that women are organized in every sphere of life. In physical defense, there is the YPJ, the first force of its kind in the world. In ideological defense, women’s academies play a central role. In the cultural sphere, women lead the struggle to preserve a women’s culture regarded as the stem cell of a natural and democratic society. And in politics and economics, women hold strong positions through the co-chair system and a mandatory 50 percent quota. In the Autonomous Administration established in 2014, the co-chair system was made compulsory. Women’s laws were enacted, and one of the first articles of the Social Contract defined a foundational principle: “Women’s freedom is the basic principle of this administration.” The contract was updated in 2016, 2020, and most recently in December 2023. Founded in 2017, the Women’s Assembly of North and East Syria serves as the umbrella structure for all women’s organizations. It drafts women’s laws, establishes women’s justice councils, and oversees the implementation of gender equality across society.
Achieved under conditions of war
Today, women participate from the communes to the people’s assemblies, and from the grassroots to the highest levels of governance, through a 50 percent quota and the co-chair system. This is essential because we still live in a deeply gendered geography. Even though a women-led revolution has unfolded for 14 years, social transformation does not occur overnight; it requires constant education, effort, and struggle. All of this has been accomplished despite the conditions of war. After the attacks by the ISIS, Turkey’s occupations began. Afrin (Efrîn) was occupied in 2018, followed by Serêkaniyê and Girê Spî in 2019. Afrin, in particular, known as a women’s city, was turned into a center of ethnic cleansing and femicide after the occupation.
The current regime is also hostile to women
Sarya said that the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria was never socialist or secular, noting clauses in the constitution such as “The president must be a Muslim” and the allowance for a man to marry four women. She continued: “Although a few limited reforms were made in recent years under pressure from the Rojava Revolution, the real transformation took place in North and East Syria. On 8 December 2024, HTS, formerly known as al-Nusra, and its supporters seized Damascus. The Assad regime was reactionary and sexist, but those who replaced it are the most reactionary, most Salafi-jihadist forces, groups that openly turned femicide into policy. As soon as they came to power, a woman-hating, people-hating, anti-democratic force began to be legitimized on the international stage.”
The force that gives women confidence
Sarya underlined that in a region where male-state violence is at its strongest, the YPJ remain the only force that gives women genuine confidence. Sarya said: “It was young women, those who had only just learned how to hold a weapon, who defeated ISIS, the most brutal male organization in the world; who stood and resisted in places where state armies fled. In Kobanê, in Minbic, in Raqqa, in Deir ez-Zor (Dêrazor), women matured through war and rose to command. Society witnessed women’s strength, and its belief in them grew. The Arab women’s revolution also emerged in this process. From the very beginning of the revolution, Arab, Syriac, Armenian, and Turkmen women fought side by side. Abdullah Öcalan’s paradigm of the democratic unity of peoples and a shared free life found concrete expression in practice.”
Hundreds of women have been killed
Journalist Sarya stated that the mentality of male-state power seeking to destroy the Women’s Revolution is today being driven forward through the support of HTS and Turkey, and that freedom-oriented Arab women are being specifically targeted in areas such as Deir ez-Zor, Minbic, and Tabqa. Sarya continued: “Since 8 December, the massacres have not stopped. Alawite women and Druze women are being kidnapped, raped, and forced to abandon their cultures. As of July 2025, official figures say that more than 710 women have been killed; the real number is far higher. Hundreds of women are still missing. The HTS administration drafted the constitution on the basis of sharia law. Women are granted almost no rights; traveling alone is banned, in public transport they are forced to sit in the back, and even sitting side by side is treated as a crime. They appointed a Christian ‘feminist minister’ as window dressing, but she represents Syrian women in no meaningful way. Women journalists, academics, and activists are being arrested, threatened, and killed. Despite this insidious policy of forced regression, Syrian women refuse to accept ‘the lesser evil.’ Structures such as the Syrian Women’s Assembly are organizing from Idlib to Damascus, from Latakia to Aleppo. Women build their strongest self-defense through organization.”