The Kurdistan Women’s Communities (KJK) announced the launch of a new strategic initiative in a written statement dated 1 March 2026, as the movement approaches 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, and Newroz (the Kurdish New Year and festival of resistance). The statement said that the evaluations made by Abdullah Öcalan on the second anniversary of his 27 February Call for Peace and a Democratic Society were embraced “with great historical and social responsibility,” adding that women would fulfill their role as the leading force of this process.
KJK emphasized that the month of March represents a symbolic turning point both for the women’s freedom struggle and for the history of resistance among peoples. While 8 March was described as a symbol of women’s resistance and Newroz as the fire of freedom for peoples, the statement noted that women, as the subjects and driving force of communal life, would expand and deepen this process.
The statement also underlined that the initiative launched over the past three years under the slogan “We march toward the women’s revolution with Jin Jiyan Azadî (Women, Life, Freedom)” has strengthened the consciousness of women’s freedom not only in Kurdistan but also across the Middle East and the wider world. According to KJK, the process has moved beyond being a theoretical slogan and has turned into a global line of resistance. Marking 8 March, the statement announced that the initiative has now entered a new phase and that a strategic period has begun under the slogan “Now is the time for women.”
The statement said that the perspective of a democratic, ecological, and women’s liberationist society developed by Abdullah Öcalan represents an alternative to the crisis facing humanity. It stressed that the struggle led by women aims to secure the process of Peace and a Democratic Society with a lasting status. In this context, ensuring the physical freedom of Abdullah Öcalan was defined as a fundamental condition for the realization of this process.
The full text of the statement issued by the KJK, titled “To Our People, the Democratic Public and All Women in Struggle,” reads as follows:
“We declare that we embrace, with great historical and social responsibility, the statement made by Abdullah Öcalan on the second anniversary of the ‘27 February Call for Peace and a Democratic Society.’ We promise that we will fulfill, in the most worthy way, the role of the ‘leading force’ of this process that Abdullah Öcalan has attributed to us women.
We are entering the month of March with historic developments. March, which gives birth to spring and crowns nature’s search for freedom, has also been the mother of the most difficult and most magnificent struggles in the history of women’s freedom. While 8 March has become the symbol of women’s resistance, Newroz, the festival of rebirth and resistance, has turned into the unextinguished fire of freedom for all oppressed peoples and women of the world, embodied in the Kurdish people. March is the month of our martyrs who ignited the fire of freedom with their bodies and became immortal through their relentless resistance for freedom. On this occasion, we commemorate all martyrs of revolution and democracy, represented by the martyrs of 8 March and Newroz, with respect, love, and gratitude, and we once again declare that we will transform the fire of freedom into the halay (a traditional Kurdish and Anatolian line dance) of free life among the peoples, becoming the subject, driving force, and pioneer of communal life.
Throughout our 52-year history of intense struggle, as the women’s movement we have developed important stages of resistance that socialized the consciousness of freedom through strategic initiatives and campaigns centered on women’s freedom and its solutions. Over the past three years, our initiative ‘We march toward the women’s revolution with Jin Jiyan Azadî’ has developed awareness, women’s freedom consciousness, resistance, and a system of renewal not only in Kurdistan but also in the Middle East and at the global level. Jin Jiyan Azadî has moved beyond being a theoretical philosophy and has become a global slogan, echoed not only by women but also by men as a philosophy and hope for liberation.
With the historical, social, and philosophical call of Abdullah Öcalan and the manifesto of communal society, we stand at the threshold of an era of enlightenment, rebirth, and the free re-creation of the self. As we conclude the initiative we carried out under the slogan ‘We march toward the women’s revolution with Jin Jiyan Azadî’ on the occasion of 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, we announce the launch of a new strategic initiative aimed at securing the lasting freedom of peoples and women.
Our initiative, which we will launch under the slogan ‘Now is the time for women!’ (Niha Dema Jinê Ye!), represents the transition from a negative revolution to a positive revolution in our struggle against women’s slavery, statelessness, identitylessness, lawlessness, and anti-woman special war policies that the male-dominated system has sought to universalize for thousands of years. Now is the time for women to build our ecological, democratic, and communal social system based on women’s freedom.
It is also an initiative aimed at ensuring the physical freedom of Abdullah Öcalan, the leader who developed the philosophy and system of women’s freedom and strengthened the comradeship of women; at creating conditions for him to live and work freely; at enabling him to conduct democratic politics through the implementation of the right to hope; and at removing the obstacles before him in advancing the project of a democratic society. The resolution of the two-hundred-year-old Kurdish question on the basis of Peace and a Democratic Society also offers an alternative solution to humanity’s universal crisis. In this sense, the physical freedom of Abdullah Öcalan deserves a universal struggle led by women.
Against the sexist, religious, and nationalist war policies of capitalist modernity, which turn women’s bodies into battlefields through the philosophy of ‘kill the woman’ and a culture of rape, now is the time for women to build organized women’s identity and status by socializing the philosophy of Jin Jiyan Azadî, self-defense, democracy, equality, and freedom.
Over the past two centuries, Kurds and Kurdistan have been divided piece by piece through assimilationist, genocidal policies and international conspiracies. As the Kurdish people stand at the center of the Third World War, a war aimed at redesigning the world, they are also its target and face constant attacks. Overcoming these policies is possible through a national unity that will recreate Kurdish history, and through the national unity of women. On this basis, we say that now is the time for women’s national unity against genocidal policies and for the construction of the perspective of the democratic nation. We call on all Kurdish women to take historical responsibility for developing national unity and to crown this process with unity. Now is the time for women to secure Kurdish status and ensure that the Kurdish reality gains legal recognition.
In Rojava, with the self-defense force of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), women’s organization, equal representation, and the co-chair system, the women’s revolution has become a geopolitical and geostrategic reality. It shines like a star in Syria, Kurdistan, the Middle East, and across the world against the darkness of ISIS and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Yet the women’s revolution in Rojava has still not achieved official status, and the dangers remain significant. It is now time to protect Rojava, defend the women’s revolution and the YPJ, and secure constitutional guarantees for gender equality and women’s free and equal participation in all areas of life. With the women’s revolution in Rojava, now is the time for women.
The deepening of war is connected to the depth of women’s enslavement. As women become free and as the slave-like relationships, lifestyles, and rules imposed by the male-dominated system are overcome, the culture and system of war and violence will also disappear. For this reason, expanding the women’s peace movement and unity of struggle will be a core strategy of our initiative. In the face of war and violence directed at women and society, we say that now is the time for women’s self-defense and peace.
The global expansion of male-dominated hegemony makes it necessary to organize struggle at the universal level as well. Today, the world is governed by misogynistic and child-hating forces, as seen in the mentality of the Islamic State and revelations such as the Epstein files. Religious fundamentalism, sexism, and nationalism have joined forces in a monstrous war against women. Against this system of male domination, it is time for women around the world to build common organization, self-defense, and the confederalism of women worldwide. The universalization of women’s struggle and system will bring about the birth of a free and democratic society. That is why now is the time for women.
Our initiative also aims to overcome the fundamental contradiction and crisis between women and men, and to transform men on the basis of democratic principles of freedom and equality. On this basis, we call on all men who seek freedom to join the initiative we have launched for building a democratic, free personality and a new life on the line of women’s freedom.
The first historical society created by women was a communal, democratic, libertarian, ecological, and peaceful society under women’s leadership. Today we face the task of updating the free and democratic society realized in our history and turning history in favor of women and peoples. Communal organization, based on free, autonomous administration and the coexistence of differences, is the solution to the social crises and chaos we face today. For this reason, now is the time for women; now is the time to build communal life.
On this basis, we call on all women to participate strongly in the initiative, to organize, and to crown with victory the process initiated by Abdullah Öcalan. At the same time, we call on all democratic and libertarian institutions and women’s movements to embrace and support this initiative.
We celebrate 8 March, International Working Women’s Day, of all women who have raised their voices for women’s freedom in the streets from 1 March to 8 March. We commemorate with respect, love, and gratitude our great martyr Sema Yüce, who became a symbol of the realization of the philosophy of women’s freedom. By embracing the legacy she left us through her profound act, let us build a bridge from 8 March to 21 March and carry the spirit of the ‘Now is the time for women’ initiative into the rebirth and blossoming of Newroz.”
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