The question of women’s liberation in Kurdistan has been a subject of debate for many years. The prominent place Kurdish women hold today in every sphere of life is closely intertwined with the history of the freedom movement. Emerging in the chaotic atmosphere of the 1970s, the Kurdistan freedom movement not only introduced a new perspective on socialism in Turkey and Kurdistan but also marked the first steps of transformation within the reality of the Kurdish people.
In the context of Kurdistan, women were often unable to fully participate in social life and did not possess an equal voice even within socialist structures. In contrast, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) stood from its earliest ideological circles as a movement that opened all areas of struggle to women. Although the birth of the Kurdish women’s movement is generally dated to the mid-1980s, Kurdish women had in fact been participating in the freedom movement from the very beginning, occupying a distinct and significant position within it.
Freedom quest that began from the first day
In the PKK first manifesto, The Path of the Kurdistan Revolution, Abdullah Öcalan explained the movement’s objectives as follows: “Creating a democratic Kurdistan depends on eliminating the heavy feudal and comprador pressures imposed on Kurdistan’s social structure. The removal of oppression and exploitation carried out by the feudal-comprador class will ensure the liberation of women, peasants, minorities and the entire social structure.”
The freedom movement addressed the transformations it sought to achieve in Kurdistan not through a strategy postponed to “after the revolution,” but through the steps that had to be taken on the path toward revolution. In doing so, it moved beyond prevailing views about women’s place in life.
In the declaration of the PKK’s founding congress, Abdullah Öcalan described Kurdish women in the following words: “It is the women of Kurdistan who were enslaved as society entered class divisions, torn away from a humane life under harsh feudal pressure, bought and sold because they had no voice over their own future, and whose horizons were darkened by countless hardships. To free ourselves from this oppression, to attain an enlightened and free personality, and to gain a say over our own future and that of society, we must join the struggle led by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, just as thirsty for freedom as you are, to make Kurdistan an independent and democratic country.”
The period leading up to the 1980 military coup also revealed why Kurdish women did not take part in classical leftist and Kurdish nationalist structures. Ideological discourses developed without considering the reality of Kurdistan did not find a genuine response among the Kurdish people; on the contrary, they caused the public to distance itself from such organizations.
The first attacks against the individuals and structures identified by Abdullah Öcalan as the “feudal-comprador structure,” along with the major Urfa resistance, had an impact not only on the Kurdish people but also on Kurdish women who, until then, had been struggling to survive under heavy pressure and isolation within their own society.
With the PKK, Kurdish women ceased for the first time to be individuals who stood in the background, seen as “in need of protection” or “in need of help,” and instead became active subjects who made decisions and took action.
Sakine Cansız’s legacy: “They cut off my breasts, I was too ashamed to cry out”
One of the most profound influences on Kurdish women was the resistance in Diyarbakır Prison (Amed). Despite the severe torture carried out in the prison, the great resistance led by Sakine Cansız in the women’s ward inspired women outside the prison to embrace the struggle as well. Sakine Cansız’s defiant stance against Esat Oktay has since been regarded as one of the first steps toward the philosophy of “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî (Woman, Life, Freedom)”, which today resonates across the world.
Sakine’s determined resistance inside the prison also paved the way for Kurdish mothers to begin protests outside its gates. Actions that had previously been seen as the resistance of women in the PKK were increasingly transformed into a broader resistance of Kurdish women. The moment when a mother attempted to set herself on fire in front of the prison in protest against the torture inside became a sign that the PKK would not remain merely an organization.
The developments that followed Diyarbakır Prison contributed to Kurdish women emerging as the pioneers of this revolution and as the leading force that would carry its ideology toward victory. From the very beginning, Abdullah Öcalan focused on the lives of Kurdish women, seeking to analyze the conditions they faced and to develop a meaningful response to this reality.
In one of his analyses, Öcalan wrote: “A close connection can be drawn between the level colonialism has reached in Kurdistan and the specific conditions faced by women. The colonial reality embodied in Kurdistan bears striking similarities to the situation women have endured not only today but for centuries.” In this way, he emphasized that the oppression, isolation and third-class treatment experienced by Kurdish women must be understood within the same historical context as the colonization of Kurdistan.
PKK is an organization of women’s existence
As the only movement that managed to survive and resist after the military coup and the period of repression that followed, the PKK entered a new phase. The fate of an entire people now rested on its shoulders, and the most isolated and marginalized segments of society stood alongside the PKK. The PKK of the 1970s was no longer the same; a new period and a renewed PKK were necessary. The guerrilla movement that emerged in the mid-1980s was a result of this transformation. By the end of the 1980s, the PKK had begun to move beyond being a “cadre movement,” as many classical leftist organizations were described, and was increasingly becoming people’s movement.
According to the account of Martyr Beritan, Kurdish women played a decisive role during the 1992 Newroz in Cizre, the first major Newroz celebration to take place in the streets. Despite attacks by state forces carried out with live ammunition in what amounted to a massacre, Kurdish women resisted and ensured that large Newroz celebrations were held in Cizre. The 1992 Cizre Newroz was not merely a holiday celebration; in the words of Abdullah Öcalan, it represented “the realization of a rebirth,” and the greatest contribution to that rebirth came from the determination of Kurdish women who refused to leave the streets.
Why, then, did Kurdish women embrace the PKK when numerous leftist and nationalist organizations existed both before and after the PKK was founded? Can this be explained solely through national consciousness? Certainly not. In one of his analyses, Abdullah Öcalan addressed this question in the following way: “The form of women’s liberation encountered in socialist countries today largely consists of greater participation in economic activity, a somewhat stronger voice in society, and improvements in physical well-being. For example, women’s share in the political sphere remains very limited. It is as if a logic operates that avoids contradicting a general understanding of equality. As a complement to this general equality, women’s participation in party organizations, state institutions and other social activities is determined through official decisions that allocate certain quotas. (…) Therefore, the status assigned to women has largely not gone beyond the status created by men. While the status assigned to women in feudal society clearly bears the mark of male domination, in socialist society women have achieved a limited level of participation, yet the determination of a status supposedly transformed toward equality has still largely been shaped by men.”
Quest that began from the first day turned into practical steps in the 1990s
It is precisely this perspective that has shaped the present. Abdullah Öcalan, who articulated how women should be regarded in Kurdistan, emphasized that such an approach should not be a model copied from elsewhere but one that emerges from its own unique conditions.
The 1990s in Kurdistan became a decade of significant transformation. The growing popular character of the freedom movement and the broad support of the people for the PKK led to organization in every sphere of life. Legal political parties, civil society organizations, associations and cultural centers began to be established. During this period, the Kurdish women’s movement also began to organize according to its own specific conditions. Within this process, numerous associations and institutions were founded, including the Association of Patriotic Women, the Free Women’s Association, the Dicle Women’s Cultural Center, the National Democratic Women’s Association, Kurdish Women’s Solidarity, the Foundation for Research on Women’s Issues, ARJIN, the JIYAN Women’s Cultural House and the Roza Women’s Association. Although some of these institutions were later closed, new organizations emerged that further developed and carried forward their legacy.
It is necessary to open a brief parenthesis here. One notable aspect of the history of the Kurdistan freedom movement is that it has never practiced a form of “name fetishism,” but instead has continually renewed itself according to changing conditions. For this reason, when the founding purposes of certain institutions changed or when they began to repeat themselves, organizational structures were also transformed. This was not only a result of state pressure; it was also part of an organizational model developed according to practical needs, reflecting what is often described in leftist terminology as the principle of “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”
These women’s organizations of the 1990s, which at first appeared independent from one another, eventually made clear, especially with the growth of the Kurdistan freedom movement and the evolving needs of the struggle in the 2000s, the necessity of a broader umbrella structure. The umbrella organization formed with the Kurdistan Women’s Communities (KJK) also encouraged the development of similar umbrella models in Turkey. The process of umbrella organization began with the Democratic Free Women’s Movement, continued with Kurdistan Jinen Azad (KJA), and later developed further with Tevgere Jinen Azad (TJA).
While this process unfolded in Turkey and Kurdistan, the 1990s also represented an important turning point for the guerrilla struggle in Kurdistan, leading to the development of a new model of combatant organization. Abdullah Öcalan stated that for Kurdish women to fully free themselves from the conditions they faced and to develop their own revolutionary practice, it was necessary to establish a women’s guerrilla army.
Looking far beyond the classical leftist understanding of the issue, Öcalan took the first step toward opening the path for women to recreate themselves and to free themselves from all forms of male-dominated mentality. The foundations of the women’s guerrilla army, an experience that continues today to inspire both revolutionary struggle and women’s movements across the world, were thus laid in the 1990s.
A struggle for existence against both the system and patriarchy
The reality created by this step meant the complete collapse of the leftist ideological framework that had existed until then. Kurdish women, who were subjected to a dual process of annihilation, began shaping their own ideas within the arenas of struggle, in contrast to what the traditional leftist thought system had produced. While fighting against the system on one hand, they were also engaged in a profound intellectual struggle against the male-dominated mindset within the Kurdish people and within the freedom movement itself. This enabled them to shape their theories directly through practice and to develop a new theory of socialism and resistance. Contrary to the long-standing notion that “war is a man’s affair,” the emergence of a woman who fights not only within a war organized and led by women but also against all forms of masculinity began to take shape.
In one of his analyses addressing women, Abdullah Öcalan also explained how the PKK was able to grow so significantly among the Kurdish people. In an assessment concerning the family, he stated: “We will reflect the revolutionary transformation of the family in our mass activities. In organizing the women’s movement, we will assign important tasks to the development of revolutionary transformation within the family. Most of you barely even approach your families. This is not correct, and it brings no benefit to them either. Considering the situation families are in, it is an important political duty to encourage them to be careful and sensitive and to strengthen this awareness. (…)
Let us turn the great game played by the enemy upside down and transform every family into a hearth of patriotism. If every family becomes a small cell of the party, Kurdistan will have been established. If this cannot be achieved, it must be stated that liberation will be very difficult, or that liberation will develop in proportion to the revolutionary transformation of families.”
To be continued.
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