Kurdish women and feminism in guerrilla warfare

A co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and two other female militants were found shot dead on Thursday January 10, 2013 in Paris, France.

Days after, thousands of millions of Kurds marched worldwide, expressing their anger and frustration over the killing of three Kurdish activists. On their funeral, more than a million people gathered and flowered the corpse of the three women in the Kurdish populous city, Amed in Turkey’s southeast. The assassination of the three activists shows the high status of women in Kurdish freedom struggle in Turkey.

When Abdulla Ocalan, Kurdish legendary leader who is currently spending a life sentence in a Turkish prison, started the Kurdish freedom struggle in Turkey in 1978, women were partly the main players of the foundation. When the armed struggle started in 1984, women took up arms and joined the movement.

Women have been the main players in Kurdistan Workers Party’s development since then. Abdulla Ocalan theorized that if women would not be free, the nation will never be free. He said life, women and freedom cannot be separated. This became the main motto of Kurdish women in Turkey. The leader has reiterated on different occasions that “PKK’s revolution is women’s revolution.”

Now, more than 2000 women fighters out of 7000 Kurdish PKK guerrillas on mountains are fighting against the Turkey’s imperialism on Kurdistan.  

One of the pillars of PKK’s ideology is freedom of women. The feminist ideas of Ocalan have been completely brought into effect in the organization. The PKK ideology compulsory applies a minimum 40% women's quota in the whole skeleton of the party, and its affiliated parties and organizations.

Apart from that, it is a compulsory, and unanimously agreed upon by the members that a party or any other institutions should be presided in a joint leadership; a woman and a man. For example, the Peace and Democratic Party, the only Kurdish legal political party in Turkey is co-chaired by a woman and a man. I don’t think that it is available in the whole world of political or ideological systems. Feminist movements have not brought this ideology into the scene yet.

Within the movement, Kurdish women have their own party, and even community. In the heart of Qandil Mountains, you can find PKK women do everything by themselves, even building houses and military outposts.

If we compare the women members of Turkey’s parliament in the country’s 17th general election which was held on 12 June 2011 to elect 550 new members of Grand National Assembly, we see a huge difference between Kurdish women deputies in the only Kurdish party and the two other opposition parties. There are 20 female deputies out of 135 deputies from the opposition Republican People's Party, three out of 53 from the Nationalist Movement Party and 11 out of 35 among the Kurdish Peace and Democracy party.

This is the innovation of Kurdish freedom struggle movement that you cannot find in the whole Middle East region. You can hardly find female political figures in Middle East. This is not to say that some female political figures don't exist in Middle East, but of those that do they rarely get to the higher positions. But in Kurdish the freedom struggle and political ideology, it has become a system that will go forward in the future.

Bear in mind, the women that are guerrilla fighters are not married and if you ask them about marriage, they straightly tell you “If our land is not free, marriage is meaningless.” This is the same for the male guerrillas as well.

To fight side by side to men, Kurdish women fighters have become the soul of the revolution. Though they are martyred every now and then, but they are so proud that they have dedicated their life to the nation and the land.

PKK women say that they are one hundred percent equal to men, yet they want more! They will never see their families once they have joined the revolution. Once I asked a PKK female guerrilla in Qandil Mountains: "Do you miss your mother?"

"Your mother, is my mother, too. Daily, I see her several times here. My mother is here, she is there, she is everywhere in the country. My mother is my HOMELAND." she replied

The latest achievement of PKK’s women is that they were able to become the top leaders of the KCK. Bese Hozat became the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-President in KCK’s last congress which was held in the beginning of 2013. Despite KCK affiliated parties and organizations impleneting the Co-chair system, KCK had not done so. Consequently the last congress became a milestone for PKK's female fighters because they were able to acheive equality to men within the political structure of KCK.

Gaining equality and high positions within the PKK revolutionary movement was not handed to women on a silver plate. Women struggled against the patriarchal mentality of men, and through constant struggles they acomplished what they set out to do. 

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