Free Women’s Movement in Kurdistan

There is a great World War III in the Middle East today, that is rooted in the structural problems emerging of the patriarchal and capitalist system. Although this state of war may seem like a current problem, it is essentially a problem that originates in the system of exploiting the values that women have created for thousands of years through the use of violence and deception. In other words, it is the state of crisis that occurs when man turns into a sovereign who begins with women and gradually uses force on the whole of society.

The Leader of the Kurdish People Abdullah Öcalan is trying to overcome this crisis, which threatens all values created by humanity. He is doing so through the paradigm of democratic civilization, which is a paradigm of freedom, which the core struggle of forming a free life for all humanity, especially for women.

In this crisis, the Kurdish women, with their liberation struggle and their uncompromising policy of self-defense, are overturning all the given values, definitions and structures and showing the women of the world with their resistance and hope that freedom is possible through struggle.

This struggle developed in Kurdistan, on the ancient land of women’s culture, and on the basis of women identity due to this characteristic. Kurdish women put women’s liberation at the center of their struggle and, on this basis, moved forward with the goal of social revolution and women’s revolution. Unlike all other socialist and oppressed movements in history, Kurdish women created developments in social change and women’s liberation within the revolutionary process.

On the basis of women’s identity and culture, the reality of a confederal system that vitalizes the democratic and peoples’ tendency towards freedom against statehood and power has been achieved. By questioning the values, culture and life created by the male-dominated mind, women have embarked on the struggle to create a new life based on the principles of freedom. On this basis, many firsts were experienced for women in the mountains of Kurdistan.

The Kurdish women, who militarized the women, fought intellectually as well as physically, and ensured that the measures of free life they created became part of the principles of a new society. All knowledge, value judgments and codifications for and on behalf of women were turned upside down. Through their own struggle, intertwined with difficulties and by paying the price, women have created a new truth. In Kurdish society, a revolution within the revolution, social change and freedom developed under the leadership of women. The way to vitalize the resistance and victory, women’s struggle and its results as a new model of life and society is to struggle on the basis of the values that have emerged.

The Kurdish Women’s Movement, continuing its 40-year experience of resistance today, is not only struggling against the regimes of the sovereign countries that exploit them, but also against the social reality in which they find themselves. Kurdish women continue their work with the awareness that they face very serious problems and that they are forced to struggle.

The Kurdish women’s movement is organized on the basis of an umbrella organization. The ideological field organization of this structure is the ‘Partiya Azadiya Jin a Kurdistan’ (Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Party, PAJK), the social field organization is ‘Komalên Jinên Kurdistan’ (Association of the Women of Kurdistan, KJK), and the legitimate defense field organization is ‘Yekîneyên Jinên Azad ên Star’ (Free Women’s Unit, YJA-STAR). Kurdish women have identified their areas of struggle, but they are also aware of the fact that they face enormous problems that need to be overcome. As is well known, violence and injustice against women is experienced not only in Kurdistan, but all over the world. The basic approach to identify and solve these problems is based on local and regional struggle, while this struggle has a universal and global perspective.

Kurdish women have been waging a fierce struggle to ‘be themselves’ (in Kurdish ‘xwebûn’ which is one of the essential struggle’s of the women’s liberation movement) for years. This historical experience on the peaks of the mountains and in the depths of the valleys is still in full swing. Women who are active in all areas of life with their discovered own identity, with the awareness of their own rights, give momentum to the struggle and are able to participate which much bigger effect in society.

Women’s representation in structures, institutions and organizational mechanisms, their presence in local structures, councils, etc. is also an important element. The level reached in this regard, although insufficient, is valuable. Decisions such as the co-presidency system in local structures as well as in all other areas, women’s quota practices, cautionary decisions taken in the field of combating violence against women, the exclusion of men who perpetrate violence and polygamous men in political and social structures, etc. are decisions that should not remain on paper; they are decisions that should be taken as exemplary.

It is important to emphasize that all these rights were achieved through women’s determined resistance and at great cost. This is a level that has been achieved as a result of thousands of women losing their lives in the mountains, facing sexist, backward and traditional practices, etc., and suffering great hardships. The reality of life and the struggle has shown Kurdish women that they should not expect to be given rights in a male-dominated society.

What has to be done in all times and places is to raise the gender struggle under all circumstances, to struggle to develop an emancipatory perspective in all areas of struggle, and to be radical and determined in this regard. As a matter of fact, male domination does not give up its aggressive attitude towards women for a moment. For this reason, seeing the current level as sufficient would not only be a mistake, but would also jeopardize the achievements made.

The important thing is to raise the level of resistance even higher with the common struggle of all the women of the world.