To All Women’s Structures and Our Esteemed Sisters! 8 MARCH IS THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM!

8 March, International Working Women’s Day, is blessed to all women of the world who seek the
rights of their labor, to all humanity who struggle for this cause, and to Kurdish women! 8 March is
the day of unity and struggle for all women.
As the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement, we bow with respect before the memory of all
women who fell martyr in the cause of freedom, and we salute the awakening and magnificent
actions of women who, despite all forms of oppression, violence, and massacres, have transformed
prisons, mountains, streets, workplaces, fields, homes, in short every sphere of life, into arenas of
Freedom.
As the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Movement, for more than 40 years we have waged a great
struggle to deepen the ideology of women’s liberation; to reveal women’s self-defense power and
consciousness; to ensure women’s equal and free representation in the political sphere; to overcome
sexism in all areas of life; and on this basis to accelerate women’s liberation. On this path, we have
always attached great importance and meaning to sharing the achievements we have reached with
the women of the world.
And now, with great excitement, enthusiasm, and a high level of determination, we aim to fulfill our
mission within the universal women’s freedom movement in order to transform the 21st century
into the era of women’s freedom and to realize the second great women’s revolution.
As you are all closely following, we have entered 2026 at a dizzying pace of developments. The
world is rapidly shifting towards a multipolar, fragmented order. The global system has fractured.
Across the world, populist, machoist leaders are placing their own power interests above all values.
Our world has been rendered unlivable due to hostile competition and power relations. Capitalism,
patriarchy, and domination are causing the very ground beneath our feet to collapse. For all these
reasons, the international system based on rights and rules stands on the brink of disintegration. The
President of the United States, D. Trump, through his actions and words, has driven the final nail
into the coffin of the nation-state. Today, the rules of a world under destruction are being
determined by despots and populist, misogynist leaders. Unfortunately, democracies today are not
even effective in limiting this harmful course.
In this situation, the primary question for women is the following: How should we read this process
and how should we position ourselves? This is the fundamental question that must be answered
from the front of the peoples, and specifically of women. As has been claimed, it has become
sufficiently clear that the international system does not provide a protective, balancing, or binding
framework for the lives of peoples; on the contrary, for women it is both the cause and the result of
all negative conditions. The era of the nation-state has collapsed; all the masks of the nation-state
gods have fallen alongside the multiple crises they themselves have created.
With the collapse of the bipolar world order at the end of the 20th century, the search for a New
World Order began. The war in Yugoslavia, the Iraq war, the uprisings and wars that began with the
Arab Spring, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Gaza war, and the ongoing wars in all parts of
Kurdistan divided among four colonialist states have intensified and deepened since the 1990s.
These colonialist wars that have devastated our planet have not ceased; they are systematically
sustained by dominant powers. The wars being waged have not resolved existing problems; rather,
they have deepened them further and destroyed whatever belonged to the old world. As Antonio
Gramsci said: “The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of
monsters.” In recent days, everyone expresses this reality. Humanity now lives in an age ruled by
the strong.
While the nation-state society binds individuals to power through citizenship ties, it has struck the
heaviest blow to communal life. Whatever sustains a society – economy, ecology, health, settlement,
education, and self-defense as fields of organization – has been seized by the state. Peoples and
communities have been left defenseless. The forces that should be responsible for the defense of the
people are either mobilized as aggressors to seize others’ lands and wealth or driven against
opposing fronts.
Although our planet has long been sending out an SOS, ecological destruction is produced for the
sake of greater wealth; genocides and mass displacements are carried out. Why, while our planet is
on the verge of death under such exploitation, do states refrain from necessary agreements and fail
to impose essential limitations on corporations? Science and technology, which should provide
solutions to our existing problems, are transformed into serious weapons in the hands of power
centers and used against humanity. Why is our food and drinking water poisoned, and why are the
diseases arising from this not prevented? The answer to all these questions is simple: so that some
may gain more profit. Poverty, inequality, social oppression, authoritarianism, environmental crisis,
pollution, loss of diversity, and the uncontrolled use of technology are the results of wars waged to
secure the competitive arenas of the capitalist system.
It is time to abandon the illusion that states serve the peoples. Nation-states are the fundamental
pillars of the capitalist system (of capital owners and narrow power centers). To sustain their own
power, they need the people, the worker, the unemployed, the army, raw materials, migrants, the
family, technology, and ideologies that generate exploitation (nationalism, religiosity, sexism, and
scientism). No people, especially forces outside power, can claim that nation-states represent them.
Peoples know they are oppressed, exploited, and suppressed under power, yet due to the illusion
that life without the state is impossible, they tolerate these usurpations of rights.
As women, we have no state; as workers, we have no state; as migrants, we have no state; as
indigenous peoples, we have no state. When we say we have no state, we mean there has never been
and will never be, a state that represents us, protects our interests, or prioritizes our well-being.
Worldwide, women still have to struggle for equality in every sphere. Because in all areas of life,
women are still systematically subjected to male violence. Women are still humiliated, degraded,
and objectified. Who, despite women constituting half of the world’s population, sustains this order – and how?
Why, despite the objections of people living in a country, are heads of state (such as the Taliban in
Afghanistan or Jolani in Syria) brought to power by force with the support of external powers? And
why are leaders or forces who gain the support and consent of the people killed, abducted,
criminalized, and imprisoned? Because the interests of power are taken as essential, not the will of
the peoples.
Peoples have been dragged into wars that are not their own and turned into instruments of others’
struggles for power. How is it that peoples pay the heaviest price for policies they did not
determine? The illusion of securing the just demands of peoples through the state has deprived us of
our own foundations and has led us to sustain the power of others.
How did powers accomplish this? Not solely through brute force, though that has never been
lacking. The state’s army, police, law, and media have always been deployed against segments of
society that refuse obedience, and especially against women. But more importantly, through the
ideologies of power – nationalism, religiosity, scientism, and sexism – peoples and societies were
integrated into this system.
Because of this mentality, all struggles for freedom and equality conducted so far have not freed
themselves from resembling their opposites; instead, they have strengthened them. The national
liberation struggles and class struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries met the same fate. Any
struggle that cannot create its own alternative modernity in the face of this system cannot escape the
same fate.
Male domination – and on this basis the phenomena of power accumulation, class formation,
militarism, and religification – has for thousands of years struck, massacred, and exploited us
women. The patriarchal civilization that systematized oppression and exploitation is today shaken
by realities resembling barbarism. The criminal files of Jeffrey Epstein, watched in astonishment for
days by all humanity and women in particular, have become a confession of the male-dominated
system. The exposure of the powerful and billionaires as rapists cannot be read as a malfunction or
an isolated incident within the system. The true rapist is the capitalist system itself, shaped by
patriarchal codes.
Yes, dear sisters, we are precisely at the moment called “Either freedom or barbarism!” Women’s
freedom is not merely a theoretical proposition; it is the foundation of all social freedoms. Women’s
enslavement and femicide are the foundation of all enslavements and wars of power. The only path
to liberation from all the evils created by power, from the practices of femicide described as
barbarism, passes through women’s freedom. If the usurpation of rights, will, and labor created by
the patriarchal system were not so deep, humanity, women in particular would have risen up after
the exposure of the Epstein files. The issue goes far beyond an extraordinary scandal. Once again
we see that capital relations intertwined with male-dominated power networks have also rendered
the field of law a private domain of men. Male power networks protect the perpetrator and render
the testimonies of victims worthless and invisible. Violence is a structural phenomenon in all
patriarchal systems. The demonization of “J. Epstein” today may conceal the masculinity and power
relations that made such monstrosity possible. As women, we must begin by questioning the system
that leads to such barbarism. The Epstein file is the portrait of organized male evil. The historical
realities called cannibalism, barbarism, and predation find expression precisely in the criminal
network formed by Epstein. What has occurred is not an exceptional example of the male
dominated system. Epstein’s crime island is the capitalist order itself.
Without targeting and transforming the masculine order that makes abuse possible, every exposure
may become an agenda, but the system will remain where it stands. Women’s freedom requires
daring a great and radical struggle. For this reason, as women we must cleanse ourselves of
everything belonging to power, its mentality, culture, lifestyle, and instruments. Otherwise, we
cannot save ourselves from becoming victims of this monstrous system. We must no longer develop
others’ struggles, but our own. For this, we must build our own paradigm, institutions, alternative
system, and culture through which we can develop and defend ourselves, our society, our lands (our
living spaces), our nature, and our labor. We must lead the struggle for alternative life, the antidote
to all powers.
Because the capitalist system is founded upon the exploitation of women and therefore women’s
exploitation is its most essential pillar. To abolish this pillar, we must lead alternative struggles.
Because the women’s struggle is the longest and the most universal. The politicization of women,
with its universal meaning at the forefront, will offer profound openings and radical solutions in
human rights, social and cultural rights, sensitivity to nature and environmental problems, children’s
rights, health, and education.
Because women are also the driving force of socialism. The woman question is more important than
class and national realities. It is comprehensive both historically and socially. It is more valuable
and encompassing than politics conducted in the name of class and nation. On the basis of
recognizing and overcoming the fact that woman is the lowest and most excluded class of all, we
believe that the communalist struggle will achieve the success it deserves and we say: the pioneer of
building Democratic Socialism is woman! It has been understood that a socialist struggle that does
not successfully pass the test of women’s freedom cannot produce the result it deserves.
In the face of barbaric patriarchal system practices that make life difficult for all living beings,
women must emerge as the force that most insistently raises peace and democracy. It is we women
who will stop the flowing blood and restrain all the barbarities created by the male mind. Women
everywhere must act as militants of peace and democracy; otherwise, in the wars ruthlessly waged
by the male mind, none of us will have calm and peaceful harbors to which we can retreat.
Rebelling against the male-dominated mentality and system undoubtedly requires great sacrifices; it
requires tremendous organization, deep struggle, and efforts of self-defense. As seen, in all crisis
regions and in processes of the collapse of authoritarian regimes, women have been the most radical
dynamic of mass actions. Yet at negotiation tables, it has again been women whose rights, existence,
voices, and gains have been ignored. Wherever we are, we must place women’s status on the
agenda as a strategic issue. With the sensitivity that if we win, we win together, and if we lose, we
lose together, we must listen to the women’s resistance and objections rising across the world and
raise solidarity beyond all borders constructed by powers. We must see and embrace our sisters’
pain, joy, success, and achievements as our own heritage.
At this dawn of history, it is essential that we organize universally and build, on a global scale,
women’s free and equal system against the sexist, patriarchal, capitalist world system. For this, we
must develop democratic women’s alliances. We must develop paths, methods, and perspectives of
struggle appropriate to the conditions, characteristics, and needs of the 21st century. Indeed,
together we must create the 21st-century women’s liberation program.
The sharp increase in attacks against women worldwide is directly linked to this crisis condition and
to the relationship between the patriarchal capitalist world system and women’s freedom. We must
see the connection between gang rapes in Asia and sexual violence in the United States; we must
address as a whole the femicides reaching massacre levels in Latin America and the abduction and
enslavement of women and girls by religion-masked gangs in Africa and the Middle East. We must
evaluate together the rise of fascist, misogynist regimes and the usurpation of women’s rights won
through struggle. And we must clearly see that this war waged worldwide by the patriarchal system
aims to suffocate the rising quest and struggle for women’s freedom. Because perhaps at no stage in
the history of civilization has the male-dominated system been so strained, its foundations so
shaken. And for women, the conditions for achieving freedom have never matured to such an
extent. The possibilities for realizing the second great women’s revolution have never grown so
vast. Therefore, we are passing through a historic process. Great opportunities exist but the danger
is also great.
As Kurdish women, we greet the 116th year of International Working Women’s Day with this
intensity. With this brief letter, we wished to share our thoughts and hopes regarding the process
with our esteemed sisters and women’s structures. On this occasion, we celebrate your 116th
International Working Women’s Day. With the strength and light of the common women’s struggle,
we renew our promise to tear the darkness created by domination and patriarchy out of our lives and
to make every day March 8.
Salute to our symbols of resistance, from Rosas to Saras!