Female combat commanders of the YPJ and political agency – framing the fight on their own terms

ABSTRACT

Women have taken part in several insurgencies. Research shows that women resort to violence not only for private reasons but also as a means to achieve political goals. The aim of this study is to explore how high-ranking YPJ commanders’ frame their decision to first joint the PKK and their use of violence as founding members of the YPJ. This is done with the help of a thematic analysis of life history interviews with three YPJ commanders in the midst of the civil war in Syria. The focus is on how the interviewees frame the themes. When highlighting some aspect of reality over other aspects, for example, in the context of a conflict, frames act to define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgements, and suggest remedies. The study argues that the respondents’ framing connected their personal experiences with broader ideology. Thus, personal experiences can lead to embracing a broader ideology such that they motivate women to join the violent struggle. Three themes emerged from the analysis: Patriarchy; inspiring examples; and global liberation and democracy. These explorative results suggest a corresponding three-stage analytical framework for analysing how women join militant movements during civil wars: Personal experiences that define the problem and prepare the ground for action; other women’s roles as pathbreakers making the previously seemingly impossible action appear possible; and finally, the formulation of a political goal to guide action. This framework focuses on agency as inherently relational.

KEYWORDS:

• Political agency
• women fighters
• YPJ
• framing

Introduction

In the last two decades, women have had a documented presence in guerrilla movements in almost 60 countries (Henshaw 2016, 204). Already during the 1960’s and 1970’s, Italian terrorist factions were made up of about 20% women and also many Palestinian, Irish and Basque women took part in their respective struggles (Cunningham 2003, 176). Women also 'comprised ∼30% of combatants in the Peruvian, Salvadoran, and Sri Lankan insurgencies and ∼25% in the Sierra Leone insurgency' (Wood 2008, 552). Moreover, as women were ‘the backbone’ of, for example, the FMLN during the civil war in El Salvador (Viterna 2013, 145) women fighters have also increasingly become casualties of ground combat. For example, 14% of the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê - Kurdistan Workers’ Party) militants killed in battle have been women (Tezcür 2016). While many militant groups include female fighters, few do so in numbers as large as in the PKK in Turkey and its all-women offshoot YPJ (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin – Women’s Protection Units) in Syria (Eccarius-Kelly 2011, 201). This study focuses on the YPJ and explores how high-ranking female commanders chose to join the militant Kurdish movement, ultimately increasing their political agency. As Sjoberg (2012, 269–270) argues, ‘women’s agency is not and should not be limited to perceived gender-appropriate norms’.

Women’s active participation in various rebel groups increases these groups’ fighting power, but at the same time it challenges the patriarchal social order within which the groups operate. Therefore, to protect the male characteristics of active combat, many rebel groups that have incorporated women into their ranks have perceived women fighters as 'honorary men'. As the violent conflict is over, however, they may be demoted to their 'traditional' or 'natural' roles as women (Shekhawat 2015, 10). War may also open a window of opportunity for women to improve their position in society (Nilsson 2018a; Anderson 2016; Anderson and Swiss 2014; Hughes 2009; Mageza-Barthel 2015; Tripp 2015). Indeed, post-conflict reconstruction is a gendered process (MacKenzie 2012). For example, Hughes and Tripp (2015) argued that the ending of civil conflict enabled higher growth in women’s legislative representation in Africa. Thus, although war can disrupt societies, it can also foster transformational changes in women’s social roles, at least in the short to medium term (Webster, Chen, and Beardsley 2019).

However, political violence and warfare is still often perceived as something belonging to the realm of men. The political motivations behind the violence, be they nationalistic, anti-occupational or a response to the brutal treatment of people, are not always seen as the driving factor behind the women’s decision to take part in it. In a statistical study of women’s participation in 72 armed rebel groups, Henshaw (2016, 212) found no correlation proving that political grievances drive women into political violence. Instead, economic grievances stood out as the most prominent explanatory variable. Explanations have often focused on the private realm, be it poverty, economic grievances, failed femininity, or external factors such as female participation being necessitated by a decimated pool of male candidates, or that the use of female combatants provides a tactical and strategic advantage for the rebel group (Henshaw 2016; Chawade 2016; Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2012; Eager 2008; Cunningham 2003; DeGroot 2001).

Especially the focus of previous research on women as victims has ended up robbing women of political agency (Coulter 2008, 55). For example, women joining the Chechen insurgency in Russia were often perceived as ‘black widows’, forced to the violent conflict as a result of the deaths of their men, or ‘zombies’ tricked into the violent conflict by men. In both narratives, women are victims of someone (Stack 2011, 83). As D’Amico (1996, 119) writes: ‘War has been perceived as men’s domain, a masculine endeavour for which women may serve as victim, spectator, or prize. Women are denied agency, made present but silenced’. Narratives of women as either mothers, monsters, or whores ‘both represent the continuation of subordinating images of women in global politics and are complicit in that continued subordination’ (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007, 56).

Moreover, advancing the cause of women is seldom believed to be at the core of why women fight (DeGroot 2000, 29). It is sometimes argued to be a possible side effect of women taking the role of combatants, but not a primary reason to join (Chawade 2016, 104–113). Based on her interviews with women who joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam’s (LTTE) insurgency in Sri Lanka, Alison (2011, 137) argued that women were mostly motivated by the same reasons as men, such as nationalism, and yet ‘most of them had not been aware of women’s social conditions, women’s rights, or equality’. An interview study of female Peshmerga soldiers fighting the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, however, found political motivations that were clearly feminist. While seeking balance between their identities as good mothers and professional soldiers, Kurdish women in Iraqi Kurdistan saw their war participation as a chance to increase their political agency and improve gender equality in society, as combat operations created ‘a window of opportunity to change perceptions of women’s roles’ in a patriarchal society (Nilsson 2018a, 263).

Kurdish women have played even more prominent roles in the insurgencies in Turkey and Syria. Especially the proactive gender equality policies of the PKK and the Syrian PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat – Democratic Union Party), with YPJ as its all-women military wing, have facilitated women’s substantial participation (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019). Szekely (2020) argued that this policy emerged as a result of four factors: The PKK’s leftist ideology, the preferences of its leadership, the need to recruit selectively, and the greater participation of Kurdish women as a result of Turkish state violence. Moreover, Çağlayan (2012) argued that the PKK had redefined the notion of honour from being one focused on women’s bodies to one defined on the basis of homeland, thus making women’s participation easier. However, as Haner, Cullen, and Benson (2020, 280) argued, ‘one important aspect of the PKK as an insurgent organization has, to date, received insufficient attention from researchers, and that is the role of women as supporters, fighters, and leaders’. The gap in knowledge is even greater regarding the Kurdish women, especially senior commanders, fighting in Syria.

Del Re (2015, 92) wrote about Kurdish women of Syria that ‘despite the fact that there has always been a tradition of female combatants in the Kurdish history […] this does not make the participation of Kurdish women in the fight a feminist stance’. However, the official ideology of the PKK and its all-women offshoot in Syria, the YPJ, focuses on gender equality, as the founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, argued that the liberation of women is an integral part of the revolutionary democratization of society (Öcalan 2013). Moreover, as Demir (2016, 73) argued, the creation of women’s organizations within the PKK ‘with independent decision-making centres reduced men’s influence and gave women an ever-stronger independent will. Men were all forced to accept the new situation, just by knowing that an army of women with its own consciousness existed’. Indeed, although in the 1990s gender equality could not be taken for granted in the PKK (Novellis 2018), now ‘any position and decision within any organ of the movement can only be decided on with women’s power, presence and participation’ (Saeed 2017, 71). The ideology behind the empowerment of especially Kurdish women, aiming to restore their central place in society, is Jineoloji (Al-Ali and Käser 2020). According to Cartier (2021), it consists of five principles: Rejection of colonialism and assimilation imposed on women; women being free to make their own decisions; women organizing themselves; women taking rights through struggle and creating alternatives; and women not sticking to patterns of beauty dictated by society or men.

This suggests that women can aspire to increase their political agency by joining the militant movement and embracing its feminist principles. A political agent can be argued to be a person who is ‘capable to act’ politically (Sanchini, Pongiglione, and Sala 2019), taking part in the struggle to define the models of a common life (Mouffe 2005). However, based on a critique of the public/private divide, feminists have had an analytically broad perspective on agency (Sjoberg 2012). Thus, women have agency even without joining militant movements. In this study, women increase their political agency by opting for political violence when encountering members of the militant movement. Thus, their agency is both ‘relational’ (Sjoberg 2006) and ‘action-based’ (Åhäll 2012, 210), seemingly shocking society as they enter the public arena ‘as active agents and participants in war’ (Begikhani, Hamelink, and Weiss 2018, 11), which had been previously denied to them. When women fight, society may seek to deprive them of their broader political agency with the help of different narratives, depicting them as, for example, mothers, whores, or monsters (Gentry and Sjoberg 2015, 133). Therefore, it is imperative to let them tell with their own words how they joined the insurgent group. The aim of this study is to explore how high-ranking YPJ commanders frame their decision to first join the PKK and their use of political violence as founding members of the YPJ. This is done through a thematic analysis of life history interviews with three high-ranking YPJ commanders, who are in a position to reflect on their experiences.

Framing is important for mobilizing people and other resources in violent conflicts (Nilsson 2020). Frames do this by reconstituting the way in which some objects of attention are perceived, for example, by making routine grievances injustices (Snow 2013). The frame concept is borrowed from Goffman (1974, 21) and denotes ‘schemata of interpretation’ that enable individuals ‘to locate, perceive, identify, and label’ events in their lives and in the world at large. Frames often perform a transformative function by reconstituting the way in which some objects of attention are seen – for example, by transforming routine grievances into injustices or mobilizing grievances. Thus, according to Kuypers (2009, 182), framing is ‘the process whereby communicators act – consciously or not – to construct a particular point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be viewed in a particular manner, with some facts made more or less noticeable (even ignored) than others’. Kuypers (2009, 182) further argued that ‘when highlighting some aspect of reality over other aspects, frames act to define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgements, and suggest remedies’. Ideological frames that justify collective action are important expressions of political agency by constructing social reality. Moreover, ideological frames become even more powerful expressions of political agency when they mobilize people and other resources.

Based on an interview with an imprisoned high-ranking member of the PKK, Haner, Cullen, and Benson (2020), 284) were able to gain information on ‘the group’s recruitment of women, gender relations, women’s ideological and military training, and the general treatment of women’. However, in exploring women’s political agency it is imperative to make women’s own voices heard. The interviews were conducted in Rojava – the self-declared autonomous Kurdish region of northern Syria. Through inductively derived generalizations, the results of this explorative study suggest a three-stage analytical framework for how women join militant organizations: Personal experiences that define the problem and prepare the ground for action; other women’s roles as pathbreakers making the previously seemingly impossible action appear possible; and finally, the formulation of a political goal to guide action.

PKK and YPJ

The PKK, which is currently labelled as a terrorist organization by, for example, the United States and the EU, has Marxist-Leninist roots. It launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984, and since the 1990’s women have been an active part of the PKK’s fight in Turkey. Before joining the YPJ, which is not regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU, the respondents in this study all first became members of the PKK between 1990 and 1994. According to Del Re (2015, 6), women now comprise 50% of its fighting force. The recruitment of women into the PKK may have stemmed from simple practicality as the organization needed more members. However, the enforcement of gender norms can also be a means of strengthening group boundaries and identities (Enloe 2014). The founder of the organization, Abdullah Öcalan, argued in his The Revolution is Female (2010) that women’s liberation is an integral road to achieving a revolutionary democratization of the society, as subjugation of women paved the way for all other forms of hierarchy and state structures. Although Öcalan sees capitalism and the nation state as the main enemy, for him, the patriarchal family structure is one of the most important building blocks of capitalism and a micro-model of the state. Therefore, a successful revolution requires incorporating women into the PKK.

The connection between the PKK and the YPJ is deeper than merely having Öcalan as a common inspiration. When the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK grew, elements of the PKK fled across the porous border into Syria where they operated in the 1980’s and 1990’s. When they were ousted from Syria in 1998, remaining elements of the PKK formed the Democratic Union Party (PYD) (Tank 2017, 413–414). Its military wings are today the all-men YPG (founded in 2011) and the all-women YPJ (founded in 2013). In the midst of the Syrian Civil War, after having taken control of large swaths of northern Syria, the PYD officially declared regional autonomy for Rojava on 9 January 2014. In the following years, the Kurdish forces played a crucial role in defeating IS, while at the same time building up new social and political institutions inspired by Öcalan’s vision of democratic confederalism, which includes, for example, direct democracy and feminism (Öcalan 2011).

It is clear that the YPJ is inspired by Öcalan’s ideology. For example, Al-Ali and Tas argued that Kurdish women activists have ‘stressed the continuous support of Abdullah Öcalan’. However, they continued that ‘the achievements of the women’s movement were not merely handed down through a shift in ideology by the male political leadership, however supportive, but had to be fought for over many years of hard struggles’ (Al-Ali and Tas 2018, 461). By the end of the 1990s, women composed about one third of the PKK fighters. However, according to a female commander, women did not occupy leading positions: ‘We didn’t have any decision-making power. Meetings between us were infrequent. […] Men decided about everything' (Demir 2016). Therefore, it is important to study women leaders’ political agency by analysing how they frame their fight. Szekely (2020) interviewed former PKK members in Germany, but it was unclear whether any of them had been a senior commander. Moreover, although Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely (2019) include interviews with female fighters, the focus of their study is on comparing variation in the involvement of women in the armed wings of the major Kurdish armed movements in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

Method

We know little about how senior commanders of the YPJ frame their decision to join the militant movement, which makes this study exploratory. ‘Researchers explore when they have little or no scientific knowledge about the group, process, activity, or situation they want to examine’ (Stebbins 2001, 5). The data was collected with the help of life history interviews, conducted on the ground in Syria. The life history interview is a superb method for exploring the research question, as it can uncover turning points that led individuals into joining an insurgent group. It has been previously used to interview an imprisoned PKK leader by Haner, Cullen, and Benson (2020), 283–284), who argued that ‘as a means of probing the unique turning points and processes […] and of gaining a rich, textured understanding of that life, the life-history method is unparalleled’. The interviews in this study focused on the respondents’ experiences of growing up, how they chose to join the PKK, and their use of violence as part of the YPJ.

The desired outcome of an explorative study is ‘inductively derived generalizations’ (Stebbins 2001, 5), that is, theory development. In this explorative study, the data from the life history interviews are subjected to a thematic analysis to create such generalization. Validity is increased by access to first-hand sources. Senior members of the YPJ have several years of fighting experience and are therefore in a good position to reflect on their experiences and how they joined the militant movement. The interviews were conducted in north-eastern Syria (Rojava) in June 2016 at a YPJ safe house. The place was suggested by the commanders who were interviewed. In addition to this being the best option, given the high-risk environment in the midst of a bloody civil war, it also provided a relaxed setting since it was literally their safe house. Such spaces increase validity as they can help the respondents speak openly about personal experiences.

The questions were asked in English, translated into Kurdish by an interpreter, after which the respondents answered in Kurdish with the interpreter translating their answers back into English. To avoid misunderstandings and mistranslations, all interviews were recorded and transcribed for a later analysis. A possible disadvantage is that the identity of the researcher could affect the generated data (Silverman 2015), in this case, a Western man interviewing Kurdish women. During the interviews, however, this did not appear to be a problem, with all respondents seemingly comfortable talking about their lives and experiences. While a Kurdish female researcher might have been easier for the respondents to confide in, it is possible that they gave more detailed information about their experiences as women since they could not assume a Western male researcher to have the same pre-existing understanding of the female experience of growing up in Kurdistan.

Only three commanders were interviewed because finding respondents matching this study’s criteria, getting in contact with them, agreeing to conduct an interview, and finally meeting with the respondents proved difficult. The war on IS was still in full swing and friction between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq and the Syrian Kurds of the PYD controlling Rojava made the border-crossing difficult. To strengthen the analysis, the results were compared with interview material available in the media and previous research (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019; Bay 2016; Tax 2016), and Öcalan’s writings.

However, as Haner, Cullen, and Benson (2020) demonstrated, even interviewing just one high-ranking member of the militant Kurdish movement with the help the life history method can produce interesting results. Moreover, using the life history method in an explorative study works the best when there are few respondents, which makes it possible to use long quotes that make the women’s voices heard. The three commanders interviewed for this study were among the veteran PKK fighters who crossed into Syria and helped found the YPJ as a force separate from the YPG. As such, they were not just members of the organization, but among its founding members. This made these interviews especially valuable.

The respondents were Kurdish female commanders of the YPJ who have first-hand experience of ground combat. This criterion, however, proved somewhat controversial amongst the respondents. Military rank is not something which is stressed within the YPJ, and its importance was downplayed by all respondents. Respondent 1, who joined the PKK in 1990, said that ‘I am a soldier. There are no ranks in a revolution. I started as a soldier and will always be a soldier’. However, when asked whether she is commanding any troops in the YPJ, she answered: ‘Yes, in the mountains … and now I am a member of the women’s movement inside the revolution. We have a female leader for the women and a male leader for the men. Together they make a co-chair and I am one of the three women [in the town]’.

Respondent 2, who joined the PKK in 1993, explained the intricacy of the question of leadership from the YPJ’s revolutionary and egalitarian perspective:

This is the most difficult question. Everywhere around the world, people show off with their rank, but we as a movement do not because our duty lies towards our friends and consists of being equal and working together, that is our job. Ranks are often linked to a person’s task or job, but we are all fighters and revolutionaries. Yes, I am responsible for people, like a commander, but we are all equal in this fight.

Respondent 3 joined the PKK in 1994 and is also a commander of the YPJ’s forces in a Kurdish town.

Scholars employ different methodological approaches to analyse framing. Wimmer and Dominick (2006, 152) argue that such an analysis can be conducted as a form of qualitative content analysis or thematic analysis. In this study, the interviews were analysed to identify and code meaningful units. After the coding process, different themes dealing with problems, causes, moral judgements and remedies were identified. Thus, the focus was on how the respondents framed these themes, for example, how they framed patriarchy as the key problem.

Analysis

Three themes emerged from the analysis as all respondents brought up patriarchy, inspiring examples, and global liberation and democracy.

Patriarchy

Interviews in previous research and the media have identified fighting the oppression of women as crucial to the PKK and YPJ ideology. For example, the head of a female battalion of the PKK argued that ‘women grow up enslaved by society. The minute you are born as a girl, society inhibits you’ (Damon 2008). A YPJ captain also argued that ‘Our society used to look at women only as “good housewives”. Women were just made ready for men and locked up at home like a slave’ (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019, 34). Thus, as a female fighter explained, 'The war that we fight is, above all, against the dominant system […] The YPJ has broken down the stereotypes and subsequently women have said ”we do not belong only to the kitchen, to the home, to men for childbirth, we too exist in all spheres of this society”' (Bay 2016, 57–58).

In accordance with these previous interviews, the respondents in this study pointed out the patriarchal community as the main problem. However, in the life history interviews, the respondents stressed their own experiences of patriarchy. Although they also spoke of patriarchy in general, this theme, defining the problem, was especially strong because it had affected them greatly during their youth before deciding to join Öcalan’s movement. They were well aware of how Öcalan frames the causes of oppressive social hierarchies. Öcalan argues that the form of primitive socialism that existed in Neolithic, matriarchal, hunter-gatherer societies started to vanish as ‘man (quite possibly by developing more successful hunting techniques) bettered his position’ (Öcalan 2013, 15). This new social order where the man subjugated his wife and ‘owned the children’ would be the precursor of all other types of hierarchies and slaveries (Öcalan 2013, 21). Moreover, Öcalan argues that ‘the instrument of force disguises itself behind common security’. Respondent 3 explained, based on her own experiences:

In the community I was told a lot what my ‘duty as a woman’ was, what I should and should not do. Coming from a tribal area, that was a big part of our reality. I grew up in a family and a community where a man is free and can go outside and do anything while the woman should be at the house and cannot do this and cannot do that. The women were not allowed to go to higher education because they might learn something ‘dangerous’, not go outside alone. The atmosphere was very controlling, of both mind and body. I realized that I could not decide my own future, that it had already been planned for me.

While Öcalan primarily frames the subjugation of women as a problematic historical event that would have ‘negative consequences’ (Öcalan 2013, 22) by leading to other forms of oppression, respondent 3 framed the problem of patriarchy from a woman’s first-hand perspective as an institution that makes one ‘sick’. Therefore, her moral condemnation of it is based on what only a woman can have experienced, requiring practical strategies of constant negotiation to keep clear of its worst effects:

When my cousin came to our house, he saw my sister and decided he wanted to marry her. But he already had a wife and kids, and his family did not accept him getting married again. But that is a problem because he had already promised my father that he was marrying my sister, so he tried to lie and say that my sister was not a virgin, which would make the promise null and void. That is something that could get a woman killed, but my family was smart enough to take her to a doctor who confirmed that he was a liar. And even if you could say this had a ‘happy ending’ it still made me sick. Seeing my sister being without any support or help, and seeing a stranger coming to our house just stealing my sister for marriage without even talking to her, I knew I could not end up like that.

And every woman around me had the same kind of stories about how they suffered from the mentality of the male inside their community. I could not end up like that. Marry someone and be something for someone else. That made me join the movement … The story of women has always been told by men. For myself, the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan made me see the situation of women in our community through different eyes and it taught me how I can be a woman for myself and how I can be a free woman, not something for someone else.

Respondent 1 had similar experiences of patriarchy. She explained that she was 12 years old when she started to question the unequal power structures between her father and mother, and why her brother was treated differently. She also explained how patriarchy and gendered norms were so strong that making up her mind took four years:

I started asking why there was such a difference between the women and the men in this house and at one point it was just too much. So, when I was 16, I decided to run away and join the PKK … The reason why it took four years to decide to leave was mostly because of the culture in the community, how they look at the girl and how we should live.

We have a culture inside the community – when they try to stop someone from doing something for herself, they say that one of the cousins has the right to marry the woman even if the woman does not want it. The family tried to stop me from joining by trying to make me marry one of my cousins.

Also previous research has shown how difficult it can be for a woman to join the revolutionary movement. For example, Sakine Cansiz, an iconic PKK leader, had similar experiences as a young girl (Tax 2016, 145):

A comrade visited our house one day and told us the history of Kurdistan. Me and my siblings all listened to him with great interest and till late hours after his leave [departure] we told each other about what he had told us. Everything he said was of importance for us because I learned from his telling that we were Kurd and came from Kurdistan. Impressed by the ideology of this movement, I started to live a contradiction with my family who were […] preventing us from taking part in the revolutionary movement […] However, as a woman, I couldn’t display strong resistance against all those pressures […]

Respondent 2 similarly explained how difficult it can be for a young girl to leave the family for Öcalan’s movement: ‘They expected me to get married, and many have asked for my hand but I have refused them all … The first thing they say is “if you go, I will kill myself, if you go I will die”.’ Respondent 1 argued that previous revolutions had been unsuccessful because they had not dealt with patriarchy. Therefore, echoing Öcalan’s vision that ‘woman, reborn to freedom, will amount to general liberation’ (Öcalan 2013, 57), the remedy for the problem of patriarchy was the dual revolution, ensuring the success of the general political and social revolution with the help of a parallel women’s revolution:

When Abdulla Öcalan started this revolution, he actually started two revolutions. One was the revolution in Kurdistan, revolution of the community. Inside this revolution was the revolution of the woman – the revolution of the woman inside the revolution of Kurdistan. This idea came from looking at the history of all the other revolutions in Kurdish history. They all failed because of the mentality of the men inside the community and because they were only led by men. That means that one of the two legs will always be broken. Now we have started to build the other leg and now our revolution is beginning to be successful.

In the beginning in the late 70’s, Abdullah Öcalan started with the woman and all the problems that faced women, and they didn’t put a woman to the side because they had a problem. They tried to fix it and continue focusing on our other problems. These problems weren’t just found inside our community, but also inside our movement. All the time, men looked at females as something sexual. Many of the problems in the last three-four decades come from this. Men couldn’t cope with us being only human. But now, by elevating women, we also elevate men and that helps the whole society.

She continued that because of the initial patriarchal resistance within the movement, successfully spreading the idea of a dual revolution that would liberate women and harness their energies and skills, for the greater good of the broader social revolution, was not self-evident:

Abdullah Öcalan asked every outpost if they would be able to work side by side with women in all aspects of the frontline. And they said no because of two main points: First, because physically women are not like men; second, because of the sexual things. Men couldn’t think of women in a non-sexual way, and because he couldn’t stop himself, and a problem could appear because he couldn’t control himself. Therefore, everyone said that it couldn’t be done. Women couldn’t be part of the mountain life. They were separate from each other, all because of the men. The only place where it was accepted was in the Botan region, a big mountain with many different parts. In Botan they decided to make women an equal part of the mountain life. And Öcallan said that if we can train ourselves physically, to swim, jump, fight and shoot better than men, I will make you a full part of the revolution. So, the experiment started in the Botan region.

Respondent 2 did not start with a similar focus on patriarchy. Instead, she stressed her experiences of being oppressed as a Kurd: 'I joined this movement because of personal experiences. In the beginning of 90’s I started to understand just how oppressed we were as Kurdish people. We did not have any rights, we could not speak our own language, not even listen to cassette tapes in Kurdish, we could not even call ourselves Kurds'. As Çağlayan (2012), 3) argues, ‘the perceptions and experiences of the women who have participated in the Kurdish movement could help discover the practical possibilities and the limits of the new definition of Kurdish identity’. These practical experiences, however, often intertwine womanhood and nationalism. For example, respondent 2 explained that also patriarchal power relations and the limits they posed to the development of the Kurdish society played an important role for her joining the movement: ‘We also started to understand the situation of the women in the families – how women were supposed to live in a special way, have special duties and have a limit for what they can achieve inside the community’.

In sum, while both Öcalan’s writings and the previous interviews with YPJ fighters point to the importance of challenging the patriarchal social system (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019; 34; Bay 2016, 57), the life history interviews reveal women’s personal experiences behind ideological statements and show how these experiences contributed to motivating them to join the movement and the public sphere, thus broadening their political agency. However, personal experiences of patriarchy were often mixed with inspiring examples of equality and martyrdom.

Inspiring examples of equality and martyrdom

The respondents also related that first encountering Öcalan’s ideology and fighters was an especially inspiring experience that made them see the marked differences between the communities they grew up in and Öcalan’s movement. Such contrasting realities helped motivate the respondents, as they created negative moral judgements about the inequalities of the patriarchal society.

As respondent 3 explained, the idea of equality was especially prominent in the PKK: ‘The community I come from was very tribal and traditional, and when the PKK came to my house and ate and slept, they talked about everything with such warmth and showed that everyone was equally important – man and woman, child and grown up. The difference between our community and the PKK was inspiring’. This sense of equality was embedded in narratives of inspiring examples. Indeed, all the respondents said that they had been inspired to join the fight because of inspiring examples of martyrdom by especially other women in the movement. Respondent 3 added:

Also, the stories about a Yazidi woman called Beuwa [inspired me]. She was born in Turkey, grew up in Europe and joined the movement. And when she was martyred, she became a legend. Her story affected me very much. And also the story of Zara, she was also martyred and inspired me a great deal … It is important to point out that I was very lucky to find the PKK, which gave me an option, a way and a mentality to be able to live for myself and other women. The women inside the communities have the will to reject the man, but not the option. I was given that option. To be able to reject a community which oppresses me and instead be a part of a movement with such strong role models as Zilan, Beritan, Berivan was like a dream for me … The stories of strong and great women that have fought for these [Öcalan’s] ideas made me realize that I too can do more than produce children and cook food. All of this pushed me into joining this war.

Women’s examples of martyrdom can have several functions. They can shame men into action (Gunes 2012, 120) and motivate current fighters to continue and escalate the struggle, as the fighter interviewed by Bay (2016, 59) argued:

Most of our comrades fell as martyrs. The ones that were left behind are living through the memories of their friends that they have lost […] I struggle with the thought of how to make their dreams, feelings come true and how can we build a life on this basis. This thought escalates the struggle […] In a sense we would launch them into eternity, but their memories will always stay with us. We promise to take revenge of the martyrs and escalate the struggle.

Novellis (2018, 117) also suggested that ‘the PKK portrayed female guerrillas as heroic role models to bolster women’s recruitment’. As the fighter interviewed by Bay (2016, 58) argued, with YPJ women being martyred ‘the people have seen that women can do everything’. This motivational force of examples is also clearly demonstrated by the personal experiences of the YPJ commanders in the life story interviews.

As inspiring examples of martyrdom increase the chances of women contributing to winning the fight, they are framed as part of the solution to the problem of patriarchy – a remedy. Respondent 1 explained that it is especially important for teenage girls, who have observed the gendered power structures in the society, that the role models are women: ‘I personally heard about the revolution in 1986, when I was 12. I heard about it from another woman, a Yazidi woman, who came from Europe and joined the PKK in Syria. For me, it was important that I learned about the PKK from a woman, and not a man’. Also, respondent 2 said that female role models and how stories about them spread in the society were important for her in combination with the general socialist ideology of the PKK:

Another reason was Zara. She was a Kurdish prisoner in Diyarbakir, and everyone was talking about her story and how she was resisting in that jail. She was a big inspiration to me as woman and as a Kurd, and all these things together convinced me to join the revolution. Moreover, at this time there were many communist movements around the world and that atmosphere also helped me make the decision.

Indeed, Öcalan’s movement – equalitarian politics inspired by socialism – is thoroughly anchored in women’s liberation, and these ideas live on with the memories of martyrs who provide strongly motivating examples to take up the fight.

Martyrdom is an ancient social phenomenon involving notions of good and evil. It also includes framing actions as heroism and sacrificing one’s life for a higher religious or ideological cause. Durkheim (1952, 175) noted that the norm of self-sacrifice is most prevalent in collectivist cultures, for example in the Middle East, often helping bring together the community with the help of altruistic actions. While martyrs reinforce the community’s social cohesion (Klausner 1987, 231–232), they are not created by self-sacrifice itself but with the help of the community’s collective memory. As Rosourx argued, ‘martyrs are made not simply by their beliefs and actions but by those who witnessed them, remembered them and told their story’ (Rosourx 2004, 83). However, when the martyrs share the same life experiences as those who witness them, as portrayed in the life history interviews, their ability to inspire increases. Thus, being inspired by female role models plays a significant role in the recruitment process.

It is the community that gives meaning to acts of self-sacrifice and defines the actors as martyrs. ‘By placing ideology above physical survival’ (Hatina 2014, 4) the idea of martyrdom not only accentuates the division between ‘us’ (the good) and ‘them’ (the evil), but also delegitimises the enemy and stresses the moral superiority of the community’s ideology. Indeed, how inspiring sacrifices, witnessed and remembered by the community, create a sense of moral superiority has been observed among the Peshmerga soldier fighting IS in Iraqi Kurdistan (Nilsson 2016). When an act is framed as martyrdom by the community, it is the ultimate moral judgement about the superiority of the ‘in group’ as compared to the ‘out group’. Moral judgements are created especially when the ‘in group’ feels oppressed by the ‘outgroup’ and resorts to the idea of martyrdom to fight patriarchy and other oppressive ideologies. Both when fighting IS and facing adamant patriarchal societies in Turkey and Syria, the idea of martyrdom is an essential part of identity politics that increases women’s motivation to fight, as the death of a martyr creates a duty among the remaining members of the group to fight on.

Global liberation and democracy

The head of a female battalion of the PKK said that ‘we want a natural life, a society that revolves around women - one where women and men are equal, a society without pressure, without inequality, where all differences between people are eliminated’ (Damon 2008). A YPJ captain also argued that much had changed as a result of the ideologically motivated fight: ‘Now we understand our bitter reality. We have changed now. We live, learn […]’ (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019, 34).

Respondent 2 further explained that women participating in the fight has profoundly changed the local community, for example, in Sinjar. Thus, she framed women’s participation and exemplary behaviour in violent conflicts not only as an effective remedy for patriarchy but also as a means to increase social equality in local communities:

To have women in the fight has completely changed the community, for example, in Sinjar. In Sinjar there are four to five social levels, and they cannot marry people from below their own level. Many Sinjari women had not even talked to women from other levels, but during the last three years people from all levels have been in the same military units where everyone is equal, and this has had a strong effect of making things more equal in the society.

We are fighting on three fronts at the same time. One fight is to turn all these feminist theories into practical actions and social changes. Another fight is against the mentality of our friends, our male friends, and the society which sees us as less worth than men are. And the last fight is the actual war and how we do this in a way that changes the situation for women and makes us achieve our feminist goals, to fight for women’s rights. And we have actually achieved all these three things in Sinjar. Now we have that system where we as women make the decisions concerning ourselves.

This all is in line with Öcalan’s (2011) idea of democratic confederalism, which sees the fight for women’s rights and democratization as inseparable. However, the respondents also saw their fight in a global perspective. This theme, defining the problem in a broader context, emerged after the respondents had first connected the fight to their personal experiences during their upbringing and then reflected on the ultimate aims of the struggle. As respondent 3 argued:

Fighting for the PKK is not just about the liberation of the Kurdish people but of humanity by not recognizing borders and helping wherever we are needed. This movement and revolution do not belong only to Kurdistan, they belong to humanity. If we educate the women, we educate the community. If you have free women, you get a free community.

Thus, the respondents framed armed struggle as a remedy to the oppression of women and lack of democracy at both local and global levels. Respondent 3 explained that ‘my goal as a woman is to keep fighting forever for what I believe in – for justice and equality, for everything alive on this planet. To have this as the one way, one direction, and one desired result, that is my goal in life’. Previous research has also pointed to the global aims of the fight. For example, a YPJ fighter argued that ‘we do not fight for Kurdish people only or Kurdish women, our war is the freedom struggle for all the people and women […] The task of YPJ is not only to fight. The main task is to recreate the society’ (Bay 2016, 58). Similarly, respondent 1 stressed that establishing Öcalan’s (2011) democratic confederalism not only calls for women’s liberation; women pay a decisive role in the fight for this political system, and its global aims are intrinsically connected to the similarity of women’s experiences throughout the world:

Until the communal system is built by female hands, we will fight. The struggle knows no borders, women have the same problem in the whole world. Turkish women, Kurdish women, Persian women, European women, American women … We are women [now] working on our region, how to defend it, how to build a system including everyone. Like in the canton in northern Syria, Rojava, anyone is included in this system – Arabs, Christians, and so on. And yes, we will fight until every woman has rights in the system. First in Kurdistan, then in the Middle East, and after that around the world.

It is not about nations and borders; it is about a system where women are equal to men, based on communalism and respect – everywhere in the world, not based on borders, ethnicities, religions. Women need to be leaders in all parts of the society. This is no longer a struggle for a free and defined Kurdistan, this is about communal democracy. Liberating Kurdistan is part of this. And that is the biggest call for us, to have a communal system, democracy and equality. This has always been the goal.

Especially the fight against IS and the threat it posed to women had highlighted the ideological foundation of the war for the respondents. This, however, did not lead to the armed struggle being framed as the only remedy for the problem of patriarchy. Respondent 1 explained that ‘now it is necessary. This situation we are living in right now, with the barbarian movement IS with many fighters from Europe, has made it necessary to fight. If we don’t defend ourselves, they will finish us’. Respondent 3 added that the fight is ultimately a war of ideologies and the armed struggle is only one, but often necessary, manifestation of it:

The weapons are part of our struggle, but the war is much greater than that. We have an ideological war; we [also] have a war where someone tries to come and control the community both militarily and politically. Both are wars, and if we cannot fight this on every level we cannot win. Then we cannot have justice, democracy and equality inside the community, which is how we stop the bigger war. So, the weapons are a necessary evil.

Discussion and conclusion

The aim of this study was to explore how high-ranking YPJ commanders frame their decision to first join the PKK and their use of political violence as founding members of the YPJ. Although Alison (2011, 137) argued that the women of LTTE were mostly motivated by the same reasons as men, such as nationalism, some of the previous research has argued that women often take part in violent conflicts for private reasons, and not for reasons concerning ideology and therefore they have little political agency (MacKenzie 2012; Del Re 2015). For example, during the civil war in Sierra Leone, many young women fighters were first abducted by the rebel group (MacKenzie 2012). And even if anti-state nationalisms ‘often provide more space (ideologically and practically) for women to participate as combatants’ (Alison 2004), few studies go so far as to argue that women wage war to increase women’s liberation and gender equality (DeGroot 2000, 9).

Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely (2019) as well as Parashar (2009) argued that women in different nationalist movements have both political and personal reasons to join the armed struggles. The results of this study confirm their general conclusion about mixed motives. Previous interviews with YPJ and PKK fighters (Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019; Bay 2016; Tax 2016) have also indicated their high level of awareness of patriarchy, the meaning of martyrdom, and the global aims of the fight. It is possible that ideological awareness, encountering the PKK ideology and members of the movement, can lead individuals to frame their personal experiences through an ideological lens. Thus, agency and autonomy are to a large degree relational, as decisions are made not without others but instead with or around them (Sjöberg 2006), for example, in the environment one grows up in and when encountering female role models in the militant movement. Indeed, people actively engage with a changing social and political field in which several ideological discourses exist side by side (Begikhani, Hamelink, and Weiss 2018; Weiss 2010). However, as the respondents’ framing connected their personal experiences with broader ideology, the life history interviews of this study also show how personal experiences can lead to embracing a broader ideology such that they motivate women to join the violent struggle.

The results of this study go beyond the case of LTTE women whose widespread ‘mobilization often has little to do with any empowerment of them’ (Parashar 2009, 243). Moreover, while MacKenzie (2012, 83) argued in her study of former female soldiers in Sierra Leone that ‘female soldiers had more access to resources, more social freedom, and more political power during the official war’, it is important to focus on how women frame their decisions to join military movements.

The respondents’ narratives of growing up in a society that oppresses women and Kurds, and these experiences of dual oppression (see also Trisko Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely 2019; Nilsson 2018b), prompting them to join Öcalan’s movement, may at first sight suggest that women fight because of what someone else did to them or their families, not necessarily because they believe in what they are doing. However, three common themes emerged from the interviews: Patriarchy; inspiring examples of equality and martyrdom; and global liberation and democracy. Such themes not only explain how the respondents joined the militant movement, but also connect personal experiences with broader ideology and point to efforts to increase one’s political agency by entering the public sphere.

Through inductively derived generalizations, these explorative results also suggest a corresponding three-stage analytical framework for analysing how women join militant movements: Personal experiences that define the problem and prepare the ground for action; other women’s roles as pathbreakers making the previously seemingly impossible action appear possible; and finally, the formulation of a political goal to guide action. This framework focuses on agency as inherently relational.

Indeed, although previous research has well depicted the ideology of the YPJ, the life history interviews better shed light on how the respondents chose to join the militant movement. All respondents pointed to experiences of patriarchal oppression during their youth as the major problem. Being inspired by female role models also played a significant role in the recruitment process. Especially women martyrs became the ultimate moral judgement about the superiority of the ‘in group’ as compared to the ‘out group’. The respondents also framed the problem of patriarchy from a woman’s first-hand perspective as an institution that makes one ‘sick’. Therefore, the moral condemnation of it is based on what only a woman can have experienced, requiring practical strategies of constant negotiation to steer clear of its worst effects.

However, encountering Öcalan’s ideology and contrasting their communities’ patriarchal social structures with the equalitarian nature of the movement contextualized the respondents’ personal experiences and helped define the problem conceptually. This process also convinced them that they can increase their political agency to change their own lives and the society, framing women’s participation and exemplary behaviour in violent conflicts as an effective remedy for patriarchy. Especially important for awakening the possibility of increasing one’s agency by entering the public sphere were the female role models and the stories of their sacrifices for the cause. Moreover, although women’s liberation was an important part of it, they framed social revolution, including the implementation of democratic communalism, as the ultimate goal of their fight. While their prospects of increasing their political agency was awakened in contrasting the patriarchal social institutions of their native villages with Öcalan’s egalitarian ideology, providing an opportunity for greater personal freedom, these prospects became even greater when embracing the broader goals of the radical social revolution.

Indeed, the respondents framed their participation in the YPJ with reasons extending beyond the private realm. All respondents pointed to the patriarchal oppression affecting them personally as the point where their ideological journeys began, but these personal experiences were not the only reason for their struggle. Their fight was not only about getting rid of their personal oppressors but to achieve broader political and ideological goals in line with Öcalan’s ideology. The duality of the movement’s ideological struggle, involving both a women’s revolution to defeat patriarchy and a comprehensive social revolution in the form of communalism, increased women’s participation and created a sense of broadening agency – being able enter the public sphere and have a greater impact on the society. Especially the frame of global liberation and democracy showed how possible individual motivations become overshadowed by broader ideological goals, thus increasing the scope of women’s agency. While their personal experiences of oppression increased the chances of joining the movement, these experiences were viewed through the lens of Öcalan’s ideology, and their ultimate goal became to counter oppression everywhere, which is rooted in the YPJ’s core ideology.

The three-stage analytical framework can potentially apply also to how other women join militant movements in patriarchal societies. Further studies are, however, needed to refine and test it in different contexts. How women relate to role models and political ideology may depend on the availability of role models and ideologies in the conflict setting. Moreover, how they are legitimized and contested may vary, for example, depending on the character and resilience of dominant local norms, such as patriarchy, and how norm entrepreneurs seek to challenge them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).