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Abstract
The article explores the relationship between theory and practice in terms of gender-based equality and justice within both the armed units and the political–legal movement linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey and transnationally. An analysis of the historical developments of both political ideology and mobilisation reveals the radical shift towards a stated commitment to gender-based equality that has taken place within a wider political transformation from a nationalist independence movement to a movement pursuing radical democracy. The article focuses on the dialectical relationship between the writings of the founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, and the struggle of Kurdish female militants and political activists to challenge male hegemony and patriarchal gender norms. We recognise the centrality of Öcalan’s writings in the shift away from the emphasis on national liberation to the idea of radical democracy with gender equality at is centre. However, our main argument developed in the article is to recognise the importance of women’s resistance and struggle to implement gender-based equality while we also highlight gaps between ideological pronouncements and everyday practices. Throughout the article we refer to Kurdish women fighters’ and activists’ personal experiences within the movement.
Acknowledgements
The two authors of this article are equal co-authors. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the London School of Economic (LSE), as part of the seminar series ‘Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the Middle East and North Africa’; and an earlier working paper version of this article was published by the LSE Middle East Centre as Al-Ali and Tas, “Dialectics of Struggle.” We thank John Chalcraft for his earlier comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Interview with long-term Kurdish guerilla and educator in Germany, October 2017.
2 We use pseudonyms throughout the article to protect our respondents. The earlier working paper version of this article was published by the LSE Middle East Centre; see Al-Ali and Tas, “Dialectics of Struggle.”
3 Akkaya and Jongerden, “Reassembling the Political.”
4 Cockburn, Space between Us; Mazurana, Raven-Roberts, and Parpart, Gender, Conflict, and Peacekeeping; Pankhurst, Gendered Peace.
5 Cockburn, “Continuum of Violence.”
6 Al-Ali and Tas, “War Is Like a Blanket”; Elshtain, Women and War; Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases; Enloe, Manoeuvres: The International Politics; Mazurana and Proctor, “Gender, Conflict and Peace”; Sylvester, “Contending with Women and War”; Yuval-Davis, “Nationalist Project and Gender Relations.”
7 Al-Ali and Tas, “Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism”; Bernal, “Equality to Die For?”; Hasso, “Women’s Front”; Jacoby, “Feminism, Nationalism, and Difference”; Salhi, “Algerian Feminist Movement.”
8 Öcalan, Kadın ve Aile Sorunu.
9 Çağlayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith.”
10 Kandiyoti, “Identity and Its Discontents.”
11 See note 4 above.
12 Șahin-Mentucek, “Strong in the Movement,” 479.
13 Altınay, Vatan, Millet, Kadınlar; Yuksel, “Encounter of Kurdish Women”; Çağlayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith”; Çaha, “Kurdish Women’s Movement”; Açık, “Re-Defining the Role of Women.”
14 Nationalism, in the Kurdish context, as well as that in other stateless communities such as Palestinians or Catalan, refers to the aspiration to create an independent nation state, linked to liberation from an oppressive regime or occupying force. Adopting Anthony Smith’s distinction between ‘ethnocentric’ and ‘polycentric’ nationalism (see Smith, Theories of Nationalism and Smith, Nationalism and Modernism), Herr, for example, distinguishes between justifiable and unjustifiable nationalisms (see Herr, “Possibility of Nationalist Feminism”).
15 Çağlayan, Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar; Çağlayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith.”
16 Çağlayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith,” 10–12.
17 Öcalan, Kadın ve Aile Sorunu, 106.
18 Öcalan, Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan; Öcalan, Liberating Life.
19 Çağlayan, Analar, Yoldaşlar, Tanrıçalar; Çağlayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith.”
20 Öcalan, Kürt Aşkı.
21 Ibid.
22 Öcalan, Kadın ve Aile Sorunu and Kürt Aşkı.
23 Gunter, “Continuing Kurdish Problem in Turkey”; Tas, Legal Pluralism in Action.
24 Maur, Staal, and Dirik, Stateless Democracy; Anderson and Egret, Struggles for Autonomy in Kurdistan; Knapp, Flatch, and Ayboga, Revolution in Rojava.
25 Akkaya and Jongerden, “Reassembling the Political.”
26 Öcalan, Nasıl Yaşamalı I. Cilt; Öcalan, Kutsallığın ve Lanetin Şehri.
27 Öcalan, Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan; Öcalan, Liberating Life.
28 Öcalan, Nasıl Yaşamalı I, 144–5.
29 Öcalan, Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan; Öcalan, Liberating Life, 96.
30 Öcalan, Kutsallığın ve Lanetin Şehri.
31 Ibid., 13, 21.
32 Grojean, “La cause kurde,” 526–7; Galletti, “Western Images of Women’s Role.”
33 Güneşer, “Feminicide,” 62–3.
34 Yuksel, “Encounter of Kurdish Women”; Diner and Toktaş, “Waves of Feminism in Turkey”; Çaha, “Kurdish Women’s Movement”; Açık, “Re-Defining the Role of Women.”
35 Between 1978 and 2020, the PKK officially organised 11 congresses and six conferences where the new structure, policies and aims were discussed and important decisions were taken. The equality between men and women, and the acceptance of the co-chair system only became a main topic during the PKK’s 9th congress which was organised in 2005, between 28 March and 4 April. See also eg Cansiz, Sara: My Whole Life Was a Struggle; Kisanak, Kürt Siyasetinin Mor Rengi; Dirik, “Western Fascination with ‘Badass’ Kurdish Women”; Güneşer, “Feminicide”; Kurdish women’s magazines Jujin, Roza, Jin û Jiyan and Özgur Kadin (YÖK).
36 Arat, “From Emancipation to Liberation”; Yuksel, “The Encounter of Kurdish Women.”
37 Açık, “Re-Defining the Role of Women,” 26.
38 Ibid., 27.
39 Özcan, PKK Tarihi, İdeolojisi, Yöntemi.
40 Cansiz, Sara: My Whole Life Was a Struggle.
41 The full interview with Ayla Akat was published by Open Democracy; see Al-Ali and Tas, “Kurds and Turks Are at the Edge of a Cliff.”
42 Öcalan, Kürt Aşkı, 19.
43 The Kurdish MP and women’s rights activist Leyla Zana was elected as a MP in 1991. She was the wife of Mehdi Zana, a former mayor of Diyarbakir, who also went to prison in the 1980s for his political position. When Leyla Zana was first elected, her social status as wife of a famous Kurdish politician was the main reason for her election. Of course, she has become a very important Kurdish figure and politician in her own right. As an elected MP, Zana had to face prison in 1990s for a decade, along with several other Kurdish MPs.
44 The full interview with Gültan Kişanak was published by Open Democracy; see Al-Ali and Tas, “Kurdish Women’s Battle Continues.”
45 Al-Ali and Tas, “Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism.”
46 Șahin-Mentucek, “Strong in the Movement,” 471.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nadje Al-Ali
Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Brown University, where she is also Director of the Centre for Middle East Studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilisation, with a focus on Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (University of California Press, 2009, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (Zed Books, 2007), and Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Her co-edited book with Deborah al-Najjar, entitled We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War (Syracuse University Press), won the 2014 Arab-American book prize for non-fiction. Professor Al-Ali is on the advisory board of kohl: a journal of body and gender research and has been involved in several feminist organisations and campaigns transnationally.
Latif Tas
Latif Tas holds a Marie-Curie Global Fellowship at SOAS University of London. He has also been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton (2019/2020). With a PhD from the Law Faculty, Queen Mary University of London (2012), he is a social scientist studying political violence, social justice, authoritarianism, social movements, migration and gender. He has been doing ethnographic research in Turkey, Germany, the UK, Iraq and Syria for the last 13 years and has published extensively. His articles have appeared in many scholarly journals such as Nation and Nationalism, Cambridge Journal of Law in Context, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, Dissent and the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. His political commentaries have been published in media such as Open Democracy, Public Anthropologist and the Brussels Times. He is the author of Legal Pluralism in Action: Dispute Resolution and the Kurdish Peace Committee (Routledge, 2014). His forthcoming book is titled Authoritarianism and Kurdish Alternative Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). He can be contacted at [email protected]