This book originates from my Ph.D. thesis (2006) on Kurdish women’s political participation and the formation of a Kurdish women’s identity. The interviews that I carried out in 2005 formed the basis for both the thesis and the Turkish version of this book, which was first published in 2007. I also included a feminist reading of the fundamental texts for understanding the ideological–political discourse of the Kurdish political movement as well as texts from pro-Kurdish political parties.1 By the time the book was translated into English in 2019, profound developments had taken place that affected Kurds, whether as the main actors, the sufferers of hardship, or both. This process is still continuing.
The PKK (Partiye Karkarên Kurdistan, Kurdistan Worker’s Party ), which was the standard bearer of the post-1980 Kurdish political opposition, has gone through both ideological–political transformations and radical organizational changes. By embracing a radical democratic perspective, it adopted a transnational confederative structure composed of units connected to each other ideologically, with flexible ties at the organizational level. It is also no longer restricted to a Kurdish membership,2 which has meant that women’s active political participation and the effects of this are no longer limited to Kurds in Turkey.3 In particular, the armed struggle against ISIL increased the visibility of women in Kurdish military units4 while practices toward gender equality and women’s active participation in every stage of socio-political structuration became significant in the Rojava region in Northern Syria—ruled by autonomous Kurdish governments—especially at the height of the war in Syria.5
The unfolding of the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and developments related to resolving the Kurdish issue,6 which seem to have reached a stalemate currently, are equally important. For example, progress among pro-Kurdish political parties regarding gender equality and women’s equal political representation has stimulated a new era in Turkey’s political history. Having remained at around four percent throughout Republican history,7 women’s parliamentary representation jumped dramatically after these political parties entered parliament.8 In addition, Kurdish women’s visibility as political representatives is more than a numerical change. While it does not automatically entail a feminist politics, it counters the maleist bias in political representation and political leadership in Turkey.
The gender equality perspective of the Kurdish political movement has also had implications beyond the political sphere. Women politicized within the hegemonic setup of the movement have founded hundreds of social organizations that primarily address gender equality and violence against women in the regions where Kurds live. They also extended their organizational attempts to local administrative units, forming women’s consultancy centers and women’s cooperatives affiliated to municipal administrations. Such steps extended the goals of gender equality perspective and women’s socioeconomic empowerment through society. During the years when Kurdish identity and Kurds’ demands for recognition and representation were somewhat more easily expressed and when steps toward permanent peace were taken in Turkey,9 these developments became more visible and effective in various spheres of life.
Women’s experiences with struggle have also affected the intellectual sphere. Kurdish women activists and/or politicians started a debate on their readings of gender equality and women’s freedom within the scope of Jineoloji.10 They organized international meetings as venues to share local knowledge and experiences among feminist activists and academics from Turkey, Europe, and the Middle East, including other Kurdish regions.11 However, these positive developments for women and their advocacy of gender equality were damaged by the violence and political pressure that erupted after peace negotiations were interrupted, political tension increased, and deadly armed clashes returned, especially in 2009 and since 2015. In 2009, when the state began mass arrest operations against Kurdish politicians, women politicians constituted a third of the arrested Kurdish politicians.12 Since 2015, dozens of women MPs and mayors, and thousands of Kurdish women activists have been arrested during a period marked by severe repression.13
This book begins with the 1980s, when Kurdish women started to become visible in the public sphere as political actors. I had many reasons to choose such a topic for my doctoral research. First, the Kurdish issue had been one of the key issues on Turkey’s political agenda since 1984, when the PKK launched its first armed attacks in Turkey.14 Women played significant roles in the public image of the effective Kurdish opposition during this period. As a student of social science, and especially as woman, the topic was—and still is—desirable to consider from the women’s perspective. The presence of Kurdish women as political subjects in the post-1980 period, and especially in the 2000s, was sufficient reason to pick this topic. However, it was not easy to conduct academic research on the Kurdish population in those years given that the well-known sensitivities concerning the topics could dissuade people from researching it. Such research could be perceived as being against state security and national unity. Thus, if I had not had other reasons for pursuing this topic, I would have opted for the most frequently taken path given these sensitivities and directed my scholarly interests to other topics. I did not do so, however, because this work carried more than an academic meaning for me. Focusing on Kurdish women’s road to publicness in the 1980s and 1990s from women’s perspective would enable me to investigate and understand my own history. There were quite a few readings of the social, political, and everyday representations of these women, who were the most popular figures of the Kurdish movement. However, it was not possible to hear their own voices in these readings so seeking these voices is valuable in itself. At the same time, exploring the borders of Kurdish women’s identity through critical inquiry required first comprehending the underlying history, and its components and its dynamics. I also aspired to simultaneously reach out to the voices of Kurdish women. Thus, this work represents a narration of a two-layered story that intertwines the individual and the social.
One of the distinctive features—perhaps the most important feature—of the post-1980 Kurdish movement is its successful collective mobilization of women. Another feature is its transformation from a radical demand for separatism to a stance that tailored its demands to acknowledge human and citizenship rights, and prioritize identity politics. In fact, the prioritization of identity politics is not restricted to Turkey’s Kurdish movement as the late twentieth century witnessed a global rise in social and political movements based on individual and group identity.
The history of Turkey’s Kurdish issue and the corresponding Kurdish opposition dates back to the pre-Republican era. The historical dynamics and changing historical contexts also caused changes in the form of this opposition. It is this change that allows us to consider the new features of Kurdish movement, which is in no sense brand new. One new aspect is the prioritization of cultural identity. This is related to both sociocultural change in Turkey and globalization. For some time, social science has considered these two aspects as mutually affecting each other: The rise of ethnic and sectarian identities is a defining feature of globalization while globalization has encouraged the revival of ethnic and sectarian identities, long excluded from the homogenizing national identity construction of nation-states, which were expected to wither away due to capitalist development and modernization (Touraine 1997). New ethnic movements that offer ample spaces for the cultural and symbolic components of collective identities voiced up human rights; the right to recognition and representation emerged as the new actors of social movements. These movements are marked by women’s effective participation.
Certainly, women’s participation in ethnic/nationalist movements is not new. Despite Virginia Woolf’s (n.d.: 99) remark that nationalist claims are woven by and through the patrie,15 women actively participated in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anticolonial (nationalist) movements. Today, too, they are among the significant components of ethnic/national-based movements (West 1997). Women’s participation in the post-1980 Kurdish movement made them visible in the public sphere, when many women took part in street demonstrations and meetings, became active members of various legal political parties as Kurdish women, joined the guerilla forces, and suffered mass detentions and arrests. As I noted above, my interest in this topic grew out of my aim to explore how women experienced and construed this process. There have been different approaches and readings of women’s political and social mobilization. For example, for Kurdish...