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Interview with the Free Women’s Movement (TJA) in North Kurdistan

“Actually we have been calling our experience World War III. This is a war of destruction. The state does not call it a war, but this is the experience of those affected.”

By Anna Rebrii, Mahir Kurtay, Ayşe Gökkan and Gülcihan Şimşek
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Screenshot: Banner of the TJA website.

After the Syrian Kurds’ fight for Kobane (a Kurdish city in northern Syria/Rojava) against ISIS in 2014-5, many across the world were suddenly made aware of the Kurdish women’s movement.

What has not reached us, however, is a much wider context that enabled the Kurdish women-fighters to confidently take up arms to defend themselves and their people. The unprecedented accomplishments of the Kurdish women predated Kobane and the war in Syria. They are rooted in the evolution of Turkey’s Kurdish liberation movement, as it is represented by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and in the ideological shift of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0