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Kurdish Female PKK fighters: We won't
stand for male dominance
7.10.2008
By Arwa Damon
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October 7, 2008
QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraqi Kurdistan region
border with Turkey,— The women line the
mountainside, locked hand in hand in their green
battle fatigues, and begin dancing. It's a victory
dance, they say, that is routine after raids across
the border on Turkish troops.
"We want a natural life, a society that revolves
around women -- one where women and men are equal,www.ekurd.net
a society without
pressure, without inequality, where all differences
between people are eliminated," says Rengin, the
head of a female battalion of the Turkey's Kurdistan
Workers' Party, or PKK.
Most of these fighters go by a single name.
Rengin joined the PKK in this mountain enclave in
1990, when she was just 14, after she says Turkish
forces killed her father. She says she wanted to
fight for Kurdish rights and women's rights.
"Women grow up enslaved by society. The minute you
are born as a girl, society inhibits you," she says.
"We've gone to war with that. If I am a woman, I
need to be known by the strength of my womanhood, to
get respect. Those are my rights. And it was hard
for the men to accept this." |
The PKK women say they are fighting for their
rights. We want ... society that revolves around
women, one says. |
Much of the outside
world views the PKK with suspicion. It's been
labeled a terrorist organization by the United
States, Iraq, Turkey and NATO. The PKK has fought
Turkey for decades to establish a Kurdish state.
Tens of thousands have been killed in the conflict.
The most recent spate of fighting broke out over the
weekend. The Turkish military bombed PKK positions
on Saturday in response to clashes on Friday that
killed at least 15 Turkish troops and 23 PKK
fighters, according to the Turkish military. The PKK
gives a different assessment: It says more than 60
Turkish troops were killed, and that it lost nine
fighters.
Facing mounting pressure and wanting to distance
itself from the PKK, the Kurdish Regional Government
in northern Iraq has made it increasingly difficult
for outsiders to reach the Qandil Mountains where
the guerrilla group is based. Checkpoints have been
set up along all routes leading to and from the
mountains, intended to stop people as well as any
aid and supplies from reaching the fighting force.
CNN has gotten rare access, and is taken deep into
the PKK hideout. Three fighters escort us on a
five-and-a-half-hour hike through rugged terrain.
They move naturally through the jagged, rocky
region, effortlessly climbing and descending steep
trails even at night.
"We have built-in night vision," one fighter
jokingly whispers.
The mountainside camps, made of makeshift tents that
are easily dismantled, blend into the landscape. The
fighters change locations every few days to avoid
detection. As dawn breaks,www.ekurd.net
a group of fighters
huddles around an old radio that brings in news of
the outside world. Small fires burn in front of the
tents, heating water in blackened kettles for tea.
The PKK has an idealistic philosophy, one that
combines Kurdish nationalism with certain communist
goals, such as equality and communal ownership of
property. The fighters here say that their cause has
evolved beyond a desire for a Kurdish state -- that
they are now fighting to generate dramatic social
change.
Today, the PKK's ideology revolves around a belief
that global crises and injustice are a result of
millennia of male-dominated rule. Here, the women
run their own assaults and have their own command
structure. All tasks are shared, both on and off the
battlefield. Discipline is paramount to survival,
they say, and weapons are always clean and never out
of reach.
Back in 1998, the fighters say, their now-jailed
leader Abdullah Ocalan declared the group "a women's
party." It was initially difficult to accept, says
Karim, a 42-year-old male member of the PKK.
"There was an intense discussion about the role of
women," says Karim.
"We didn't want to accept it at first. Women by
nature are physically weaker, and in war that hits
you like a boomerang. You need to watch the way you
fight, the way you move. So we were against this. We
didn't want the women with us because it makes
combat tougher on us. But Ocalan said in his book,
if we are really trying to create a new society, we
have to develop women. If women are enslaved, then
so are men."
Turkey accuses Iraq's Kurds of aiding the PKK, whose
stronghold is located in Iraq's Kurdish northern
region, an autonomous area run by the Kurdistan
Regional Government.
Turkish Gen. Hasan Igsiz was quoted in the leading
Turkish daily newspaper, Huriyet, as saying, "We
have no support at all from the northern Iraqi
administration [against the separatists]. Let aside
any support, they are providing [the separatists
with] infrastructural capabilities such as hospitals
and roads."
Bahoz Erdal, the military leader of PKK, told CNN,
"We are ready for a political solution."
"We do not expect to find a final solution
immediately, but we want to take the first steps
towards that solution," he said. "And that first
step could be Turkey changing its attitude towards
our jailed leader, stopping military sweeps and
attacks against our forces, and ending its policy of
oppression."
He said these can be initial steps to a solution
that gives Kurds equal rights with Turkish citizens
within Turkey, not a separate Kurdish state.
For its part, Turkey has said that it will not
negotiate with terrorists.
At the camp, Yildiz, a round-faced 20-year-old,
says: "We don't have a goal of fighting."
She says she joined the PKK when she was 17 because
she felt society was suffocating her, as a woman and
as a Kurd.
"Our struggle is about many things: Changing people,www.ekurd.net
returning to core
values, getting rid of society's ingrained
enslavement. When I came here, I realized the social
injustices so much more. How could we have lived
like this for so long? How could we have accepted
this for so long?"
Leaning forward, she pulls her vest around the two
grenades that each fighter carries. "I felt
different from the first moment that I got here,"
she says. "In the city, the atmosphere is crowded,
full of people and cars. Here, there is that silence
and beauty of nature. It's so different."
The fighters may seem cut off from the outside
world, but they have a regular supply of arms and
food brought in on mule convoys. They say they stay
well funded by Kurdish expatriates all over the
world.
Western defense analysts estimate their numbers
based in Iraq's mountains are in the few thousands.
The PKK won't tell us how large their fighting force
is. But they say that it was because they are driven
by passion that they have survived this long.
Rengin says on her second night in the mountains,
when she was 14 years old, her unit came under
attack. Her battalion commander was shot in the
head. "Her head was on my knee," says Rengin, now
32. "As she was dying, she said to me: 'Our people
are going to get what is rightfully theirs. I am
proud to have died for this. Tell everyone we will
succeed."
The armed struggle has brought few results. The PKK
says it wants to shift to dialogue, but after
renewed fighting, there seems to be little hope of
that.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, cnn com
*
Over 39,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey. A large Turkey's
Kurdish community openly sympathise with the Kurdish
PKK rebels.
The PKK demanded Turkey's recognition of the Kurds'
identity in its constitution and of their language
as a native language along with Turkish in the
country's Kurdish areas, the party also demanded
an end to ethnic discrimination in Turkish laws and
constitution against Kurds, ranting them full
political freedoms.
The PKK is considered a 'terrorist' organization by
Ankara, U.S., the PKK continues to be on the
blacklist list in EU despite court ruling which
overturned a decision
to place the Kurdish rebel
group PKK and its political wing on
the European Union's terror list.
Turkey refuses to recognize its Kurdish population
as a distinct minority. It has allowed some cultural
rights such as limited broadcasts in the Kurdish
language and private Kurdish language courses with
the prodding of the European Union, but Kurdish politicians
say the measures fall short of their expectations.
** Kurds are not recognized as an official minority
in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate over 40 million Kurds live in Big
Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to 25 million ethnic Kurds, a
large Turkey's Kurdish community openly sympathise
with the Kurdish PKK for a Kurdish homeland in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet has led
to judicial persecution in 2000 and 2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
wikipedia.
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