What role do Kurdish women activists play in the fight against the Turkish state? Between instrumentalisation and empowerment.

Elisa CAMPON

Translated by: Annaëlle Philippon

04/06/2025

Following the recent announcement of the dissolution of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), this article examines the evolution of the party’s feminist doctrine. Initially conceived as a strategic tool, this doctrine has gradually become a central ideological framework, particularly through the redefinition of women’s roles within the movement. Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s founder and leader, theorised the party’s ideology in several texts, devoting particular attention to Kurdish women’s fight for greater autonomy.

The PKK is recognised as a terrorist organisation by several states, including the United States^[1]Foreign Terrorist Organizations – United States Department of State. (2025, 5 mars). United States Department Of State. https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/ and the European Union^[2]Commision Staff Working Document : Turkey 2019 Report. (2019, 29 mai). European Commission. … Continue reading, is a Kurdish political and military organisation that has been waging guerrilla warfare against the Turkish state since the 1980s. The Kurds are an oppressed ethnic minority spread across Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. Although the PKK’s initial objective was independence, through the creation of a Kurdish state on Turkish soil, Ankara’s repression forced the party into a first ceasefire in 1993. The PKK then had to reinvent itself to continue its fight. Moving away from the Marxist framework of its original doctrine, the party, through its theorist Abdullah Öcalan, who is currently imprisoned, began a complete overhaul. In several texts, notably Women and Family Question (1992)^[3]Öcalan, A. (1992). Woman and Family Question.,

Öcalan asserts that the Kurds will not be able to end their oppression in the countries where they live (Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey) until Kurdish women are free and equal to Kurdish men. He thus made the liberation of Kurdish women the first condition for the autonomy of the Kurds of Turkey. This initial observation gave rise to a series of writings advocating for the emancipation of women, who were doubly oppressed due to both their Kurdish ethnicity and their gender. Yet, Kurdish men and women are still not entirely equal, either within society or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. 

To what extent has the feminist doctrine developed within the PKK, initially conceived as a strategic lever, evolved into a structuring ideological framework, particularly through the redefinition of women’s roles in the movement? This doctrine enabled a redefinition of the various roles of Kurdish women activists within the party and contributed to bringing about certain advances in favour of greater freedom for these women. However, the party’s founding texts have failed to fully challenge the patriarchal structure of Kurdish society, and in practice, equality between women and men remains far from being achieved. This is why, in the late 1990s, some Kurdish women reclaimed the party’s progressive writings to demand stricter implementation and to gain greater autonomy by founding their own organisations.

A feminist doctrine that has led to some tangible progress toward gender equality…

In his essay Liberating Life, Öcalan writes, “Liberating life is impossible without a radical women’s revolution that would change man’s mentality and life”^[4]Öcalan, A. (2013). Liberating Life.. Here, he articulates the dependence of the Kurdish struggle on the fight for women’s emancipation. Öcalan relies on the supposed existence of a matriarchal Neolithic period, which is considered a true golden age for the Kurds, prior to domination by foreign powers. At that time, Kurdish women are said to have ensured the existence of a ‘primitive socialism’^[5]Öcalan, A. (2013, without private property, in which equality and freedom prevailed. The overthrow of this order by men would have initiated male domination by reducing women’s role in society to domestic duties. Öcalan draws on the concept of ‘housewifization’ theorised by Maria Mies (1986)^[6]Mies M. (1986) Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: women in the international division of labour. Zed Books, which posits that women’s domestication was achieved by confining them to the household sphere and devaluing their labour there. Öcalan’s writings sketch a utopian feminist Kurdish society, moving away from the initial Marxist vocabulary focused on uniting Kurdish proletarians to challenge domination and establish a single independent Kurdish state. In the early 1990s, a real shift occurred in the party’s doctrine and propaganda, trading real Marxist socialism for a discourse emphasising women’s liberation as a step towards the liberation of the Kurdish people and all the oppressed. The application of this new doctrine can be questioned, as it also served as a political tool at a time when PKK membership was dwindling and recruitment was becoming a priority^[7]Lafaye, C. G. (2022). S’engager au PKK pour la libération des femmes ? Lecture critique d’une construction politique. Confluences Méditerranée, 120(1), 185205. … Continue reading. In fact, the party does hire Kurdish women, creating genuine professional opportunities for them. Women accounted for 40% of guerrilla soldiers in 2013, and “40% of military leadership positions […] were reserved for women”^[8]Grojean, O. (2013). Théorie et construction des rapports de genre dans la guérilla kurde de Turquie. Critique internationale, 60(3), 2135. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.060.0021. This would have represented around 10,000 women out of 35,000 party members in 2021^[9]ritimo. (2021, janvier 21). La présence des femmes kurdes au sein des organisations politiques kurdes : Le Komala et le PKK. ritimo. … Continue reading. They also receive the same training as men in the units^[10]Haner, M., Cullen, F. T., & Benson, M. L. (2020). Women and the PKK : Ideology, Gender, and Terrorism. International Criminal Justice Review, 30(3), 279301. … Continue reading. There was, therefore, a real effort toward parity within the PKK. Not only are there many women in the PKK, but they also take on diverse roles that are not limited to direct participation in the armed struggle^[11]Ide, T. (2023). Supply and Demand : Drivers of Women Non-Combat Participation in Rebel Groups. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 0(0), 1-19.. They actively take part in smuggling and espionage operations, in outreach to facilitate engagement with certain civilian populations in the field, but also in shaping the organisation’s strategies and recruiting new members^[12]Başer, Ç. (2022). Women Insurgents, Rebel Organization Structure, and Sustaining the Rebellion: The Case of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Security Studies, 31(3), 381–416. 

…but that still struggles to break free from the patriarchal structure of Kurdish society, whose implementation remains uneven.

Öcalan’s doctrine seems to focus in depth on debunking gender stereotypes and on assigning a leading role to women’s liberation. However, this discourse operates within the patriarchal structure of Kurdish society, without fundamentally dismantling it. For example, the party reclaims the complex concept of namus, which is particularly present in Kurdish society. Difficult to translate, it refers to family virtue and honour, which is reflected in women’s behaviour, particularly their chastity. Therefore, the family exerts control over women to safeguard this honour. Under Öcalan, the PKK takes on the role of protector of the integrity of women who choose to join its ranks. While this measure enables women to leave their homes to enlist, this reinterpretation of namus also perpetuates control over their bodies^[13]Grojean, O. (2013). Théorie et construction des rapports de genre dans la guérilla kurde de Turquie. Critique internationale, 60(3), 2135. https://doi.org/10.3917/crii.060.0021.There is also ambiguity surrounding the ban on sexual relations between men and women within the PKK. The doctrine justifies this ban on the grounds that men and women are not sufficiently deconstructed to engage in such relations without perpetuating male dominance. In practice, it also serves to enforce control and a form of discipline over women’s bodies so that they are entirely devoted to the cause and its leaderr^[14]Novellis, A. (2018). The Rise of Feminism in the PKK : Ideology or Strategy? Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.13169/zanjglobsoutstud.2.1.0115.

The doctrine thus accords a prominent place to women’s liberation, but it does not always fully challenge the patriarchal structure of society.

In the field, numerous research studies report tensions between women and men within units. These include arguments steeped in sexist clichés accusing women in the guerrilla of being too soft, emotional and not tough enough^[15]Grojean, O. (2013. Testimonies from former female commanders recount how men maintain their ascendancy within the units by deciding everything for the female fighters under their authority, right down to their clothes^[16]Novellis, A. (2018).

Moreover, while the PKK doctrine allows women to be involved in the fight for independence, their participation is often limited to stereotyped figures, such as the ‘patriotic mother’, the ‘pacifist mother’, or the ‘guardian of Kurdish culture’, perpetuated by Kurdish media^[17]Açik-Toprak, N. (2013). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey : From Protest to Resistance. Ethnopolitics, 12(1), 106107. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2013.764607. Representations reduce women to gendered and essentialising roles that give them little choice between the figure of mother, victim or wife^[18]Açik-Toprak, N. (2013). and fail to reflect the diversity of possible forms of commitment. There is thus a significant gap between the archetypes promoted in the magazines and the reality of women’s involvement within the PKK. Their roles extend beyond participation in the armed struggle to include espionage, recruitment, party leadership and mediation with local populations in support of the guerrilla cause^[19]Başer, Ç. (2022)..

Moreover, theorising the double oppression of Kurdish women – oppressed both as women and as Kurds – has the direct consequence of requiring them to redouble their efforts to escape their situation and prove their worth and reliability^[20]Novellis, A. (2018. As a result, women often take on the most radical and dangerous guerrilla tasks, such as suicide bombings. In 1996, Zilan became the first Kurdish woman to die in a suicide bombing, before being elevated to the status of martyr by the party’s propaganda, encouraging others to emulate her. It is therefore legitimate to wonder whether the ideological shift in favour of women’s liberation in the 1990s was also motivated by the opportunity to recruit on a large scale and to deploy women, who were less likely to be suspected by Turkish security forces, as spies or to carry out dangerous, even deadly, terrorist attacks.

Choosing rupture in the face of the limits of egalitarian ideology in practice

At the end of the 1990s, the PKK’s doctrine evolved once again. The discrepancies between the theory of gender relations within the PKK and the reality of its half-hearted implementation led to the creation in 1995 of the Free Women’s Union of Kurdistan (YJAK), an all-female armed organisation. Two years later, Öcalan formulated the “theory of rupture” in response to this split in the party’s armed forces. He stressed the importance of developing relationships among women, free from the influence of men and patriarchal structures, to enable them to assert their true identity. Strengthened by this discovery and free from patriarchy, they could return to the party to lead the fight more effectively.

In Kurdish Love, published in 1999, Öcalan wrote: “We have seen that the man is the main problem […] For me, the question of the man now takes precedence over that of the woman”^[21]Öcalan, A. (1999). Kurdish Love. The PKK leader is now targeting men’s reluctance to respect the principles he himself promulgated in his earlier writings^[22]Çağlayan, H. (2012). From Kawa the Blacksmith to Ishtar the Goddess : Gender Constructions in Ideological Political Discourses of the Kurdish Movement in Post-1980 Turkey (C. Evren, Trad.). … Continue reading. Female Kurdish activists, by contrast, seem much closer to his precepts, which they apply strictly. This allows them to acquire greater autonomy in practice^[23]Novellis, A. (2018.

This reappropriation is a way to bypass the pitfalls of an ambivalent initial implementation.

The new space of freedom created by these Kurdish women enabled them to put into practice some of Öcalan’s theories, starting with jineology, the foundations of which he developed in Liberating Life in 2013^[24]Öcalan, A. (2013). Liberating Life. This philosophy, which is difficult to define, etymologically corresponds to the “science of women”. According to research published in 2022 by Piccardi and Barca^[25]Piccardi, E. G., & Barca, S. (2022). Jin-jiyan-azadi. Matristic culture and Democratic Confederalism in Rojava. Sustainability Science, 17(4), 12731285. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01099-x, researchers at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, jineology is a reconstruction of the natural and social sciences by and for women. It is also a method, described as a ‘militant pedagogy’, that promotes a holistic and intersectional feminist framework of analysis, criticising patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism and the State. Schäfers and Neven^[26]Schäfers, M., & Neven, B. (2017). Jineology: from women’s struggles to social liberation. Roar Magazine, both researchers at Ghent University in Belgium, emphasise the living and constantly evolving dimension of jineology, which is continually reshaped by women’s contributions. Originally an epistemological philosophy, jineology gradually became institutionalised in the 2010s with the creation of several committees in the Syrian Kurdish region known as Rojava, taking advantage of the weakness of the local authorities, which were then engulfed in civil war. In 2017, the Jineology Centre opened in Brussels to bring jineology closer to the work of Western feminist scholarship.

There are practical applications of jineology. Although the Turkish regime exercises control over its territory and allows few large-scale Kurdish initiatives, a few Kurdish villages in Turkey have organised themselves into a network that forms the Kurdistan Communities Union (the KCK). This organisation implements a new system of governance directly inspired by jineology: democratic confederalism^[27]Akkaya, A. H., & Jongerden, J. (2014). « Confederalism and autonomy in Turkey », in Cengiz & Zeydanlioglu, 2014, The Kurdish Question in Turkey, London, Routledge. Democratic confederalism is the application of jineology as a model of societal organisation, based on the idea that women’s liberation is a precondition for other revolutions, particularly social and ecological ones^[28]Piccardi, E. G., & Barca, S. (2022. The model promotes a gender-equal, egalitarian form of direct democracy, in opposition to the centralisation that is inherent in the state system. The Union is structured by various committees, at village and regional levels, and at global level by an executive council made up of several delegates, currently co-chaired by a woman, Besê Hozat^[29]Besê Hozat, KCK co-Chair. (s. d.). https://kck-info.com. https://kck-info.com/hozat/. The application of jineology through democratic confederalism enables Kurdish women to express their views and actively participate in social transformations.

An unsettled future

The PKK’s propaganda has undergone many transformations, adapting to developments in the fight against the Turkish authorities. It is therefore necessary to consider this feminist doctrine in the context of the political fight. The party’s opening to women can thus be understood as a means of recruiting more broadly and of enabling the Kurdish nationalist fight to win the support of a new and significant section of the population. In practice, the shift in discourse on women’s participation in the fight has enabled them to become activists and to occupy various positions, despite the often simplistic and stereotyped representations. The feminist utopia described by Öcalan struggles to fully challenge the patriarchal structure of Kurdish society by assigning a central role to women’s liberation in the Kurdish nationalist fight. Between instrumentalisation and a nuanced application of the doctrine, some women activists have opted for rupture, seeking stricter implementation of egalitarian principles and thus empowering themselves through new organisational models. In a troubled geopolitical context, the future of Kurdish women and their fight for independence and equality remains uncertain. Meanwhile, Öcalan, still imprisoned, has called for a ceasefire and the dissolution of the PKK, despite the resumption of bombing by Ankara^[30]Rfi. (2025, 14 mars). L’impossible dissolution du PKK face aux bombardements turcs. RFI. https://www.rfi.fr/fr/europe/20250314-l-impossible-dissolution-du-pkk-face-aux-bombardements-turcs. The question of women and their role in the fight for Kurdish rights no longer appears to be a priority on the party’s political agenda.