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The Kurdish women rebels who are ready to
fight and die for the Kurdish cause 24.10.2007
Deborah Haynes in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi
Kurdistan
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October
24, 2007
The Kurdish fighter tied back her hair in a scarf
and hoisted a rifle over one shoulder before darting
farther up the rugged mountain to escape the threat
of a possible airstrike.
“Get as far away from the camp as you can,” a second
rebel told The Times, pointing to a steep slope and
indicating the fastest way down.
A third added: “We are seen as a terrorist group, so
what do you expect?”
The alarm was raised during a weekend visit to a
small camp for women rebels in the Qandil Mountains,
which straddle the border between the Kurdistan
'Kurdish north of Iraq' and southern Turkey. |
The Kurdish PKK women rebels who are ready to fight
and die for the Kurdish cause anf for more rights in
Turkey |
The women are mostly former Turkey's Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters who say that they now
pursue more of an educational and co-ordinating role
in support of Kurdish women’s rights. Airstrikes
have become a regular hazard as tensions rise
between their outlawed organisation and the Turkish
Government.
Women play a crucial role in the PKK, which has been
fighting for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for three
decades in a campaign that has cost more than 30,000
lives.
In the latest bloodshed, an ambush on Sunday left at
least 12 Turkish soldiers dead and 16 wounded,
increasing tensions at the border where Turkish
forces are massing.
Treated as equals by their male counterparts on the
battlefield as well as in the political arena, women
fighters are trained to use Kalashnikovs, grenades
and other weapons before being dispatched in mixed
and single-sex units.
The best women fighters are also able to climb up
the ranks to positions of command, with the
“self-defence” armed wing of the PKK operating an
obligatory 40 per cent female quota.
“If a Turkish soldier comes and wants to kill me,
then I shoot him back,” said a woman called Surbuz,
who joined the PKK in 1993.
“That is the mechanism of war. It becomes a part of
everyday life,” the 32-year-old said, dressed in
baggy, dull-green trousers and a shirt with a
woollen jumper over the top.
At first the Turkish Army did not take the women
rebels, who have been part of the PKK’s armed
struggle since it was begun in 1984, seriously.
“Then they realised that the women are as tough if
not tougher than the men,” said Surbuz, an
attractive woman with short, bobbed, brown hair.
“After this the soldiers stopped distinguishing
between the male and the female fighters. I think
they are now more afraid of the women because the
women are more disciplined and they will never
surrender.”
“We will either kill or be killed,” she added. “For
me it is freedom, success or death. It is simple.”
Pictures of women who have been killed or taken
their own lives dotted the walls of three rooms
inside makeshift huts where members of the group
live and operate.
As well as being willing to die for their cause, the
women in the PKK avoid sexual relationships, feeling
that having sex with a man, even a fellow fighter,
undermines their goals. “If you could create a
society of feminist men then that would be okay,”
Zilar Sterk, a second Kurdish rebel, said.
Surbuz and Ms Sterk, along with about 20 other women
at the Qandil mountain base, belong to an umbrella
female organisation known as the High Commune of
Women (KJB).
This group helps to co-ordinate the work of three
wings: an ideological branch that offers education
on the rights of women; a practical unit that
addresses problems of inequality in society, and a
section that oversees the female military role
within the PKK.
“There is a lot of pressure in Middle Eastern
society, in Kurdistan especially, on women from the
father, the mother and the brothers,” said Surbuz,
who is a member of the KJB co-ordinating committee.
“Mothers and sisters, they are made to live in the
man’s house. I do not want to be like that.”
Ms Sterk, 34, a member of the commune’s management
committee and the only woman on the base without
experience as a fighter, said that she was
imprisoned for four years because the Turkish
authorities wrongly suspected her of being a member
of the PKK. She was never prosecuted.
“After my release I joined up,” she said, noting
that she wanted to help women to maximise their
potential, as well as fight for the rights for Kurds
in general.
“A woman should be able to share her power and trust
herself to have the strength to do whatever she
wants,” said Ms Sterk, who used to work at a
state-run orphanage in Turkey while studying at
university.
Scattering up the mountain face after the airstrike
warning — the threat later turned out to be of a
possible shelling from Iran, which is also fighting
Kurdish rebels — the women left all belongings
behind apart from their weapons.
“This is how we live,” Ms Sterk said as she
apologetically ushered The Times away from the camp.
“I must go to a safer place, but I am not scared.”
timesonline co.uk
**
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 over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom 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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