The Kurdish Women's Movement - History, Theory, Practice

'One the foremost writers and participants in the Kurdish women's movement' - Harsha Walia

The Kurdish women's movement is at the heart of one of the most exciting revolutionary experiments in the world today: Rojava. Forged over decades of struggle, most recently in the fight against ISIS, Rojava embodies a radical commitment to ecology, democracy and women's liberation. But while striking images of Kurdish women in military fatigues proliferate, a true understanding of the women's movement remains elusive.



Taking apart the superficial and Orientalist frameworks that dominate, Dilar Dirik offers instead an empirically rich account of the women's movement in Kurdistan. Drawing on original research and ethnographic fieldwork, she surveys the movement's historical origins, ideological evolution, and political practice over the past forty years. Going beyond abstract ideas, Dirik locates the movement's culture and ideology in its concrete work for women's revolution in the here and now.



Taking the reader from the guerrilla camps in the mountains to radical women's academies and self-organised refugee camps, readers around the world can engage with the revolution in Kurdistan, both theoretically and practically, as a vital touchstone in the wider struggle for a militant anti-fascist, anti-capitalist feminist internationalism.

Figures

Abbreviations and acronyms

Locations in Kurdish

Map

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: The Kurdistan women's revolution - A social history from below

PART I: HISTORY

1. Mapping the Kurdistan of women

2. The Kurdistan Revolutionaries

3. Berxwedan jiyan e! - The Diyarbakr prison resistance

4. Vejîn! - The first bullet

5. Edî bes e! - The dirty war

6. Towards women's autonomy

7. International conspiracy and internal crisis

8. The battle for the PKK's soul

9. Enter Democratic Confederalism

PART II: THEORY

10. 'Struggling woman': Ideology and identity

11. Building 'democratic modernity'

12. Jineolojî: 'A science of woman and life'

PART III: PRACTICE

13. Stateless society

14. Öcalan: Leader, prisoner, comrade

15. Revolutionizing love

16. Mothers

17. Self-defence

18. Martyrs

19. Prisoners

20. Education

21. Media

22. Ecology

23. Mexmûr: From displacement to self-determination

24. Bakur: Women against politicide

25. Bäûr: 'Freedom is more than the absence of dictatorship'

26. Rojava: A women's revolution

27. Resistance or feminicide: Women against Daesh

28. engal: From feminicide to women's autonomy

29. Kobanê did not fall

30. Life after Daesh: Women's solidarity in Manbij

31. War and peace

PART IV: EMPOWERMENT OR REVOLUTION?

32. Two rivers, two freedom agendas?

Notes

Bibliography

Index