Kurdish Women in Rojava

From Resistance to Reconstruction

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3892467
AutoresPinar Tank (0000-0003-4754-5377, Peace Research Institute Oslo, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume57
Fascículo3-4
Páginas404-428
Data de publicação2017-10-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoDie Welt des Islams (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0043-2539 • E-ISSN: 1570-0607
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/15700607-05734p07
OpenAlexW2765841581
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas19
Referências citadas6

In 2010, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, declared, "The freedom of the Kurdish people can be viewed as inseparably bound to women's freedom."1 This statement emphasizes a core tenet in the reinvention of the PKK's ideology as articulated by Öcalan: the understanding that freedom can only be achieved through the defeat of the patriarchal system. The women of the PKK and its sister organization, the Democratic Union Party (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, PYD), represent the embodiment of the PKK's new ideology, attracting international attention following Kurdish efforts to establish an autonomous region of governance in north-east Syria. This article focuses on a case study of the PYD's Syrian Kurdish Women's Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ), and their defence of Kurdish-dominated enclaves in Syria. The analysis demonstrates the agency behind their engagement and the ideology that motivates their resistance to patriarchy in the Middle East. In so doing, the article compares the YPJ's understanding of agency to media representations of YPJ fighters' engagement, in an effort to see beyond the traditional victim/peacemaker articulation of gendered engagement, arguing instead for the need to recognize the politics behind Kurdish women's participation as combatants in the Syrian civil war

Agency (philosophy) · Articulation (sociology) · Democracy · Ideology · Patriarchy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society