Washington Kurdish Institute
By: Dr. Shilan Fuad Hussain April 2, 2021
In recent years, Kurdish women have entered the global public’s consciousness in a unique way. The primary driving force which placed them on the world’s stage was the heroism of the YPJ i.e., Women’s Protection Units in Syrian Kurdistan, known to Kurds as Rojava. The video clips and photos of young smiling unveiled women from the Middle East taking on the barbarians of ISIS, who wanted to enslave and shroud them in black burqas, was a powerful good versus evil narrative that earned them—and hence all Kurdish women to a degree—widespread notoriety and admiration. However, what is less known is that these brave YPJ fighters belong to a long line of Kurdish women who have traditionally challenged a male-dominated Kurdish culture and fought for the political rights of their fellow Kurds throughout the Kurdistan regions of the four main nations where Kurds reside (Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran).
While Kurdish women have made cultural contributions in a vast array of areas such as art and music, literature and poetry, dance and fashion—perhaps the most impactful area where they have led the charge is in the realm of politics, both within Kurdistan and in the Western diaspora. The following is a brief overview of some of these notable Kurdish women politicians, which for organizational purposes has been divided into three categories: revolutionary martyrs, trailblazing pioneers in Kurdistan, and the next generation in Europe.
Revolutionary Martyrs
If one woman personifies the Kurdish woman as political rebel, that would be Leyla Qasim. She was an activist who stood up to the dictator Saddam Hussein in the early 1970’s long before he became an enemy in the West. Born in Xaneqîn in Iraqi Kurdistan, she went on to study sociology at the University of Baghdad, where she began circulating pamphlets on the horrors of the Baathist party who were ruling the country with an iron fist. Consequently, in 1974, at the age of twenty-two, Qasim was arrested, tortured, and convicted in a nationwide televised show trial, which resulted in her being executed by hanging, and afterwards she became a national hero to many Kurds.
Three more recent Kurdish women viewed as political martyrs are Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan, Leyla Şaylemez. All three of them—from Turkish Kurdistan—were shot dead on January 9, 2013, in Paris by an assassin. Cansız was an Alevi Kurd from Dersim, who left the pressure from her family and fiancé as a young woman to become a revolutionary guerrilla and helped found the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Following her arrests in the 1980s where she spent a decade being badly tortured in Turkish prisons, she went on to Europe where she became a well-known defender of women’s rights. Murdered with Cansız, were Doğan – a political activist from Elbistan who represented the Brussels-based Kurdish National Congress in France and who worked at the Kurdish Information Centre in Paris; and Şaylemez – a young activist from Mersin committed to organizing Kurdish youth. The faces of these three women are often seen on flags at Kurdish protests throughout Europe, as nobody has been brought to justice for their assassination.
The most recent notable Kurdish heroines hailed as political martyrs come from Rojava, with one falling on the battlefield, and the other in an attempt to avoid it. The first, Arin Mirkan, was a mother of two from Kobane, and commander in the YPJ who took part in defending the city from ISIS’s onslaught. Then on October 5, 2014, when she found herself surrounded by ISIS fighters, she sacrificially detonated herself under one of their tanks, in an act of defiance that became a symbol of resistance. In the years since, a large statue of her has been erected in the center of Kobane, making her a national icon in Rojava and to women around the world.
Mirkan, is joined in the pantheon of Rojava martyrs with Hevrin Khalaf, a Kurdish politician and civil engineer from Derik, who served as the Secretary General of the Future Syria Party. Four of Khalaf’s brothers and her sister had all themselves been martyred defending Kurdistan, which led her to focus on higher education and creating institutions that would improve civil society. Khalaf became known in Syria for her skill in diplomacy and building ethnic bridges of tolerance between Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, and Assyrians, and co-religious bridges between Muslims and Christians. Tragically, a car she was travelling in was intercepted during the chaos of Turkey’s October 2019 invasion of Rojava, and extremists from the terror group Ahrar al-Sharqiya pulled her from vehicle and executed her. However, even as she awaited death, she could be seen trying to convince her killers to spare the others travelling with her.
Trailblazing Pioneers in Kurdistan
Two well-known Kurdish woman politicians in Turkish Kurdistan worth knowing about are Leyla Zana and Gültan Kışanak. Zana, from Silvan, was elected to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in 1991, but caused a firestorm when she ended her oath of office with a line in Kurdish, stating: “I take this oath for the brotherhood between the Turkish people and the Kurdish people.”1 However, speaking the Kurdish language was illegal in Turkey, causing her to receive a ten-year prison sentence for violating the ‘unity’ of the country. For her years of peace activism between Kurds and Turks and her numerous prison sentences for those principles, she was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, although she was unable to collect it until her release from prison in 2004.
Like Zana, Gültan Kışanak, a Kurdish politician from Elazığ, has faced numerous prison sentences for her democratic principles. She was a student at Dicle University when she was arrested in 1980 and detained in the infamous Diyarbakir Prison for two years, with six months of that time spent sleeping in the dog kennel of the prison warden, when she defiantly refused to stand in his presence. Several years later once released, she was arrested again while protesting Saddam Hussein’s 1988 gas attack on Halabja. In 2009, she prepared a bill to enable the Kurdish language in public places and was elected to Turkey’s Parliament in 2011. This was followed with her being elected Mayor of Diyarbakir (known to Kurds as Amed), which is seen as the de-facto capital city of Greater Kurdistan. Unfortunately, she was arrested in 2016, and prosecutors aimed to sentence her to 230 years in prison. In 2019, that total was lowered to fourteen years and she currently sits in prison, where she has written the book Kürt Siyasetinin Mor Rengi (The Color Purple of Kurdish Politics), dealing with women in politics.
The next three Kurdish woman politicians come from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) and the Region’s two primary parties, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Speaker of the Kurdistan Region’s Parliament, Rewaz Faiq, and Bayan Sami Rahman of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, served as the First Lady of Iraq from 2005-2014, but prior to that served a long career which began with her being one of the first women Peshmerga fighters. Starting in the 1970’s she joined her husband Jalal Talabani in the mountains, fighting against Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. She was part of a group known as “Zhini Shakh” (women of the mountains). Throughout the years, she also became well known for pushing the issue of gender equality for women in Kurdistan.
Ahmed is joined by other influential Kurdish women such as the current Speaker of the Kurdistan Region’s Parliament, Rewaz Faiq and Bayan Sami Rahman, who is the Kurdistan Regional Government’s representative to the United States, having previously served as the High Representative to the United Kingdom. Faiq, has spoken of her motivations, saying “Our main aim is to strengthen our democracy, create prosperity, and realize our potential by granting democratic rights in their fullest to the people of Kurdistan. As for Rahman, she had to flee Iraq as a child to live in London, as her father was involved in fighting against Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the villages she lived in were continually bombed. After moving to the UK, she won awards for her writing about Kurdistan and later went on to become a journalist, diplomat, and part of the KDP’s Leadership Council. Sadly, her father—who later became Deputy Prime Minister of the KRG—and brother were killed in a February 2004 suicide bombing in Erbil alongside ninety-six other people.
The final trailblazer I would include is Îlham Ehmed, who comes from Afrin in Rojava, and is the co-president of the Executive Council for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). Ehmed is also on the executive committee of the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) coalition, which aims to implement the ideology of democratic confederalism. TEV-DEM has established a Social Contract, aiming to protect multi-ethnicity, abolish the death penalty, match the freedoms laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and establish gender equality in all positions of power—guaranteeing one woman and one man in all leadership roles. Other initiatives Ehmed is advocating for in Syria is a decentralized state with local civilian councils guaranteeing the rights of all ethnicities, recognizing the rights of Kurds in the Syrian Constitution, and including protections for freedom of expression.
Next Generation in Europe
The next wave of younger Kurdish women politicians can be found in the Kurdish diaspora of Europe. In Sweden there is Amineh Kakabaveh, who is from Iranian Kurdistan and a member of Sweden’s Parliament since 2008. Before arriving in Sweden, she was a guerrilla in Komala and Peshmerga fighter, battling the Government of Iran for increased Kurdish rights. Now in Sweden, she focuses on issues such as honor killings, women’s rights, and guaranteeing secularism. Her autobiography Amineh Amineh – not bigger than a Kalashnikov, was published in 2016. Joining Kakabaveh in Sweden is Evin Incir, from Amed in Turkish Kurdistan. Incir is a member of the Social Democrat Party and was elected to the European Parliament in 2019, where she serves on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Incir has spoken of her life as a Kurd being good preparation for her role, stating “It is one thing to read about these injustices, but an entirely different thing to have experienced them.”
Germany, home to the largest Kurdish diaspora population, is now home to two next generation Kurdish women politicians as well. The first, Leyle Imret, from Cizre in Turkey’s Kurdistan, was the youngest woman ever elected mayor in Turkey in 2014 at age twenty-seven. However, following the Turkish Army’s attacks on Cizre where she was mayor in 2015, she was removed from office. She eventually was forced to flee Turkey and seek asylum in Germany, where she had lived as a child after her father was killed by the Turkish Military. In 2018, the International League for Human Rights awarded Imrwet the Carl von Ossietzky Medal, citing her “courageous struggle for Kurdish rights.” She is joined in Germany by Özlem Demirel, from Malatya in Turkish Kurdistan, who is a Member of the European Parliament. Growing up as an Alevi Kurd in Turkey, Demirel has said she was always fascinated with politics and wanted to be “a voice for the voiceless”, something she now does in Parliament.
The last two Kurdish woman politicians I will mention reside in Belgium and Austria. In Belgium, Zuhal Demir, from Turkish Kurdistan, has been a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, and is now the Flemish minister for Justice and Enforcement, Environment, Energy and Tourism. Her outspoken stances and defense of Kurdish rights in Turkey, has led to her receiving numerous death threats. In Austria, Berivan Aslan, from Turkish Kurdistan, is a politician for the Austrian Green Party. From 2013-2017, she was a member of the National Council, and like the previously mentioned Demir, Aslan has also received numerous death threats for her outspoken defense of Kurdish rights within Turkey. In 2019, a defector even turned himself into Austrian police, saying he had been ordered by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) to assassinate Aslan, but did not want to carry it out.
It is through those threats that we see the common thread that runs through the revolutionary martyred Kurdish woman politicians of past decades to the current ones in the European diaspora. It seems that wherever Kurdish women go, standing up for human rights and demanding justice places them at the forefront of potential reactionary violence. Thankfully however, more of them will keep stepping up to take their place and will not be deterred, and as a result, humanity and especially the women of the world, will be better off.
References
- Al Ali Nadje and Tas Latif, Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey, Nations and Nationalism 24 (2), 2018, pp. 453–473.
- Cengiz Gunes, The Political Representation of Kurds in Turkey: New Actors and Modes of Participation in a Changing Society, I. B. Tauris, 2020.
- Handan Çağlayan, Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2019.
- Michael Gunter, Routledge Handbook on the Kurds, New York, 2019.
- Mojab Shahrzad, Overview: Kurdish Women. In Suad Joseph (ed.), Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, pp. 358–366. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005.
- Mojab Shahrzad and Gorman Rachel, Dispersed Nationalism: War, Diaspora And Kurdish Women’s Organizing, Vol. 3, No. 1, Special Issue: Transnational Theory, National Politics, and Gender in the Contemporary Middle East / North Africa (Winter 2007), Duke University Press, pp. 58-85.
- Q & A: Rewas Faiq Hussein Brand Kurdistan November 27 , 2019. https://brandkri.com/qa-dr-rewas-faiq-hussein/
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