Dialectics of Struggle: Challenges to the Kurdish Women’s Movement

Our paper engages with the complex relationship between national liberation and women’s rights movements as an instance to recognise the significance of intersectional political struggles and claims. In our specific case study, we critically explore attempts by political activists and elected representatives of the Kurdish political movement in the Middle East and its diasporas to challenge patriarchal and masculinist ideology and practices. Our work aims to recognise the recent commitment to gender equality, while complicating the often simplistic glorification of women’s roles within the Kurdish political movement in the context of Turkey but also northern Syria, both ideologically inspired by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), and particularly by the writings of its founder Abdullah Öcalan. Based on two years of multisited fieldwork in Diyarbakir, Istanbul, Berlin and London, our collaborative paper sheds light on the dialectic processes through which the Kurdish political movement is engaging in the translation of its political principles of democratic confederalism and gender equality.