by Meredith Tax
555ème Congrés, Programme du PKK, 1995.
56Ferdinand Hennerbichler, “The Origin of Kurds,” Advances in Anthropology, 2.2, May 2012, http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=19564; Andrew Curry, “Kurdistan Offers an Open Window on the Ancient Fertile Crescent,” Science 4, April 2014, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6179/18.
57V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (London: Watts, 1936).
58Abdullah Ocalan, Prison Writings: The Root of Civilisation, trans. Klaus Happel (London: Pluto Press, 2007), p. 12.
59Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya and Joost Jongerden, “The PKK in the 2000s: Continuity through breaks,” in Marlies Casier and Joost Jongerden, eds., Nationalism and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (Routledge: London, 2011), 152, https://www.academia.edu/376934/The_PKK_in_the_2000s_Continuity_through_breaks; Abdullah Ocalan, Serxwebun, March 1993, as quoted in Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 103.
60Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 107.
61Kutschera, “Abdullah Ocalan’s Last Interview,” 1999.
62Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm, Act III.
63Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 95.
64Ipek Uzum, “What is really missing from Turkish education?” Today’s Zaman, May 12, 2014, http://www.todayszaman.com/blog/i-pek-uzum/what-is-really-missing-from-turkish-education_347572.html; David Lepeska, “New Turkey turns to old Ottoman,” Al-Jazeera America, December 23, 2014, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/12/erdogan-turkey-ottomanlanguage.html.
65Olivier Grojean, “The Production of the New Man Within the PKK,” European Journal of Turkish Studies, July 9, 2014, http://ejts.revues.org/4925.
66Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 149; Grojean, “The New Man,” 2014.
67Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 146.
68Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 141, 143, 180–1.
69Grojean, “The New Man,” 2014.
70Abdullah Ocalan, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution (Cologne: International Initiative Edition, 2014, 51, http://www.freeOcalan.org/?page_id=267.
71Vamik Volkan, Blood Lines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1997), 174–5.
72Andreas (Marburg), “Zur Geschichte und Politik der Arbeiterpartei Kurdistans (PKK),” [“The History and Politics of the PKK”] 1997, passages translated for the author by Miriam Frank, https://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/isku/hintergrund/geschichte/hausarbeitpkk.htm.
73Kurdistan Committee of Canada, “Women’s Army: PKK 5th Congress Resolution,” August 1995, http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/old-apc-conference.mideast.kurds/1995-August/000972.html.
74“March 8, International Day of Kurdish Womens Amazons,” March 7, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbgfg_87sx4.
75Email communication from Aliza Marcus, October 2, 2015.
76This information is from a PKK internal educational resource translated from the German by Miriam Frank.
77White, Primitive Rebels, 146. In addition to annulling the decisions of the Women’s Congress in 1992, Abdullah Ocalan accused his brother of having mishandled the war with Turkey and relations with the KDP, and organized a conference to explore his “collaborationist” mistakes. Osman Ocalan fled to Iran, but the PKK brought him back and he was imprisoned for five months, eventually returning to leadership after a protracted process of self-criticism. He told journalist Chris Kutschera in 2004, after he left the party: “In June 1993, they removed all my powers . . . I was isolated in a cell for three months and interrogated for 52 days before being tried in February 1995. The trial lasted only one day. I was warned that if I continued to defend my ideas, I would be executed. If not, I would be pardoned. A lawyer? Out of the question. The trial was conducted under the law of the mountain.” Chris Kutschera, “Kurdistan Turkey: PKK dissidents accuse Abdullah Ocalan,” The Middle East Magazine, July 2005, http://www.chriskutschera.com/A/pkk_dissidents.htm.
78Nazan Ustundag, “Self-Defense as a Revolutionary Practice in Rojava, or, How to Unmake the State,” South Atlantic Quarterly, January 2016, http://saq.dukejournals.org/content/115/1/197.full.pdf+html.
79Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds, 84. The members of the PKK’s first Central Committee were General Secretary Abdullah Ocalan, M. Hayri Durmuş, Cemil Bayik, Mazlum Dogan, Mehmet Karasungur, Kesire Yildirim, and Sahin Donmez.
80Marcus, Blood and Belief, 42–44. At Ocalan’s trial, he suggested that Yildirim’s splinter group may have been involved in the unsolved assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme. “Ocalan denies role in key rebel actions, Palme assassination,” CNN, June 1, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9906/01/Ocalan.02/.
Chapter 5: Kurdish Women Rising
1Darren Butler, “Slain Kurdish activist Cansiz leaves stamp on militant PKK,” Reuters, January 12, 2013, http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/01/11/france-kurds-cansiz-idINDEE90A0GU20130111.
2“The Foundation of the PKK in the Words of Sakine Cansiz,” Kurdish Question, November 2014, http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/kurdistan/north-kurdistan/the-foundation-of-the-pkk-in-the-words-of-sakine-cansiz/493-the-foundation-of-the-pkk-in-the-words-of-sakine-cansiz.html.
3Amberin Zaman, “One woman’s journey from prisoner to mayor,” Al-Monitor, March 23, 2015, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/turkey-woman-in-middle-east-gultan-kisanak.html.
4“Foundation of the PKK,” 2014.
5Zaman, “One woman’s journey,” 2015.
6Zaman, “One woman’s journey,” 2015.
7Constanze Letsch, “Sakine Cansiz, ‘a legend among PKK members,’” The Guardian, January 10, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/10/sakine-cansiz-pkk-kurdish-activist.
8Michael Gunter, “Murder in Paris: Parsing the Murder of Female PKK Leaders Sakine Cansiz,” Militant Leadership Monitor, 4.1, 2013, http://www.mesop.de/murder-in-paris-parsing-the-murder-of-female-pkk-leader-sakine-cansiz/; “Three PKK members killed in Paris attack,” Daily Hurriyet, January 10, 2013, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/three-pkk-members-killed-in-paris-attack.aspx?pageID=238&nID=38748&NewsCatID=338.
9Letsch, “Sakine Cansiz,” 2013.
10Susan Fraser, “Sakine Cansiz Murdered: PKK Founder’s Execution Highlights Women’s Role in Kurdish Insurgency,” AP, January 11, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/sakine-cansiz-pkk-execution-kurdish-women_n_2457081.html.
11“Sakine Cansiz,” [obituary], The Telegraph, April 11, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9988186/Sakine-Cansiz.html.
12Butler, “Slain Kurdish activist Cansiz leaves stamp,” 2013.
13Aliza Marcus, Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 173.
14Delal Afsin Nurhak, “The Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Movement,” n.d., http://www.pkkonline.com/en/index.php?sys=article&artID=180.
15Andreas (Marburg), “Zur Geschichte und Politik der Arbeiterpartei Kurdistans (PKK),” [“The History and Politics of the PKK”] 1997, passages translated for the author by Miriam Frank, https://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/isku/hintergrund/geschichte/hausarbeitpkk.htm.
16“The Kurdistan Women’s Liberation Movement for a Universal Women’s Struggle,” Komalen Jinen Kurdistan, March 2011, http://www.kjk-online.org/hakkimizda/?lang=en.
17“Women’s Army: PKK 5th Congress Reso,” Kurdistan Committee of Canada, August 6, 1995, http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/old-apc-conference.mideast.kurds/1995-August/000972.html.
18Deryagul Beran, “Women’s Army In Kurdistan,” Kurdistan Report, 20, January–Feburary, 1995, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/011.html.
19Xiaolin Li, “Chinese Women Soldiers: A Legacy of 5,000 Years,” Social Education 58 (2), 1994, National Council for Social Studies, 180; http://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/se/5802/580201.html.
20Benedetta Argentiers, “Iraq’s Largest Kurdish Faction Excludes Women From the Front Line,” War Is Boring, November 10, 2015, http://warisboring.com/articles/iraqs-largest-kurdish-faction-excludes-wom
en-from-the-front-line/.
21Aaronette M. White, “All the Men are Fighting for Freedom, All the Women are Mourning Their Men, But Some of Us Carried Guns: Fanon’s Psychological Perspectives on War and African Women Combatants,” Boston Consortium for Gender, Security and Human Rights, Working Paper No. 302, 2006, http://genderandsecurity.org/projects-resources/working-papers/all-men-are-fighting-freedom-all-women-are-mourning-their-men-some.
22Maxine Molyneux, “Mobilization without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State, and Revolution in Nicaragua,” Feminist Studies, 11:2, Summer 1985, 245.
23Maya Arakon, “Kurdish Women’s Unknown History of Struggle,” Revolutionary Strategic Studies, March 31, 2015, https://revolutionarystrategicstudies.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/kurdish-womens-unknown-history-of-struggle/.
24Constanze Letsch, “Kurdish women pray for peace as fears of civil war in Turkey mount,” The Guardian, August 15, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/16/women-join-kurdish-rebel-ranks
25Giuliana Sgrena, “Commander Nesrin Abdullah: The Other Half of Rojava,” The Bullet, July 7, 2015, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1137.php.
26“Rojava: the women who wove a revolution,” Jinha, July 17, 2015, http://jinha.com.tr/en/ALL-NEWS/content/view/26719.
27Cynthia Cockburn, “World disarmament? Start by disarming masculinity,” openDemocracy 5050, April 30, 2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/cynthia-cockburn/world-disarmament-start-by-disarming-masculinity.
28Madeleine Rees, “Syrian women demand to take part in the peace talks in Geneva,” openDemocracy 5050, January 12, 2014, https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/madeleine-rees/syrian-women-demand-to-take-part-in-peace-talks-in-geneva; “PYD Co-chair Moslem: We won’t recognize a Geneva-3 excluding Kurds,” ANF, January 31, 2016, http://anfenglish.com/features/pyd-co-chair-moslem-we-won-t-recognise-a-geneva-3-excluding-kurds.
29“Nairobi Declaration on Women and Girls’ Right to a Remedy and Reparations,” 2007, https://www.fidh.org/en/issues/women-s-rights/NAIROBI-DECLARATION-ON-WOMEN-S-AND.
30John Power, “Can Women End Korean War? After DMZ Crossing, Gloria Steinem says, ‘Yes,’” Christian Science Monitor, May 25, 2015, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2015/0525/Can-women-end-Korean-War-After-DMZ-crossing-Gloria-Steinem-says-Yes.
31Houzan Mahmoud, “Kurdish Female Fighters and Kobane Style Revolution,” Huffington Post, October 7, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/houzan-mahmoud/kurdish-female-fighters-_b_5944382.html.
32Dilar Dirik, “Kurdish Women’s Radical Self-Defense: Armed and Political,” Telesur, July 7, 2015, http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Kurdish-Womens-Radical-Self-Defense-Armed-and-Political-20150707-0002.html.
33Evren Kocabicak, “Interview with the World’s First Army of Women: YJA-Star,” Maoist Road, March 23, 2015, http://maoistroad.blogspot.com/2015/08/interview-with-worlds-first-army-of.html.
34Abdullah Ocalan, Liberating Life: Woman’s Revolution (Cologne: International Initiative Edition, 2014, 36, http://www.freeOcalan.org/?page_id=267.
35Ocalan, Liberating Life, 52.
36Handan Caglayan, “From Kawa the Blacksmith to Ishtar the Goddess: Gender Constructions in Ideological-Political Discourses of the Kurdish Movement in post-1980 Turkey,” European Journal of Turkish Studies, 2012, 19, https://ejts.revues.org/4657.
37“Sakine Cansiz,” (obituary), The Telegraph, April 11, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9988186/Sakine-Cansiz.html; Fraser, “Sakine Cansiz Murdered,” 2013; Olivier Grojean, “Self-Immolations by Kurdish Activists in Turkey and Europe,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 25, December 2012, 159–168.
38Gita Sahgal, “Legislating Utopia: Violence Against Women: Identities and Interventions,” The Situated Politics of Belonging, ed. Nira Yuval-Davis, Kalpana Kannabiran, and Ulrike M. Vieten, SAGE Studies in International Sociology 55 (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2006), 217.
39Michael Taussig, “The Mastery of Non-Mastery,” Public Seminar, Aug. 7, 2015, http://www.publicseminar.org/2015/08/the-mastery-of-non-mastery/.
40“We reproduce below a very informative Ask May Anything (AMA) from Reddit with a verified PKK fighter active in Kobane, Cizre, Bakur (Turkey) and Bashur (Iraq),” Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland), Facebook, July 20, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/WorkersSolidarityMovement/photos/a.974071899285290.1073741894.132000150159140/1175786155780529/.
41Janet Biehl, “Paradoxes of a Liberatory Ideology,” Biehl on Bookchin, November 22, 2015, http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/paradoxes-liberatory-ideology/.
42McDowall, Modern History, 442.
43Paul White, Primitive Rebels or Revolutionary Modernizers? The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey (London: Zed Books, 2000), 122, 184.
44Tim Weiner, “U.S. Helped Turkey Find and Capture Kurd Rebel,” The New York Times, February 20, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/20/world/us-helped-turkey-find-and-capture-kurd-rebel.html; Tony Karon, “Behind Ocalan’s Capture: Deceit, Abduction—and the Mossad,” TIME, February 17, 1999, http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,20031,00.html; Marcus, Blood and Belief, 270–79.
45Olivier Grojean, “Self-immolations,” 2012; “Syrian Kurds Find Refuge in Camp Named after Suicide Bomber,” Agence France Press, October 20, 2014, http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/syrian-kurds-find-refuge-in-camp-named-after-suicide-bomber-682131; Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya and Joost Jongerden, “The PKK in the 2000s: Continuity through breaks?” in Marlies Casier and Joost Jongerden, Nationalism and Politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish Issue (London: Routledge, 2011), 143, https://www.academia.edu/376934/The_PKK_in_the_2000s_Continuity_through_breaks.
46“Capture of PKK Leader Causes Worldwide Kurdish Protest,” Transnational Communities Program, Economic and Social Research Council, Oxford, n.d., http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/traces/iss5pg1.htm; “Kurds storm UNHCR headquarters; new protests erupt,” CNN, February 17, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9902/17/Ocalan.protest.02/.
47Marcus, Blood and Belief, 282–4.
48Chris Kutschera, “Kurdistan Turkey: Revelations on the Ocalan System,” The Middle East Magazine, May 20, 2000, http://www.chris-kutschera.com/A/RevelationsPKK.htm.
49Marcus, Blood and Belief, 286–7.
50Akkaya and Jongerden, “PKK in the 2000s,” 2011.
51“Erdogan: Kurdish leader should have hung,” Al Jazeera, June 10, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2011/06/201161010254112644.html.
52Ali Kemal Ozcan, Turkey’s Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan (London: Routledge, 2006), 91; Abdullah Ocalan, Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation (London: Pluto Press, 2007) 312–13; Nick Danforth, “An Imprisoned Nationalist Reads Benedict Anderson,” Dissent, March 7, 2013, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/an-imprisoned-nationalist-reads-benedict-anderson; Janet Biehl, “Bookchin, Ocalan and the Dialectics of Democracy,” New Compass, February 16, 2012, http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-öcalan-and-dialectics-democracy.
53Abdullah Ocalan, “Declaration of Democratic Confederalism in Kurdistan,” March 20, 2005, http://www.freeOcalan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ocalan-Democratic-Confederalism.pdf.
54Janet Biehl, “Kurdish Communalism,” New Compass, September 10, 2011, http://new-compass.net/article/kurdish-communalism.
55Danforth, “An Imprisoned Nationalist.”
56Aliza Marcus interviewed many of those who had left for Blood and Belief. See also Peter Nowak, “KURDISTAN: ‘The PKK is threatened with decay,’” [interview with Selahattin Celik], Green Left, April 12, 2000, https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/22584.
57“Osman Ocalan’s Marriage Ties PKK Into Knots,” Today’s Zaman, March 3, 2004, http://www.todayszaman.com/national_osman-Ocalans-marriage-ties-pkk-into-knots_5937.html; Chris Kutschera, “Kurdistan Turkey: PKK dissidents accuse Abdullah Ocalan,” The Middle East Magazine, July 2005, http://www.chriskutschera.com/A/pkk_dissidents.htm.
58International Crisis Group, “Turkey: Ending the PKK Insurgency,” September 20
, 2011, 1, http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/turkey-cyprus/turkey/213; Paul White, The PKK: Coming Down From the Mountains (London: Zed Books, 2015), 73, 100–101.
59Dan Bilefsky and Alan Cowell, “3 Kurds Are Killed in Paris, in Locked-Door Mystery,” The New York Times, January 10, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/world/europe/three-kurdish-activists-killed-in-central-paris.html?_r=0.
60Fraser, “Sakine Cansiz Murdered,” 2013.
61Gianluca Mezzofiore, “Is Turkey Responsible for 2013 Paris Murder of PKK Founder Sakine Cansiz?” International Business Times, January 17, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/turkey-responsible-2013-paris-murder-pkk-co-founder-sakine-cansiz-1432756.
62Harvey Morris, “Who Ordered the Killing of Sakine Cansiz?” Rudaw, January 29, 2014, http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/29012014.
63“French inquiry implicates Turkish secret services in Paris Kurds’ murder,” Radio France Internationale, July 23, 2015, http://www.english.rfi.fr/europe/20150723-french-inquiry-implicates-turkish-secret-services-pariskurds-murder.
Chapter 6: Democratic Autonomy in Turkey and Syria
1Aliza Marcus, “Asia Minority,” Tablet, October 21, 2010, http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/47397/asia-minority.
2Jon Gorvett, “Release of Kurdish Politician Leyla Zana Ends Awkward Episode for Ankara,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2004, http://www.wrmea.org/2004-september/talking-turkey-release-of-kurdish-parliamentarian-leyla-zana-ends-awkward-episode-for-ankara.html.