Falling from Grace: Gender norms and gender strategies in Eastern Turkey (original) (raw)
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The prominence of Kurdish women in Rojava (western Kurdistan/northern Syria) inspired us initially to understand the historical role of women in the Kurdish political movement. We were also interested in the role of Kurdish women in challenging traditional patriarchal society and rules. As part of this wider project, we wanted to hear the thoughts of Gültan Kışanak, the female co-mayor of Diyarbakır, the largest Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey.
European journal of Turkish studies
One of the distinctive characteristics of the Kurdish movement 1 in post-1980 Turkey is the fact that the movement has been successful in mobilizing women in masses. Women's participation in Kurdish rebellions is not unprecedented. There were women participants among the revolting forces in Kurdish rebellions of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. However, these women were exceptionally low in numbers, and they consisted mainly of wives, daughters, and relatives of the leaders of the revolts. After 1980, in contrast, women participated in the Kurdish movement to such a degree that the gender composition of the movement in general was seriously affected. Throughout the 1990s, many women went up to the mountains in order to join the 'guerrillas.' In the legal field, women started to take active roles in civil society organizations that opposed human rights violations and in pro-Kurdish political parties. Within these organizations, women reached influential positions both in decision-making and in administration, and were even elected as mayors and deputies. Besides these activities, women's success in bringing up questions regarding women's equality and injecting these questions into the political agenda of the Kurdish movement has led some to analyze Kurdish women's dynamism within the context of black feminism. 2 From Kawa the Blacksmith to Ishtar the Goddess: Gender Constructions in Ideol...
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SAGE Open, 2022
Apart from the traditional Kurdish gender regime, which originates from the Kurdish tribal structure and which to some extent restricts the visibility of women in society, the status of Kurdish women is considered to be relatively high in comparison with that of their neighbors, since Kurdish women enjoy relative tolerance in society. This includes the possibility of reaching high professional positions, their presence in public spaces, and entertaining guests in the absence of their husbands. Certain socio-economic and political transformations took place in recent decades, which improved Kurdish women’s social standing, turning it into a symbol representing fundamental change in the gender role model in the Middle East. Although there are some studies on the status of Kurdish women in different individual Kurdish regions throughout the Middle East, not many reviews have compared the four parts of Kurdistan simultaneously, and there are hardly any specific analyses dealing with Kurdish women’s interactions in public spaces. This review aims to investigate the status of women in Kurdish society in different Kurdish regions according to a comparative approach. Although the path of Kurdish female emancipation was initiated first in the region of Rojhalat in 1946 and the Kurdish region of Iraq was granted some opportunities toward national liberation in 1991, the Bakur in Turkey can be considered a successful movement, establishing a sustained approach to the liberation of Kurdish women from patriarchal structures. During the Rojava Revolution in northern Syria, this movement proved itself able to build an indigenous alternative to Western-type egalitarian societies.
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