Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey

Abstract

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.

Gendering Resistance: Multiple Faces of the Kurdish Women's Struggle

“…There are various perspectives developed by scholars who study Kurdish women's mobilization in Turkey and Kurdistan: those who understand it within the genre of “women and war” (e.g., Begikhani, Hamelink, and Weiss ), those who emphasize its subversive and transgressive practices around peace, justice, and democracy (e.g., Sirman ), and those who regard it within the framework of nationalism and feminism (e.g., Al‐Ali and Taş ). In conversation with these perspectives, but also departing from them, I suggest that analyses that mainly draw on women's presence in the armed forces are not sufficient in explaining how a broader revolutionary transformation in the gendered texture of everyday life takes place.…”

Who Is Patriarchal? The Correlates of Patriarchy in Turkey

“…11 Indeed, we see several egalitarian policies and practices within Turkey's Kurdish movement (such as the system of co-chair -women co-chairing with men -and quotas favouring women). 12 As a result, women have become increasingly visible and influential within the legal and illegal branches of the Kurdish movement in the last decades, serving in various echelons and positions, such as politicians, deputies, mayors, party officials and administrators, civil society representatives and activists (see also Al-Ali & Tas 2018;Bengio 2016;Çağlayan 2020;Grabolle-Çeliker 2019;Gunes 2012). The statistical results, however, indicate that there is still a major gap between the Kurdish ethnopolitical movement and the Kurdish masses in terms of patriarchal orientations.…”

Clashes, collaborations and convergences: evolving relations of Turkish and Kurdish women’s rights activists

“…14 Many Kurdish women initially got politicized via the PKK and its affiliated women's organizations, which grew over the past decades. 19 It is beyond the scope of this article to go into any depth in terms of the history of Kurdish women's rights activism, which has been written about eloquently by several authors. 20 Here we would like to mainly stress the significance of the wider Kurdish movement in generating a vibrant and outspoken Kurdish women's movement, partly by enabling women's participation in both armed and political struggle but also, inadvertently, by marginalizing women and displaying patriarchal attitudes towards gender norms, which led to gendered resistance within.…”