{"id":4100,"date":"2026-11-08T00:59:30","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T23:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laboratoria.red\/?post_type=avada_portfolio&p=4100"},"modified":"2026-11-09T23:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T22:23:17","slug":"an-approach-to-orientation-and-internationalism","status":"publish","type":"avada_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/laboratoria.red\/en\/publicacion\/an-approach-to-orientation-and-internationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"An approach to orientation and internationalism: \u201chearing the echo of our own struggles in the struggles of others.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dos<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

An interview with Somayeh Rostampour<\/b><\/h2>\n

By Ver\u00f3nica Gago and Marta Malo<\/b><\/h3>\n

Translation into English by Jennie Gant<\/i><\/p>\n

Somayeh Rostampour is an Iranian Kurdish activist, committed to the Kurdish struggle and revolutionary feminism. She is a member of Roja, an independent, internationalist and diaspora-based feminist collective, formed in the wake of the murder of Jina (Mahsa) Amini and the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement in Iran in September 2022. Drawing on her passionate political engagement, Somayeh wrote Femmes en armes, savoirs en r\u00e9volte. Du militantisme kurde \u00e0 la Jineoloj\u00ee, (Women in Arms, Knowledge in Revolt: From Kurdish Activism to Jineology), \u00c9ditions Agone, 2025. She takes her theoretical work just as seriously as the painstaking liaison work through which she contributes to grassroots internationalism in alliance with The Peoples Want collective<\/a>.
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

In June 2025, we were able to have a lengthy conversation with her in Paris, where she has been living in exile since 2016. Her radical theoretical commitment and urgent desire to change everything were interwoven with hospitality and food, humility, and humour, in an interview which lasted almost four hours. Here is the edited version.<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n

Ver\u00f3nica Gago and Marta Malo.<\/span><\/b> We\u2019d like to begin by asking how you interpret the current situation, starting with the genocide in Gaza, but with new military turns every day, such as with the recent attacks by Israel and the US against Iran.1<\/a><\/sup> At times, it becomes very difficult from an anti-imperialist feminist perspective to understand and keep up with events. We\u2019d like you to explain what is meant by the \u2018campist\u2019 position (which divides the entire geopolitical landscape into just two possible camps) that you are challenging. Now, with multiple war scenarios unfolding simultaneously, such debates feel more urgent than ever, but their terms change daily.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Somayeh Rostampour. <\/b><\/span>Our analysis is based on two points: the feminist perspective and the experience of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which was an anti-imperialist revolution \u2014 an especially important example for many intellectuals and activists, from Foucault to Sartre. It was a revolution against the Shah, but as the Shah was a figure aligned with the United States, it was also a revolution against imperialism, against imposed Western politics and values, the spirit of which dates back to the coup d\u2019\u00e9tat orchestrated by the United States against Mohammad Mosaddeq two decades earlier2<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n

There is a clear anti-imperialist consciousness among Kurds, which goes back to the partition of Kurdistan by France, the United States, and Great Britain following the First World War. But the anti-imperialist revolution in Iran had tragic consequences for many people, particularly for women and for the national minorities living in Iran, including Baluchis, Arabs, and other, stemming from an oppressive interpretation of Persian and Islamic values, as a symbol of resistance against Western values.<\/p>\n

In my experience as a Kurdish woman, the collective memory of the revolution in Iran is inseparable from Khomeini\u2019s jihad<\/em> against Kurdistan, just a few months after the revolution. And in my experience as a woman, it is linked to what some feminists call gender apartheid. This is a hyper-masculinist state and society which places us in a position of inequality in every area; in education, at work, before the law, and in the political and public spheres.<\/p>\n

For us, the United States, Israel, and Europe are imperialist; we have no doubt about that. But the question is whether other countries \u2014 such as China and Russia, which are aiding Iran, Syria, and all these post-colonial nations established in the early 20th century which are quite different from Western social democracies \u2014 are not also imperialist. My reflection also touches on the construction of nation-states, where nationalism and national identities carry great weight and serve as a means to erase minorities. In the case of Iran, the nation is linked to Persian identity, with glorifying references to a supposed golden age of the Persian Empire, even though 40 percent of Iran\u2019s population is not Persian. Following the revolution, an Islamist layer was added to this nationalist narrative. In both perspectives, the Kurds and other minorities are completely absent, as if they did not exist. In the case of women, in countries such as Turkey, Egypt, and Iran in the 1960s, the nationalist narrative was more ambivalent, because it did include a form of liberal feminism, with that Western-oriented idea of the educated woman, who is also the mother of the nation. But in Iran, with the Republic established following the revolution, the woman ceased to exist.<\/p>\n

When we speak of the fascistization of society, the first thing that springs to mind is this violence that occurs under these post-colonial regimes, supported by the West or by other powers that are also imperialist, such as Russia or China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran itself. We mustn\u2019t forget Iran\u2019s intervention in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, so as not to view it solely as a victim of imperialism, particularly now that the image of Iran as a victim is being amplified by the attacks from Israel and the United States. Iran has been involved in massacres and crimes in many countries. This is abundantly clear to the Kurds.<\/p>\n

During the first ten years of the establishment of the Republic of Iran, there was a great deal of violence, many political prisoners \u2014 this is a well-known history \u2014 but there is another form of ongoing violence, which has persisted to this day, which is not talked about as much. For us, this fascistization is linked to state violence, so we cannot separate state violence from our anti-imperialist analysis. From our exile, as a diaspora, we try to challenge the narrative in which there are only two opposing camps, and you have to take a stance on one side or the other. From our perspective, it is not only the imperialist violence of the United States and Israel \u2014 which is undeniable \u2014 but also that of other imperialist powers intervening in the region, such as China and Russia, or of states like Iran or Turkey, which are expansionist or semi-imperialist. We can characterize their position however we like, but the important point is that, whilst they have been historical victims of major imperialist powers, they are also participating in and contributing to a global imperial dynamic in their efforts to carve out a place for themselves in the global order, by oppressing other populations in their region, seizing territory, and carrying out ethnic cleansing. Without Iran\u2019s intervention in Syria, Assad would have fallen during the Arab Spring. The consequence of this support was the displacement of thousands of people and the tragic killing of thousands more.<\/p>\n

This expansionist drive is accompanied by state violence against its own citizens and by the militarization of the country\u2019s borders, particularly the Kurdish borders. When I speak to Kurdish comrades these days, almost all of them tell me, \u2018We have been in a state of war for forty years; this is nothing new.\u2019 Everyday life under the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been impacted by this militarization. For those who have grown up in this political culture, it is ridiculous to say that the only enemy is the United States and that the Islamic Republic of Iran is merely a victim.<\/p>\n

As part of the diaspora, it was essential to explain this. Iran has been very isolated, and the resistance has few resources; most materials have not been translated, and so on. I myself do not have enough information about many African countries, so I try to find trusted comrades who can keep me informed. That is why we are trying to build networks, to develop an internationalist discourse rooted in the territories. But people with more \u2018campist\u2019 positions don\u2019t even ask us. They\u2019ve already formed their analysis and don\u2019t want us to cast doubt on their narrative. Campist anti-imperialism, which only recognises a binary of aggressor and victim, sometimes serves to whitewash deeply authoritarian regimes. It is a kind of \u2018anti-imperialist-washing<\/em>\u2019 that functions just like \u2018pinkwashing\u2019 or \u2018greenwashing\u2019, as a political and cognitive operation that flattens our understanding of geopolitical orders. This \u2018anti-imperialist-washing\u2019 has helped to rebuild the international legitimacy that the Islamic Republic had lost following the 2022 national uprising and the Jina rebellion, particularly amongst the left and feminist movements. In other words, it works against all the efforts of activists within the country.<\/p>\n

We women in Iran have been traumatized by this. On the first 8 March after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a mass demonstration was organized against the compulsory hijab. Thousands of women took to the streets in Tehran and in many cities across Kurdistan. Many left-wing organisations not only refused to join the demonstration but also attacked the women who had organized it, claiming that they could not call into question an anti-imperialist revolution in this way. Some of the most prominent figures in the Iranian feminist movement at the time recorded videos declaring that they were prepared to accept the hijab as a symbol of identity and resistance against imperialism. They defended it as a price to be paid for the revolution. We now realize that this was a huge mistake, one we do not wish to repeat. No revolution can force us to accept our own oppression.<\/p>\n

\"Manifestaci\u00f3n

Iranian women protesting against the compulsory hijab law imposed in the name of anti-imperialism and local culture in opposition to the West. Tehran, 1979. Photograph by Hengameh Golestan.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

VG\/MM. <\/b>What would you say are the positions on this issue within feminisms today?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>Among left-wing feminists, I think there are three distinct positions. I\u2019m not referring to liberal feminists, because most of them are pro-Western, applaud imperialism and war, and fuel Islamophobia. I\u2019m thinking here, for example, of Masih Alinejad, whom the Islamic Republic of Iran has tried to kill. She lives in the United States and is constantly invited on all the European media and has a narrative that doesn\u2019t even mention the genocide in Palestine. She believes in war to bring democracy to the Middle East, and so on. In short, it\u2019s ridiculous. These kinds of figures do not represent us at all. We left-wing feminists are clear that we cannot ignore Israel\u2019s military power, which is supported by almost every other country, or the regional dynamics at play, where the United States can strike wherever and whenever it pleases. Nor can we ignore the impact of sanctions, which don\u2019t affect the Iranian government or the oligarchy \u2014and they have grown richer during this period \u2014 but do affect the people living in the country.<\/p>\n

Bearing in mind these dynamics and, in particular, the genocide in Palestine, there are comrades who believe that now is not the time to discuss the violence perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran or the internal colonialism suffered by the Kurds, for example, due to the asymmetry of power between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is another position, also from the left, which is very much focused on the Islamic Republic of Iran, and which states, \u2018We are against genocide; we recognise Israel\u2019s colonial power in the region, but that is not our primary cause. Our primary cause, our primary enemy, is the Islamic Republic of Iran, because the repression and violence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is what we face on a daily basis.\u2019 This stance is held not only by politically active left-wingers but is also the most common among those who are less politically active.<\/p>\n

We support a third position, which brings together the global dynamics \u2014 the condemnation of the genocide in Gaza \u2014 with the dynamics of militarization in the region, in which Iran plays a role, because this militarization also serves to perpetuate the dictatorship. We remember the high price we paid for sidelining the Kurdish question and women\u2019s rights during the anti-imperialist revolution in Iran. We can neither ignore nor forget the thousands of people killed in prisons during the first ten years of the construction of the revolution. Many of them were Marxist women. More than two thousand women were murdered in prison without trial, after enduring severe torture. Nor can we forget Khomeini\u2019s jihad<\/em> against Kurdish values and those of minorities in general, which has been going on for 40 years. We cannot forget what we experience every day as Iranians in the Islamic Republic of Iran, as women, as queer<\/em> people, as Kurds, and so on. We cannot put all this on hold until Palestine is liberated or the war ends.<\/p>\n

We actually believe it is precisely the other way round, because after the war, all these people will be the regime\u2019s primary targets, and this is the reality we face most of the time. This is exactly what has just happened. The day after the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, three Afghans were executed in Iran on the grounds that they were working for the enemy, without any trial or evidence. This was followed by the execution of three Kurdish porters3<\/a><\/sup>. So when we take to the streets, we call for a ceasefire, we condemn the United States and Israel, of course, but we also condemn the oppression perpetrated by the Republic of Iran and call out these arbitrary arrests and executions, which only escalate during periods of heightened militarization. We are therefore against war, but we also support the self-determination of peoples and oppose the colonial borders imposed by the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n

\"Manifestaci\u00f3n

Iranian women protesting against the compulsory hijab law. The banner reads: \u2018Women\u2019s freedom is neither Eastern nor Western; it is global\u2019. Tehran, 1979. Photograph by Richard Tomkins.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

VG.<\/span><\/b> This reminds me of the Falklands War, which allowed the Argentine dictatorship to mobilize and manipulate anti-imperialist and nationalist sentiment against England, while continuing to repress revolutionary activists and operate concentration camps. The idea of fighting against England and its colonial power was used to legitimize its own actions within the country, whilst at the same time resulting in a massacre of young soldiers, who were subject to conditions typical of a dictatorial regime on the battlefield.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>Within the Kurdish population, there is also a struggle for territorial self-determination which the Republic of Iran managed to portray as reactionary, separatist, and terrorist, pitting supposedly revolutionary Iranian nationalism against an allegedly backward Kurdish nationalism. But in 2022, with the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> movement, there was a turning point. For the first time in 100 years, the people united against the regime. In Tehran, for example, people were chanting, \u2018Kurdistan is the light and the eyes of Iran\u2019. There were also many messages of solidarity in Turkish for the Kurds, and Kurdish expressions for the Turks. It was truly beautiful. I wrote an article explaining why Kurdistan had been at the heart of the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> movement in 2022. Without Kurdistan, without its political memory, without its organisational networks, a movement like that would not have been possible in Iran4<\/a><\/sup>. Unfortunately, since the Twelve-Day War, we have been in the grips of a backlash, with a resurgence of anti-Kurdish nationalism.<\/p>\n

\"Mujer

Zehra Do\u011fan, Kurdistan 2, 2020 (courtesy of the artist\/Prometeogallery Ida Pisani). Zehra Do\u011fan is an artist and investigative journalist. Deeply politically committed, she has been imprisoned twice.<\/p><\/div>\n

VG\/MM. <\/b>Your interpretation of the situation is shaped by your own experience of living in the diaspora. Together with The Peoples Want, you have conceptualized the diasporic experience as the basis for a new internationalism. Could you elaborate on this idea and tell us about your journey to this point?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>I was in exile, then I returned to Iran, and I haven\u2019t been able to go back sine then. I haven\u2019t been back since 2016. When you move somewhere else, your revolutionary experiences travel with you, and the challenge is how to keep them alive wherever you end up. There is also the question of how to get involved in your new place. In my case, it\u2019s France, a colonial and deeply racist country, where I also want to get involved and fight. In this sense, I think my experience as an Iranian Kurdish feminist has helped me a great deal, because I\u2019ve always been forced to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, bringing together different struggles, which is what we have to do in exile and as immigrants. Of course it\u2019s difficult, because when you arrive in a country like this, you\u2019re just a worker. You have to face a myriad of administrative problems, and you\u2019re a victim of structural racism, on top of everyday prejudice. You find yourself losing your social standing and, all of a sudden, there\u2019s no room for politics or activism. You also have to learn a whole host of new social codes to be able to fit in, without the individual and collective resources you have in your own country.<\/p>\n

It is true that revolutionary upheavals in our countries also change the situation within the diaspora, and this was the case with the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> movement, which spread throughout the Iranian diaspora. It gave me the opportunity to meet people who had lived through the Iranian uprising of \u201979 and who are part of another revolutionary tradition that has been wiped out in Iran. You don\u2019t come across them in the country because they were all murdered or permanently silenced following imprisonment and torture. My own exile and the new uprising allowed me to meet those who had managed to flee back then and, through them, to gain access to a completely new account of what happened in Iran in \u201979. I remember one day, on my way back from the library, I came across a bookshop with books in Persian and French. I went in and met the man who ran it, who had lived through the revolution in Iran. I started going to that bookshop three or four times a week, to have tea and a chat with the bookseller. Through him, I discovered another world, another history of Iran. I learned, for example, about the role played by the Iranian Students\u2019 Confederation in the struggle against the Shah, and how they organized the entire Iranian diaspora to overthrow the monarchy. They all returned to Iran when the Shah fell, but nothing remains of their legacy. Khomeini\u2019s regime not only murdered people but also erased their stories and the entire left-wing revolutionary aspiration.<\/p>\n

The diaspora has also allowed me to meet and speak with Syrians who had been at the forefront of the movement against Assad, to understand the role that Iranian intervention played in crushing the uprising and not just understand it intellectually. I have been able to converse with people and construct an alternative narrative of the movements in our region, drawing on the parallels between one region and another, and in that effort to bring to life, and keep alive, all our aspirations. The second wave of the Arab Spring, which took place after 2018\u20132019, with uprisings from Sudan to Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, marks a turning point that allows us to intensify our discussions. And, from 2022 onwards, with the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> movement, we have also seen the very unity I have been talking about emerging within the Iranian diaspora.<\/p>\n

However, since 7 October, division has once again replaced solidarity, because Iran is exploiting the Palestinian issue. It has turned it into a matter for the regime. From their very first year at school, children are obliged to attend demonstrations in support of Palestine. It is a national ritual. The same thing happened in Assad\u2019s Syria. Many people apply the logic that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is why those who oppose the oppressive Iranian regime \u2014 the majority of the country\u2019s population \u2014 are reluctant to support the Palestinian cause. Consequently, we, as left-wingers who support Palestine but are also opposed to the Iranian regime, find ourselves in a very difficult position.<\/p>\n

We have put a great deal of effort into building autonomous narratives and practices that would make sense of both positions together and contribute to the debate by facilitating a two-way exchange of ideas. But it is true that things have become more complicated since 7 October. As a diaspora, we are in a vulnerable position; we suffer from everyday and institutional racism and are not sufficiently organized, so it has been easy to divide us.<\/p>\n

I feel as though we are living through two wars; a protracted war, imposed on our territories by the United States and Israel, and another war amongst ourselves. Geopolitical changes are happening so fast that we can\u2019t keep up with them. You feel so under pressure, so exhausted from fighting on all fronts. You\u2019re fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran as a feminist and a Kurd; against racism, Islamophobia, and colonial narratives about Muslim countries here in Europe as an immigrant and an exile; for Palestine and for the liberation of women and the Kurdish people as an internationalist and a left-winger; and so on. At the same time, there is the confusion of realising that our struggle is being exploited. We see Trump, for example, taking advantage of the joy at the fall of the dictatorship in Syria following Assad\u2019s departure; Israel, with US support, benefitting from the historical repression of national and ethnic minorities in the region. We see certain Islamophobic feminists (often with colonial and imperialist leanings) co-opting the radical, pioneering struggles of Kurdish women in Rojava or of women in Iran, putting them at the service of Eurocentric, Islamophobic, Orientalist and, at times, warmongering narratives. We even see those who staunchly defended the Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> movement in 2022 now remain silent in the face of Israel\u2019s attacks on those very same women in Iran, because they know that condemning Israel would mean expressing solidarity with Palestine, and they are unable or unwilling to take a stand against the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The \u2018Woman, Life, Freedom\u2019 movement in Iran. Pellets were fired during the crackdowns; some people were hit by as many as 200 pellets.<\/p><\/div>\n

VG\/MM. <\/span><\/b>What would be the key elements or fundamental tools for producing these autonomous narratives and practices which are both embedded in and situated within specific struggles, yet are not widely known or easily understood?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>The diasporic experience would certainly be key, because from this perspective it is easier to understand how capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and with the racism that stems from nation-states. But, at the same time, you arrive with the baggage of your country. You have lived under a dictatorship, under Islamic laws, in patriarchal societies like all others, and you also bring with you an entire political memory. The intersection of all these factors allows you to piece together a new puzzle of your own experience and, at the same time, to have a more global and inclusive perspective.<\/p>\n

Feminist friends from Iran used to ask us, \u2018Why are you so concerned about islamophobia? We live under Islamic law and we\u2019re sick of it.\u2019 I understand their position, but the view is different from a European perspective, because we are identified as immigrants from Muslim countries and it matters little whether my interpretation of Islam is different or whether I am not a practising Muslim. They are two sides of the same coin. In Iran we are forced to wear the hijab, here in France we are forced to go unveiled. That, then, would be a first point of reference \u2014 this intersection of perspectives \u2014 which is further enriched by the opportunity to connect with feminist, queer<\/em> and trans movements, as well as with other diasporas. We have already spoken about the meeting with our Syrian comrades. Another very inspiring encounter for me was with our Sudanese comrades. I think that, after Rojava, it was the revolution that inspired me the most.<\/p>\n

It is not just about coming together and learning from other experiences, it is also about building mutual trust, hearing the echo of our own struggles in the struggles of others, realizing that we are not a minority, that there are many of us who have experienced revolutionary events, that we are feminists, that we are against dictatorship in our own countries, but also against the United States, and against Israel. Building on that, there has been a conscious effort to gather and build something together, despite the limited resources we have. So, we have connected with comrades from Algeria, Palestine, Afghanistan, and so on.<\/p>\n

From within the diaspora, we also gain a better understanding of the dynamics involved in reclaiming our narratives. For example, there have been two significant instances in which Rojava\u2019s revolutionary feminist narrative has been completely co-opted by liberal, imperial, and colonial feminism. The first was in 2014\u201315, when Kurdish female fighters in Rojava were battling Daesh. The Kurdish movement was portrayed as a purely military movement, ignoring the fact that it is a revolutionary organization comprising millions of people, with social and political aspects far more significant than military ones. Furthermore, the struggle of Kurdish women for survival \u2014 against Daesh and against Assad\u2019s forces \u2014 was used to fuel Islamophobic narratives, as if Kurdish women were the only liberated women in the region. The courage of Kurdish women was built house by house, street by street, from the prisons to the mountains, through a feminist activism rooted in everyday life. It was by no means elitist, it was highly politicised and, at the same time, deeply grassroots. To suddenly see how all of this was being exploited to fuel Islamophobia and justify the intervention of colonial powers in the Middle East was horrifying.<\/p>\n

The second time we suffered this exploitation was in 2022, with Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em>, which was a revolutionary feminist movement. The slogan originates from the Kurdish movement and has a clear anti-imperialist and anti-colonial message. We have been using it at demonstrations here in Paris since 2014, although many of my feminist comrades from Iran heard it for the first time in 2022, because of the divide that exists between Kurdish women and other Iranian women. Until 2022, the Kurdish narrative had been a peripheral one; it had no place within the general feminist narrative in Iran. It is often difficult to bring peripheral political proposals into the mainstream. It usually happens the other way round, the proposals come from the centre and we simply consume them. Autonomy also means that: breaking away from that relationship of consumption and producing your own narrative.<\/p>\n

So, from 2022 onwards, the slogan Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> has found a place, both in the country and everywhere else, and retains that feminist and revolutionary potential. But, for the second time, we are witnessing its instrumentalization here in Europe. Liberal women who couldn\u2019t care less about the lives of women in Muslim countries, who had never taken an interest in our struggles or our problems, are suddenly rallying round because they see the issue of the hijab taking centre stage. But the 2022 movement wasn\u2019t just about the hijab. It was an intersectional movement against an entire system.<\/p>\n

These people who \u2018showed solidarity\u2019 with our movement because it suited them to legitimize their Islamophobia and attack Muslim women living in Europe, and humiliate them for wearing the hijab, are now either supporting or remaining silent in the face of Israel\u2019s genocide against Palestine. There is a Persian television channel, based in the UK, which is very popular in Iranian households. It is a highly reactionary, pro-Israeli channel. Journalists from this channel went to Gaza and wrote about a ruined building bearing the words Woman, Life, Freedom<\/em>. It was appalling.<\/p>\n

These are things that, if you live in Iran or Syria, you might not see quite so clearly, because you don\u2019t experience racism the way we do here; you\u2019re immersed in your own struggle, your own cause, your own survival. In the diaspora, all this becomes clearer. You see that the instrumentalization of our struggles has nothing to do with solidarity. It\u2019s another form of extractivism. They extract value from our fights just as they extract value from our lands; they steal and strip our slogans of their meaning in the same way that they steal from and drain the oil deposits.<\/p>\n

Of course, we must not abandon our struggles and slogans because of this; that would be to yield to the ongoing counter-revolution. As a diaspora, we resist this trivialization of our discourses; we remain feminists and queer; we fight to restore our slogans to their full meaning. These are slogans steeped in history and revolutionary memory, which we have spent decades building together. We cannot simply throw them away; that would be to capitulate to dispossession. But the Western appropriation of radical movements from the Global South forces those very same peoples to fight, too, to prove the legitimacy of their struggles. In the case of Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em>, following its instrumentalization, the movement\u2019s legitimacy was undermined amongst left-wing and decolonial circles abroad, and today it is not only in urgent need of recovery, but it also demands a redoubling of efforts on our part.<\/p>\n

\"Mujeres

Mothers for Justice Movement. Struggles for their murdered children during the <\/span>Woman, Life, Freedom<\/i><\/span> protests. Iranian Kurdistan, 2022<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

VG\/MM. <\/span><\/b>Tell us a little more about the origins of the slogan \u2018Woman, Life, Freedom\u2019.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>The history dates back to the Kurdish political movement founded in 1978 in Turkey. The Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey\u2019s population, but for years they have been referred to as \u2018mountain Turks\u2019, in a move to deny their existence and identity. The first woman to be elected to the Turkish Parliament was Leyla Zana, a Kurdish woman who was sentenced to ten years in prison for calling for unity between Kurds and Turks in Parliament and for doing so in Kurdish.<\/p>\n

Her story is remarkably interesting. Her husband was involved with the PKK and was imprisoned, so she found herself alone with her children, very young, with almost no education, unable to speak or write Turkish, and having to take charge of her husband\u2019s defence, prison visits, everything. She met other Kurdish women at the prison gates and gradually became politicized, eventually becoming the first woman MP in the history of the Kurdish movement. This is the core of the Kurdish movement; it\u2019s deeply rooted in the people and predominantly rural.<\/p>\n

The PKK was Marxist until, in 1995, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global political upheaval, it shifted its paradigm and rhetoric, moving towards a form of communalism based on three main pillars: women, ecology and the commons. Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> emerged in this context within the Kurdish movement as a slogan against femicide, referring not only to violence against women by their partners or other men, but also to state violence against Kurdish women and against life in general.<\/p>\n

There is also a distinctive feature of the Kurdish women\u2019s movement. There have been women fighters in many revolutions, but there are very few movements where the revolutionary cause and the women\u2019s cause go hand in hand. In fact, in most revolutions throughout history, it has been argued that the feminist fight must be left until later because the main contradiction lies elsewhere. But later means never. In the Kurdish movement, this is not the case: the feminist revolution is a priority, and that is so wonderful. Of course, the first generation had to fight hard to achieve this, but they were tenacious. They said that revolution is revolution; it means turning everything upside down.<\/p>\n

Now the Kurdish women\u2019s movement is autonomous. All decisions regarding gender \u2014 whether in mixed or women-only organisations, whether on the streets or in the mountains \u2014 rest with women. And there is a very rich organizational network, house by house, with training spaces for women in every neighbourhood, where you see a student doing a Master\u2019s in sociology in Istanbul alongside a woman who has five children and has never been to school, the two of them talking together about violence against women, getting organized together. Dance, songs, and stories play a very important role. It is a non-elitist, very grassroots, and enormously powerful movement.<\/p>\n

Of course, when you describe it, it sounds lovely, but we mustn\u2019t forget that behind it all lies terrifying violence. We have experienced a great deal of violence in my region, but I have never heard of violence as ruthless as that perpetrated by the Turkish army against the Kurds. It is not just the massacres, but also the sheer number of forced displacements, of lives destroyed by war, of young people who become politically active at the age of fourteen or fifteen and by the time they are eighteen have joined the armed struggle, most of whom are killed before the age of 30.<\/p>\n

Death is always lying in wait. It is rare to meet anyone who does not have two to four loved ones martyred by the government. For some, the number is as high as ten. In the face of this omnipresent death imposed by the Turkish state, simply living is a fundamental part of the fight. This is where the role of women, as the keepers of the memory of those murdered, is crucial. I believe there are parallels with the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who have been an inspiration to Kurdish women. Kurdish mothers march in the front row of many demonstrations, carrying pictures of their murdered sons and daughters. The chant Jin, Jiyan, Azad\u00ee<\/em> emerged more or less spontaneously from 2008 onwards at these demonstrations.<\/p>\n

It then became increasingly established, until the female fighters of Rojava adopted it as their slogan. If you ask them, they say it is a slogan against misogynistic power, against the disciplining of the body, against patriarchal, familial, and religious systems, but also against the imperialist power that seeks to annihilate them. I remember one of the women I met on the outskirts of Kobani in 2014, when Kobani was under siege by Daesh. We saw the Islamic State\u2019s flags with our own eyes. This mother said to me: \u201cAs human beings, we deserve the freedom to live; isn\u2019t that a basic right?\u201d Freedom in this context has nothing to do with the liberal approach. There, every night, we would say goodbye to young people who would leave at dawn, never to return. So, the freedom this mother spoke of was a freedom linked to survival, to the reproduction of life, which is in crisis.<\/p>\n

\"Mujeres

Mothers\u2019 Movement\/People\u2019s Saturday Movement. From 27 May 1995, they began demonstrating every Saturday in Galatasaray Square in Istanbul to demand justice for their children who had disappeared during the Kurdish conflict<\/span>.<\/p><\/div>\n

VG\/MM. <\/span><\/b>In your book, you describe how women arm themselves and the resulting subjective displacement. How is warlike masculinity transformed in this context?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>The feminism we find in the Kurdish tradition is a highly militant decolonial feminism, which politicizes everyday life and is intimately linked to the social movement and the fight for liberation. In fact, we can say that it is not a feminism born of the global feminist waves, but a product of the Kurdish liberation movement itself, which impacts every aspect of life. In Kurdistan, they don\u2019t use the word feminism. They prefer to speak of the Kurdish women\u2019s liberation movement and use the term jinealogy, the science of women. They believe that feminism has been co-opted and instrumentalized by colonial imperialism in Turkey, so they prefer to distinguish themselves by using different terminology.<\/p>\n

This is linked to the history of the feminist movement in Turkey, particularly in the 1980s. It was a form of feminism built around a universal definition of womanhood that paid no heed to state violence against the Kurds, nor against Kurdish women. For its part, the Kurdish movement, in its early days, was a liberation movement like so many others, centred heavily on masculinist figures \u2014 the male hero who takes up arms and saves his nation, represented as a mother. We are familiar with this nationalist-masculinist narrative of liberation movements. But what is interesting about the Kurdish movement is that at a certain point, particularly from 1992 onwards in the face of increasingly brutal state violence, everyone got mobilized, including women. For the first time, thousands of women joined the armed struggle and things began to change.<\/p>\n

There was a first generation that embraced the logic of adopting masculinist ideas, to prove that they could fight like a man, or better. A paradigm of sacrifice took hold, in which women gave their all both within the family and in politics. But the sheer number of them enabled them, little by little, to become more aware and to distance themselves from this paradigm. At the same time, they began to create a single-sex organisation within the guerrilla movement in the mountains and later replicated that organization within the political structure. Between 1992 and 1995, the movement progressed from the first all-women\u2019s battalion to the first all-women\u2019s army. The Western media were stunned when women led the liberation of Kobane, in Rojava in 2014, but for us it was only natural. It was the logical outcome of the entire process that had gone before. This has completely transformed the meanings of masculinity and femininity in the Kurdish collective imagination.<\/p>\n

I believe there are two key elements to understanding this transformation. On one side, I think it has to do with a very grassroots approach to organization, which takes the struggle into every sphere of daily life \u2014 into neighbourhoods, workplaces and from house to house \u2014 with a strong emphasis on mutual support and political education. This ensures that female fighters are always in contact with other women, engaging in open conversations about violence, politics, and the economy. The other decisive factor is having created their own structures and consistently maintained a dual form of activism, both in women-only spaces and in mixed-gender spaces. This balances the power dynamics.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are many contradictions. The armed struggle remains rooted in masculinist values. However, the powerful single-sex organization also reflects the widespread segregation that exists between men and women in society. How can one support one without reinforcing the other? The third contradiction, for me, is that of feminism. When I first encountered the Kurdish women\u2019s movement, my immediate thought was, \u2018What a powerful feminist movement!\u2019, but they don\u2019t identify as feminists, for the reasons I have gone into, even though they engage in feminist practices and are linked to all revolutionary feminist movements, from India to Latin America, via Europe.<\/p>\n

Their reasons for not calling themselves feminists are legitimate, but how can we maintain that position without fuelling the new wave of anti-feminism \u2014 be it from Trump or Erdogan \u2014 the very same wave that legitimizes the imprisonment of my fellow feminists in Iran in the name of anti-imperialism and national sovereignty? In some left-wing discourse, I get the impression that people speak as if Hillary Clinton were the leading figure in feminism. I don\u2019t know whether she is a figurehead in the United States, certainly not in other parts of the world. Sometimes we buy into these narratives, which have nothing to do with what feminism is actually like in the Global South.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, calling yourselves a women\u2019s movement also carries the risk of essentializing the feminine, which leaves out the queer perspective. That is why it is so interesting when indigenous collectives and movements from Abya Yala declare that binarism is a colonial construct, one that did not exist before colonization.<\/p>\n

\"Mujeres

Kurdish female fighters in Rojava<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

VG\/MM. <\/span><\/b>You refer to jinealogy as a reconstruction, born out of the uprising, of knowledge that had been torn away, and you link this to the role that knowledge plays in nourishing resistance. Could you elaborate on this?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

SR.<\/b><\/span> ‘Jine<\/em>\u2019 means woman; \u2018logia<\/em>\u2019 means science; so \u2018jinealogy<\/em>\u2019 is literally the science of women. Within the Kurdish popular movement, there is a strong commitment to knowledge and popular education. This is in opposition to elitist academic knowledge, which is entirely co-opted by colonial capitalism, and also in opposition to the oppressive nationalist education imposed by the state. Language is the ultimate symbol of this educational colonialism. With all the bans and restrictions, a large part of my generation has lost the ability to speak Kurdish. We weren\u2019t even allowed to speak it at home. Families didn\u2019t pass it on so as to protect their children. There is a famous story of a political prisoner who was imprisoned for ten years. His mother only speaks Kurdish, and when she visited him in prison, they had to sit in silence because speaking Kurdish was forbidden.<\/p>\n

This reality has led us to take education very seriously, not only to resist the annihilation of the language by teaching Kurdish through courses in the mountains, in villages and in towns, but also political education at all levels, as in Algeria during the period of French colonisation. Political education seen as a fundamental task in the resistance against colonialism. The idea stems from the classical Marxist tradition, but with a very grassroots approach. If we are creating a new society, we need a new form of education, one that is not elitist and does not separate theory from practice, as academic institutions do, where you might espouse democratic ideals yet, in everyday life, care nothing for anyone or anything. In the Kurdish movement, we believe that if you say something, you should put it into practice; what you believe in must be reflected in your rhetoric and in the way you work.<\/p>\n

\u2018Perwerdeya<\/em>\u2019 means education. It is the alternative to state education, whilst also being a form of resistance. It is also a tool for reaching out everywhere, for debating with everyone and integrating different collective experiences, bringing in the younger generations, and enabling them to become politically aware. Jinealogy forms part of this perwerdeya<\/em>. It is not just for activists, not just for feminists, not just for educated people. It is linked to social education; it is a way of changing everyday life and also an instrument of self-defence, enabling you to defend yourself against your father, or your husband, or an authority figure, at home, on the street, in the mountains.<\/p>\n

None of this excludes ideological education. This movement has remained alive for forty years, despite enormous repression, because it has a very solid ideological core and a collective memory that is passed down from generation to generation. Within this framework, jinealogy offers a new interpretation of the history of women in the Middle East, particularly Kurdish women, tracing its roots back to Mesopotamia, to challenge Eurocentric history and the myth of the Greek origins of civilization, which is a masculinist myth. Within jinealogy, the myth of Sahmaran \u2014 half-human, half-serpent \u2014 plays an interesting role.<\/p>\n

Sahmaran has a grand palace and is the guardian of wisdom and all secrets. She falls in love with a man \u2014 a fully human man \u2014 and entrusts him with all her knowledge. He ends up betraying her, revealing her secrets, and causing her to be killed. As Kurds, we have grown up with this myth, but within jinealogy it has been revived to present it as a story of feminicide and the theft of female wisdom by masculinist narratives. Of course, the integration of traditional mythology has its limitations, but it is interesting to see how, within the Kurdish liberation movement and the women\u2019s movement, there is a constant effort to link these myths to reality and to everyday knowledge. It is not just a matter of talking about Sahmaran, but of reviving her, to reclaim the knowledge that has been stolen from us \u2014 knowledge that once existed and which we can reclaim. Thus, in Rojava, there are many places where work is being done on women\u2019s knowledge, particularly in the fields of medicine and healing, but we also have Jinwa, a village exclusively for women who are victims of violence, organized entirely by women.<\/p>\n

\"Mujeres

Mothers for Peace Movement in Turkish Kurdistan<\/span>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

VG\/MM. <\/span><\/b>To conclude, we\u2019d like to ask you: how do you envisage feminist internationalism in a context of global war, where different patriarchies clash and Western patriarchy plays the women\u2019s rights card?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

SR. <\/span><\/b>Of course, we have seen the West play this card in many contexts; that \u2018civilizing\u2019 mindset, telling women, \u2018We will save you and liberate you from your archaic ways of life\u2019. We have seen it in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Netanyahu\u2019s speeches during the attacks on Iran. This is another reason why the Kurdish women\u2019s movement is reluctant to call itself feminist.<\/p>\n

In any case, internationalism is not an option. Perhaps it is for white people, who can choose whether or not to support Assad, whether or not to support Iran, but for us there is no choice. We cannot support the Islamic Republic of Iran \u2014 our lives depend on it \u2014 just as we cannot support the genocide in Palestine. Internationalism is what enables us to understand and unite our activisms as Kurds, as feminists, and as members of the revolutionary left.
\nI don\u2019t like the word intersectional, because it can sometimes be very superficial, but the question is how we can link, in practice, the Kurdish struggle with the feminist struggle, with the struggle against extractivism and with the ecological struggle \u2014 struggles that are, in reality, intertwined. And realpolitik, with its supposed pragmatism, is of no use to us, because it ultimately leaves us pinning all our hopes on states and their geopolitics, and we end up believing that for the liberation of Palestine we have to support misogynistic, masculinist states such as the Islamic Republic of Iran.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, an internationalism from below does work, because in real-life dialogue it is quite easy to understand why I cannot support a state that imprisons me and my comrades; first for being Kurdish, and second for being feminists. I see this internationalism as a practice of connection, a way of forging links, listening to one another, and engaging across different contexts. Sometimes it is difficult. How, for example, do we link the Syrian revolution with the Kurdish liberation movement? We managed it, but it was a hard, painful process.<\/p>\n

In internationalism, we\u2019re constantly shifting the terrain of our struggle, and sometimes it\u2019s hard to find your bearings, to understand what\u2019s most important, where to focus. We\u2019re learning from one another. It\u2019s also difficult to know how to talk about your local struggle with others. Like when I wrote the book on the Kurdish women\u2019s movement, I ended up rewriting certain sentences 25 or 30 times. I agonized over how to phrase them so they wouldn\u2019t be exploited. I wanted to be fair, because people have so much at stake, but also to allow myself to be critical.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I see white French feminists who are so enthusiastic about the Kurdish women\u2019s movement, without any kind of critique or reflection. For me, that attitude is the flip side of a colonial mindset, where you don\u2019t take other people\u2019s struggles truly seriously. I understand that it\u2019s different from their perspective, but in my case, this is my struggle and it was important for me to allow myself to take a critical view. I experienced a real internal conflict with this. How could I find the right words? Should I speak about this or not, and if so, how, knowing that it is a very violent conflict, a situation of war? It was a source of pain for 10 years. It wasn\u2019t a book I wrote as an intellectual, but as an activist, because my activism is stronger than my intellectual side.<\/p>\n\n\t\t