In a small street in Kobane, the walls sur­round­ing the Kon­gra Star build­ing – the wom­en’s move­ment with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Fed­er­a­tion of North­ern Syr­ia – house a vast and peace­ful gar­den, green and flow­ery on this sun­ny day of late April.

The calm is dis­turbed only by the roar of the gen­er­a­tors. In the shade of an awning, some women dis­cuss over tea. They are fight­ing with­in the Kon­gra Star for the eman­ci­pa­tion of women in the region, draw­ing on the expe­ri­ence of decades of reflec­tion and strug­gle of the Kur­dish wom­en’s move­ment. In cities strong­ly marked by war, such as Kobane, of which near­ly 50% has been destroyed, it is nec­es­sary not only to take care of the recon­struc­tion, but also of the estab­lish­ment of social struc­tures to orga­nize soci­ety, ensur­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women, who played a deci­sive role in the lib­er­a­tion of the city, with the sac­ri­fice of Arîn Mirkan and of the now-famous com­man­der Nys­rin Abdullah.

Kobane

Kobane, April 2018. The municipality decided to keep a district of the city in its post-war state. They call it the “museum”, to bear witness to the violence of the fighting. For lack of choice, some residents have returned to live there until the construction of new housing for them is completed.

Kobane

Nejbir, a young woman in her twen­ties, is an offi­cer of the Kon­gra Star in Kobane.

I was a child when Apo1was with us in Syr­ia. When the rev­o­lu­tion began, as a Kur­dish stu­dent, I want­ed to join it. (…) Before the rev­o­lu­tion, our soci­ety was not as pro­gres­sive as it is now, it was very con­ser­v­a­tive. It was dif­fi­cult as a woman to join the rev­o­lu­tion, and at the same time we want­ed it, we felt the need for it. We do not only work with Kur­dish women but with all women. Now Arab women too have gained in free­dom. Apo’s phi­los­o­phy has been an inspi­ra­tion to us all.”

Kobane

Kobane, April 2018. Women played a decisive role in the liberation of the city, notably with the sacrifice of Arîn Mirkan. This downtown statue is dedicated to them.

The wom­en’s move­ment is based on the the­o­ry of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation devel­oped by Abdul­lah Öcalan, impris­oned leader of the PKK, and in which the lib­er­a­tion of women is one of the three major axes, along­side democ­ra­cy and ecol­o­gy. Lat­er, the Kur­dish wom­en’s move­ment devel­oped its the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal approach to wom­en’s empow­er­ment through the con­cept of jine­ologî, lit­er­al­ly “wom­en’s sci­ence”. Where they are present, the women of the move­ment set up non-mixed struc­tures, par­al­lel to the mixed struc­tures: wom­en’s assem­bly (organ­i­sa­tion), wom­en’s house (defend rights / fight against vio­lence), wom­en’s acad­e­my (training/education), wom­en’s secu­ri­ty forces, etc.

Kobane
Kobane, April 2018. Land of the agricultural cooperative managed by women.

You see the rev­o­lu­tion that women are lead­ing.” Nejbir con­tin­ues. “The strug­gle is under­way in all domains of soci­ety, not just the mil­i­tary. In Kobane, a large part of the town was destroyed,

The eco­nom­ic field is very impor­tant. If you are not eco­nom­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent, you can­not be inde­pen­dent at all. In our phi­los­o­phy, we do not say that eco­nom­ics is the basis of every­thing but it is part of wom­en’s lib­er­a­tion. We can­not win their release with­out ensur­ing their eco­nom­ic independence.

After the lib­er­a­tion of Kobane, we orga­nized a meet­ing with the women, and we decid­ed to cre­ate coop­er­a­tives in dif­fer­ent fields, includ­ing tex­tiles and agri­cul­ture. Lat­er, we built a bak­ery run by women. There is also a coop­er­a­tive that plants trees.

At first, Kobane’s bank2lent us funds. The autonomous admin­is­tra­tion has helped. The munic­i­pal­i­ty pro­vid­ed us with free land. And every­one who want­ed to help was able to par­tic­i­pate in the project. We are now plan­ning to expand our coop­er­a­tive sys­tem. For exam­ple, we want to cre­ate farms for ani­mals. Our sys­tem is not yet an alter­na­tive to cap­i­tal­ism, present through­out the world. But our sys­tem here must help society.”

Kobane

Saliha and Yasmine

Sal­i­ha is one of the two co-super­vi­sors of the Kon­gra Star Eco­nom­ic Committee.

We are try­ing to bring [the coop­er­a­tive sys­tem] to life in Roja­va. In ear­ly his­to­ry, women were respon­si­ble for eco­nom­ic issues before they lost con­trol of them. But now we are try­ing to devel­op this coop­er­a­tive sys­tem so that women can regain con­trol over the econ­o­my. Our coop­er­a­tives in the Kon­gra Star are run by women. They start­ed two years ago, first in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. There is also a tex­tile work­shop and a knit­ting shop. And women mak­ing dol­mas. We also have a bak­ery run by women. Cur­rent­ly in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, about four­teen women work. In the tex­tile work­shop, sev­en to eight women.”

Yas­mine, for­mer aca­d­e­m­ic, works with Sal­i­ha in the eco­nom­ic com­mit­tee of the Kon­gra Star. She comes from Efrin and arrived recent­ly, fol­low­ing the Turk­ish attack. There, she was already work­ing with the wom­en’s move­ment.” Before the rev­o­lu­tion I was teach­ing at the uni­ver­si­ty. Then I got involved in the eco­nom­ic field. I found [Kon­gra Star’s eco­nom­i­cal projects] very inter­est­ing, I decid­ed to par­tic­i­pate in them. This is dif­fer­ent from what I have seen else­where, in Lebanon, Turkey and Syr­ia. I had not seen a wom­en’s orga­ni­za­tion devel­oped to such an extent elsewhere.”

Women work­ing in coop­er­a­tives feel empow­ered,” says Sal­i­ha, “they see that they can do things, that they do things. Because they par­tic­i­pate in the sys­tem and because they pro­duce their own sources of income, they feel empowered.

The women who come to work in co-ops are those who believe in them­selves. They want to do some­thing in soci­ety. There are women who for one rea­son or anoth­er did­n’t come to co-ops but they end up doing it because they need a job.”

Kobane

The women have planted these trees, but irrigation problems are holding back their growth.

This is the case of Had­la, about fifty years old, who works in the tex­tile cooperative.
“I’ve been work­ing here for a month. I want­ed to earn mon­ey for my chil­dren. A woman in our neigh­bor­hood knew about this place, she told me about it. After Daesh’s attack, we went to Turkey as refugees, I worked in the fields. Then we came back. But before I left Kobane, I was a seamstress.”

Kobane
Hadla

In the vast hangar where rows of sewing machines line up, six or sev­en women work mak­ing clothes. They were recent­ly joined by some men, who work in a near­by room; refugees from Efrin. Khaled heard about the co-op on tele­vi­sion. After he arrived in Kobane, he went to vis­it them and asked if he could work with them. Miss­ing work­force, the women agreed. Today, they oper­ate in two dif­fer­ent coop­er­a­tives, but in the same place, and are orga­nized together.

Kobane

Nis­rin, a 20-year-old from Kobane, has worked in the tex­tile coop­er­a­tive for almost two years.

Four months after Kobane was released, I came here. My aunt is a seam­stress, she told me about this place. I’ve worked with dif­fer­ent teams. We sew, iron, pack. Pro­duc­tion depends on demand, there are orders. I love this job. I want to keep work­ing here, pro­fes­sion­al­ize myself.”

Kobane

Nisrin

Sal­i­ha continues :

In Kobane, there is still no coop­er­a­tion between sales out­lets and coop­er­a­tives. But it exists in oth­er areas. In Derik, for exam­ple, there is a shop run by women. Each work­er’s salary depends on their pro­duc­tion. We have a sys­tem to orga­nize our­selves. Let me give you an exam­ple. We have week­ly meet­ings (tek­mil) dur­ing which we eval­u­ate what we have done and pos­si­bly sug­gest ways to improve the work. In addi­tion, every month a report is writ­ten for the Kon­gra Star by the local branch of the wom­en’s movement.”

The issue of com­pen­sa­tion varies among co-ops. In a num­ber of them, the equal shar­ing of work and remu­ner­a­tion between the dif­fer­ent mem­bers is a basic prin­ci­ple. In Kobane, Nejbir jus­ti­fies the dif­fer­ent remu­ner­a­tion by the fact that some women only par­tic­i­pate at the mar­gin of the project “by water­ing the trees for exam­ple”.

Adi­la, a teacher, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the cre­ation of a coop­er­a­tive that man­u­fac­tures and sells sewing and knit­ting works. Here, pro­duc­tion and sales take place in the same spot.

This co-op opened three months ago. I haven’t stopped teach­ing,” says Adi­la, “but now I do both. This coop­er­a­tive was our idea. We intro­duced it to the Kon­gra Star who then helped us. I’ve want­ed to do this kind of work for a while. After the rev­o­lu­tion, we want­ed to do some­thing so that these tra­di­tion­al tech­niques would not be for­got­ten. It’s work­ing pret­ty well.” Adi­la con­tin­ues. “At first, we had a lot of cus­tomers, because it was win­ter and what we do is more of a win­ter thing, but now it’s a bit down.”

Kobane

Kobane

Kobane

The sit­u­a­tion in Bakur3is dif­fer­ent from here.” Sal­i­ha observes. “Our soci­ety is very con­ser­v­a­tive. We are only now begin­ning to change it, and we are work­ing on it. That is why there are still not enough women here in coop­er­a­tives. What you saw is just the begin­ning. We’ve tried to make co-ops a social place, but it has­n’t worked yet. At first there were prob­lems with hus­bands, who did not under­stand the pur­pose of the project well. But we have worked hard to change that men­tal­i­ty. Our goal is not just to give women a job, we want to empow­er women, so that they may go out, be active. If women stay at home with noth­ing, their minds col­lapse. But if they go out, do some­thing cre­ative, meet peo­ple, their morale improves. We want to take women out, social­ize them, make them active in soci­ety, not just make eco­nom­ic coop­er­a­tives. The rev­o­lu­tion was like a leap for­ward. As a Kurd, this move­ment has been going on for 40 years. We grew up with this phi­los­o­phy, which is not only for the Kur­dish move­ment but for every­one. Free­dom is dif­fi­cult to achieve, and for this pur­pose you must ded­i­cate your­self entire­ly to it. Some women burned them­selves alive for it. When you believe in some­thing, you do it. Because we believed in that phi­los­o­phy, we took the risk.”

Kobane

Kobane, April 2018. “Komutan” has supported the PKK since its inception. As a young girl, she had to fight social pressure to attend meetings, events. Today, she is co-president of a commune and participates in the women’s movement.

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Kobane

Ayse Effendi is the co-president of the Tev-Dem of Kobane. She is in charge of setting up and organizing the komîn. “What is the international community doing to free Ocalan? We fought Daesh, but Daesh is the enemy of all humanity. Now everyone knows that Turkey supports jihadists. But why are they looking away from their actions? You see the price we paid in this struggle, and the thanks we now receive is the occupation of Efrin. Russia betrayed us. Nobody did anything. But the fight at Efrin continues. Ask yourselves why, when it comes to the Kurds and the oppression they suffer, the whole world is silent. Many mothers here lost children in this war, who took up arms against Daesh. We want to get this message to the world: if you do not let Efrîn’s children grow up in a peaceful environment, the rest of the world will find it difficult to be at peace. Efrin will return to the hands of its people.”

Loez
April 2018

Kobane


Kobane • Les coopéra­tives comme out­il d’é­man­ci­pa­tion des femmes Cliquez pour lire
Kobane • Las coop­er­a­ti­vas como útil de eman­ci­pación de la mujer Haga clic para leer

Translation by Lougar Raynmarth
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Loez
Pho­to-jour­nal­iste indépendant
Loez s’in­téresse depuis plusieurs années aux con­séquences des États-nations sur le peu­ple kurde, et aux luttes de celui-ci.